Bobzammel

While Buddha and Jesus apparentally preached two seperate philosophies, it seems that the life story of Buddha is very similar to the life of Christ as depicted in the Gospels.
Buddha apparentally leaves his cozy existence and starts ministry by fasting. During all this fasting, he is tempted by an evil spirit, whom he defeats. He then embarks on a ministry, teaching his new spiritual philosophy around his country. (Although he does not do any healings or miracles). He gathers a group of disciples--one of whom betrays him--and clashes with the religious authorities. He has a "Last Supper" but unlike Christ, Buddha meets his death due to some nasty pork.
Both religions encourage compassion to the poor, the unimportance of possessions, and so on. It is in their concepts of spiritual reality that they differ. Buddha has the spiritual "No land" Nirvana; Christianity has Heaven and Hell(A concept lacking entirely in pre-Hellenistic Hebrew scriptures-Although Heaven is in the OT, it is potrayed as God's hangout and not an abode of the righteous dead).
Perhaps the initial concept for Jesus came from Buddha, but it was Hellenistic, Jewish, and Persian thought which "fleshed out" the rest of the Gospel. Since there is little evidence of any 'life' of Jesus existing at the time of Paul, perhaps Mark and others decided to incorporate some elements from Buddha, whose scriptures were composed 500 years before.

Any thoughts?

Old Man

Except that no-one prophecized the coming of Buddha - he appointed himself to preach, so who could know in the time in which he lived, whether he taught the truth?

Not much similarity there.

Some say that Pre-Hellenistic Hebrew scriptures lacked a concept of hell as a place of eternal punishment, but one would hardly think so from reading Isaiah:

Isa 66:24 And they shall go forth, and look upon the carcases of the men that have transgressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched; and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh.


And the concept of judgment was deeply ingrained into Israelite society:

Ecc 11:9 Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes: but know thou, that for all these [things] God will bring thee into judgment.

Deu 11:26 Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse;


Given that both Enoch and Elijah were translated direct to heaven, it is difficult not to conclude that the blessing, the curse, and the judgment did not extend to the afterlife.

Check out the book of 1 Enoch (a very Jewish book) written circa 200BC in Israel, and you will find that the whole scheme of eternal judgment that Jesus taught sketched out. Given the prominence and rigo(u)rs of the law and Jewish tradition, I hardly think it likely there would have been room for many external influences.

bagong

There are some similarites: both are born without biological father, both resist the temptation of the devil during meditation, both preach agains the corruption of the established priestly class.

On the whole the differences are much more significant however: Mâya (the Buddha's mother) is not a virgin, the Buddha is a wealthy prince, he has a wife and son, he "ministers" for roughly 50 years and accepts thousands of disciples into his monastic order during his lifetime, he dies happily of old age (dissentry being the immediate cause of death). The last supper you mention is of no religious significance, it is merely reported what the Buddha last ate before his death. The disciple who "betrays him" is Devadatta, a monk who attempted to take over the leadership of the Sangha (monastic order), and having failed, caused the first schism over a point of discipline (he wanted to make the optional ascetic practices mandatory). This is clearly different from Judas's betrayal of Jesus.

So I don't think there's a basis for any claim that Jesus was (even indirectly) modelled after the Buddha. Having said that, the Buddhist influence on the Hellenic world is a fascinating and neglected field of study. It is certain that many Greeks in Bactria, Taxila, and the other eastern Greek kingdoms were Buddhist. Given the close cultural and trade contacts between Bactria and the Mediterranean, it thus seems improbable that Buddhism was completely unknown in the rest of the Hellenic world. Yet AFAIK, no serious study of the Buddhist influence on the western Hellenic world has ever been done.

philechat

One thing, the Greeks and the Hindus were both Indo-Europeans and probably shared certain views on the nature of gods and life, even when they diverged later into seperate religions. It is also possible that the foreign trades of the cultures brought Hindu thoughts into the Hellenic world.

Or, it is possible that under similar socio-economic or intellectual conditions similar thoughts would arise independently from seperate areas. The Golden rule, for example, was invented by Confucius, the Buddha, Plato, and others before Jesus did, even without them knowing one another.

The Buddha actually taught the Golden Rule much earlier than Jesus Christ. He was probably a Hindu philosopher deified later by the Buddhist religion. The idea of "prophecy" is irrelevent, since it is quite possible that the many qualities of Jesus were also "invented", according to the traditions of OT.

The idea of afterlife rewards and punishments were probably additions due to Zoroastrain influences, at around 1-2 centuries B.C.E. There were no concept of afterlife in the ancient Hebrews before the Babylonian capture. The Phraisee/Seducee conflict actually showed a split view of afterlife among the Jewish exiles.

Not true. The book of Ezra and Neremiah documented about many Jewish people breaking away from the dictates of the Law, and the prophets' anger about their disloyalty. By these alone we know many ancient Jewish people probably disregarded the laws and became apostates of one kind or another. Judaism evolves to be more restrictive and conservative only gradually, and the Priestly/Deutonomy additions are generally believed by scholars to be composed much later than the narrative texts in the Torah.

Old Man

Yes, that is the whole problem with ascribing Hellenic influences to Jewish thought and literature. The Jews who became Hellenizers were regarded as apostates, the scum of the earth, by the pure (Essenes & Pharisees etc), and their views would have been ostracized after Macabees rise to power.

It seems the Saducees were a law unto themselves, the political class, and produced no meaningful writings, except perhaps 1 Macabees derived from one of their number (if I recall correctlty).

The real prophetic & wisdom traditions of the OT were carried on in books like Sirach, Enoch, Wisdom of Solomon, Daniel, which is historically apocryphal vis a vis Babylon, but contemporary with the Greek era and strongly anti-Hellenic. It is hard to see how the theology of books like Daniel & Enoch, with their clear predictions of eternal life and eternal judgment, and anti-hellenic bias, could be derived from Hellenism:

Dan 12:2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame [and] everlasting contempt.

I'll need some convincing on that one.