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From:
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In article <hjBWE.59525$
vU3.22099@fx37.iad>,
FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer <
FBInCIAnNSATe...@yahoo.com> posted:
How Buddhist Cultural Memes Were Appropriated By Christianity
What else is new?
Jesus was a Buddhist Monk BBC Documentary https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbZCfWZI6qE
Govt of India Documentary on Jesus in Kashmir !! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9w-xJfSOyc
A western christian herself FINALLY got enlightened and
realized "Christianity" is NOTHING but SNAKE OIL.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5gARFv4wrk
=========================================================
https://swarajyamag.com/culture/how-buddhist-cultural-memes-were-appropriated-by-christianity
How Buddhist Cultural Memes Were Appropriated By
Christianity
by Subhash Kak
Feb 06, 2016, 2:36 pm
What is the exact relationship between the New Testament
and ancient Indian texts on Buddhism? How much of the early
gospels were inspired by the Buddhist texts?
Living in the global village as we do, it is good to trace
the origins of iconic stories within the palimpsest of
culture, especially those that hold power over the
religious imagination of people and have the potential to
create discord, in order we can all celebrate our shared
heritage and look at each other in friendship. More often
than not it will reveal the tangled nature of our
collective memories.
We know that the Panchatantra stories traveled west from
India and became Kalilah wa-Dimnah in Arabic (after the
names of the two jackals Karataka and Damanaka). The name
of the influential philosophical movement of Brethren of
Purity (ikhwan al-safa) is itself traced to one of the
Panchatantra stories. These stories and others from the
katha-sarita-sagara were celebrated in the Arabian Nights
and Sindbad. Scholars have also noted parallels between the
Panchatantra and Aesop's fables.
The origin of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, two of
the most famous Christian saints of the Middle Ages is less
widely known. This legend was so hugely popular that, from
time to time, the Church announced that the relics of the
two had appeared miraculously and were then installed with
solemn ceremony. Barlaam and Josaphat found their way into
the Roman Martyrology (27 November), and into the Greek
calendar (26 August).
The legend tells how an Indian king persecutes his son,
Josaphat, who astrologers have foretold, will establish the
Christian Church. In due course, Josaphat meets the hermit
Saint Barlaam and converts to Christianity. In the end, the
prince's father accepts the son's conversion and retires to
the desert to spend his last days with the old teacher.
Church scholars now acknowledge that Barlaam and Josaphat
is a play on the names Bhagavan and Bodhisattva, and it is
a reworking of the story of Buddha's enlightenment. The
original story was a Mahayana text that was translated into
Arabic and European languages. Indeed, this legend should
not startle us for St. Ann, St. Lucy, St. Denis and St.
Brigid, represent pre-Christian deities Anna, Lucia,
Dionysus and Brighid were similarly assimilated.
The echo of Indian stories in the early gospels and the
influence of Vedanta and Buddhism on Gnosticism is also
well accepted. In particular, the non-canonical Gospel of
Thomas (which was discovered at Nag Hammadi in 1945)
resonates with Indian ideas of spirituality.
The question of the possible relationship between the New
Testament and Indian texts has a long history. The great
philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) went so far as
to suggest that the canonical gospels had an Indian basis:
The New Testament � must be in some way traceable to an
Indian source: its ethical system, its ascetic view of
morality, its pessimism, and its Avatar, are all thoroughly
Indian. It is its morality which places it in a position of
such emphatic and essential antagonism to the Old Testament
so that the story of the Fall is the only possible point of
connection between the two.
The famed Indologist Max M�ller also spoke of the
connections:
That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and
Christianity cannot be denied, and it must likewise be
admitted that Buddhism existed at least 400 years before
Christianity. I go even further, and should feel extremely
grateful if anybody would point out to me the historical
channels through which Buddhism had influenced early
Christianity.
This challenge was met by Rudolf Seydel, who showed that
the originals of the events in the gospels are in the
Lalitavistara Sutra, and he listed fifty-one parallels.
Some of these are virginal conception by Mary and Maya, the
annunciation by the angels, the star in the east, the tree
that bends down to aid the mother, and the old sage who
predicts the child's future.
Further specific parallels are in Luke's infancy narrative,
in the story of the good thief, the story of the temptation
of Jesus, the prediction of his death as in John 12.34, or
the story of the aged Simeon in Luke 2:25 (the Buddhist
Asita), or the passage John 7:38. Some see the parallels as
no more than coincidences, although their details appear to
go against that view. The scholar Albert J. Edmunds tried
to find middle ground thus:
Each religion is independent in the main, but the younger
one arose in such a hotbed of eclecticism that it probably
borrowed a few legends and ideas from the older, which was
quite accessible to it.
It is hard to take the view that the Buddhist texts
borrowed from the Christian gospels since the life stories
of the Buddha were translated into Chinese from Sanskrit as
early as the eleventh year of the reign of Emperor Ming of
the Eastern Han Dynasty (69 CE), and this is much prior to
the time the gospels were written down.
Another important perspective is the operation of the
Church and the Buddhist temple. Our evidence comes from the
French Lazarist missionaries, Evariste Huc, and Joseph
Gabet, who were amongst the first Westerners to visit Lhasa
in the 1840s. Their travels through Asia and Tibet were
chronicled in Huc's book Souvenirs d'un voyage dans la
Tartarie, le Thibet et la Chine pendant les ann�es 1844,
1845 et 1846. Huc was astonished by the similarities
between Buddhist and Catholic rituals:
The cross, the miter, the dalmatica, the cope, � , the
service with double choirs, the psalmody, the exorcisms,
the censer at suspended from five chains, the benedictions
given by the Lamas by extending the right hand over the
heads of the faithful, the chaplet, ecclesiastical
celibacy, spiritual retirement, the worship of the saints,
the fasts, the processions, the litanies, the holy water,
all these are analogies between the Buddhists and
ourselves.
Huc explained the similarities in the borrowings by the
Tibetans from the West. But Tibetan Buddhism has an old
history that connects it to the Buddhist monasteries of
China and India with ancient prescriptions of ritual and
worship, and it is implausible it borrowed the practices of
a remote creed. It is more likely that the Tibetan and the
Catholic rituals have a common source.
Dhanyavaad for posting the article.
Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi Om Shanti
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj
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