Did the Gospels borrow the Buddha story?

Buddha preaching peace between warring factions in the
middle of a river. 

A few weeks ago, I was contacted by a young Christian scholar named Derek, asking for my take on the claim that the Gospels are recycled Buddhist material.  This may seem theoretically possible, because Buddha lived about 500 years before Jesus, his followers did conduct missions, Alexander the Great brought some basic knowledge of India back to the Mediterranean: the Romans had heard of the man.  (I believe Clement of Alexandria mentions him.)  It is also theoretically possible that the story of Mohandas Gandhi is a myth, patched together from recycled legends of the Cathars in Middle Ages, or from stories about Francis of Assissi.  Ideas flowed back and forth between Europe to India as well as the other way, there are some points of simliarity.

But both scenarios seem about equally incredible, to me, and for the same reason: the Gospels are as obviously historical as are the best accounts of Gandhi's life.  I make the case for that in detail in Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could, and in abbreviated form, in our new book, Faith Seeking Understanding, and won't repeat all that again here.  But the question introduces some important historical principles, that I think are worth touching on. 

With Derek's permission, I'll post our conversation, including my latest response to his most recent message.   I'll color-code the conversation a little differently from the norm, this time.

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Greetings in Jesus' name. I have just graduated from Colorado Christian University with a degree in Theology. I am presently working on my Koine Greek and Latin in an effort to get into the CU Boulder Classics program. As you can imagine, my passion is ancient history. I prefer ANE and Greco-Roman history, but I can get into any ancient literature with enough exposure. I have dropped by Christ the Tao for about a year now and I understand you have quite a background in Chinese history. That being the case, I assume you must have some knowledge of Indian history and literature as well. If this is so, I was wondering if I might ask you a few questions?

In Christ, Derek Neiman

Well that's easy. They didn't.

A hundred years ago, the claims went the other direction -- that Mahayana Buddhism, especially the Lotus Sutra, had been influenced by Christianity. That probably didn't happen, either.

DM

I'm just trying to figure out the best way to frame the questions. They are on radical Internet atheist assertions that pre-Christian, Buddhist legends influenced the Gospel portrait of Jesus.

Sorry again for the late reply. I'm sure I can get some sympathy from someone who's already been through the Masters degree process. :)

In any event, indeed, I have been investigating this Jesus/Buddha accusation for about a year now and I have seen people try to compare the fourth chapter of the lotus sutra with Jesus' parable of the Prodigal. But given the vast difference in size and the vagueness of the parallels (man leaves fathers home and comes back) that one's never struck me as plausible.

On its face the whole thing seems improbable, but my understanding is the silk-road made connections between pre-Christian Greece/Israel and China/India more pervasive than was once thought, so I don't know.

My two questions have more to do with the crucifixion itself and Peter walking on water in Matthew. I have to find the alleged crucifixion parallel reference, I recall DM Murdock (I know she's nuts) said that Godfrey Higgins cited a story about the Buddha being impaled/crucified after picking a flower or something, but the one I found is about one of Gautama Buddha's ancestors who is impaled. I have it one my computer somewhere, I'll find it today.

But the other one compares Peter to one of Buddha's disciples (Sari Putra) in Jataka 190 (Silanisamsajataka). Apparently he runs on a river to see the Buddha and starts to sink, he then, through discipline, is able to run the rest of the way. There are definitely differences, but the similarities are stronger than 99% of what skeptics typically bring forth (Dionysus, Mithra, Osiris). I know the Jatakas are a headache for Buddhist scholars because some are very late (9th-11th century) while some are thought to have influenced some of Aesop's fables and be from the 2nd century BC.

Apparantly thera's a pretty strong strand of water walking powers in ancient Indian literature (the Buddha flies over water, or creates an apparition that walks on water). So it's kind of hard to untangle. I'm much more at home in Akkad, Achaea and Rome than southeast Asia.

What do you think about this one? I'll get the info about the other one today.

DN

Sorry for the slow response. Things have been crazy busy this summer.

You're obviously skeptical enough to figure out the tricks these sorts of arguments play by yourself. One secret, as you have ascertained, is to always go back to the original texts, and read them in context. Most of these arguments depend on pure laziness on the part of the Christ-myther's audience. When read in the original, the parallels are seldom as clear as on the Christ-myther's website.

Another secret is to recognize that it is human nature to find patterns. One of my favorite quotes on this subject is from the wacky old novel Tristam Shandy:

‘It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimilates everything to itself, as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by everything you see, hear, read, or understand . . . (Sterne I. 44)’

Of course, that's a double-edged sword, since we Christians need to critique our own theories with this in mind, as well.

Third, the Buddhist corpus is so large, that it makes it inevitable that you'll find many parallels somewhere.

Fourth, even in true historical works, there are ALWAYS parallels. I once wrote up a fairy long list of parallels between Gandhi and Mao Zedong.

Fifth, one generally therefore needs real historical evidence for influence, unless the coincidences are at a very great level of detail and specificity.

Sixth, some events occur in both myth and real life. For example, the theme of being buried in the ground and coming out to new life, and the theme of stealing fruit, occur surprisingly often in the lives of famous men as well as in mythology. This means that if something happens in mythology, that is no argument at all in and of itself that it didn't happen in history, too.

Seventh, there is the principle of fulfillment, that I write a lot about. No time to this morning! But Jesus and the Religions of Man, or True Son of Heaven: How Jesus fulfills the Chinese Culture, are good books for that, among others.

I'd also recommend Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus. One of the chapters in the end compares ancient myths and the gospels, across 50 characteristics that the gospels share in common (that I have defined and described earlier in the book), and shows what they also share with myth, and what they emphatically do not share.

It comes to mind to write a blog answering your question in more detail. I probably won't have time to do so for a while, though -- projects to attend to are stacking up right now like airplanes at O'Hare airport on a foggy day, might take a while. 

Thanks for the info! As you can tell from my late responce, I know what being busy is about! :)

Generally, I am not impressed by 'parallels' for the reasons you noted, but this water walking one caught my eye because in both stories a man walks (in the Buddhist story the man actually seems to be running) on water (Peter on a lake, Sariputra on a river), start to sink and are saved. Of course there are differences, in the Buddhist story, Buddha does not save the man, he saves himself with his discipline, but it was still intriguing.

The second parallel I found is between the of crucifixion of Jesus and a story about a man impaled in Buddhist stories. There's a Danih scholar named Christian Lindtner (who actually has advanced degrees in Buddhist scholarship) who runs a website called jesusisbuddha.com. It seems he's a bit of a nutter, maybe even a holocaust hoaxer, but he has degrees in the Classical languages as well as Sanskrit.

On it he compares the Buddhist account of an ancestor of the Buddha's called Gautama who is impaled with the Gospels. There are also a number of other allegations on various web pages (Dorothy Murdock [I know she's a kook] says Godfrey Higgins in the 19th century read of a story in which the Buddha is "crucified" after picking a flower in a garden).

The one mentioned by Lindtner is real, it is contained in a volume called The Gilgit Manuscript of the Sanghabhedavastu, but as I the others, I don't know. As you noted, Buddhist literature is quite voluminous. Hard to pin down. So I wondered, as I know impalement was practiced in ancient India and China but I have never heard of these specific stories before, if you had ever heard of any of these, or if you knew any scholars who specialize in Buddhist lit who might know.

I look forward to the possible blog post and I'll check amazon for the books.

Thanks for getting back to me.  It may be that you were looking for a more historical response -- "This can't have happened because the Buddhist sources really say X, Y, and Z, the Indians never really thought A or B, and there is no trace of those particular Buddhist texts showing up that early, or in that part of the world." 

Walking on water is a fairly obvious thing to do, if you have "superpowers." Another parallel is Dash in The Incredibles, who also undergoes a trial while walking on water (getting shot at by the villains), and like the Buddhist disciple, needs to save himself. Two thirds of the planet is covered by water, after all, and India grew up around rivers often in flood stage on a peninsula, so whether one really has supernatural powers, or only wishes to, walking on water seems like a useful capability. 

But where exactly is Sariputra depicted as walking on water? Can you point me to the text? It's always more interesting to look at the originals, when possible, and to draw no conclusions at all, even tentative ones, until one has done so. 

I am not a scholar of Indian Buddhism, though -- like Lin Yutang, "My bias is for the Chinese sources." It seems very dubious to me, and what I've read of the Lotus Sutra did not sound at all like a Gospel -- though chapter twenty-five shows the bodhisattva Avalokitsvara answering human needs in miraculous ways that I have argued can be seen as a kind of prophetic type of Jesus.

But until we are shown actual texts, there's really nothing that needs to be done. It is a mistake, I think, to let sloppy third-hand references to texts that have yet to be produced, cause us to react too much.
Dorothy Murdock is not just a kook, she's a shameless liar, and not to be trusted with any empirical claim about anything. One MUST look at the original, especially if the claim comes from her.

I checked Lindtner's site, and found a lot about numerology (not very convincing, at first glance), but nothing about a crucifixion. Can you point to the passage? He does seem susceptible to the Tristam Shandy disease.

An Indian Christian once wrote a tract claiming that Jesus is the fulfillment of sacrifice in the Rig Veda, pointing to numerous amazingly specific parallels between sacrifice in the Vedas, and the death of Jesus on the cross.  I once quoted that tract in a book, but now I wouldn't, because I haven't found thes citations for myself, yet.  (Though it's easy to find a lot about sacrifice in the Rig Veda, including the primordial sacrifice of God for the world, which has legitimately been seen as being fulfilled by Jesus by Indian scholars like Banarjea since the 19th Century.)  It's important not to cite anything about ancient texts authoritatively, until we read it with our own two eyes.  It's amazing how often people try to get away with fake quotes, and how often they even "go viral" in an Internet environment eager to buy doctrines that tickle one's ears. 

The Vedas don't pretend to be offering historical information about something that happened in the real world. Nor do they appear to be doing that.

The Chinese philosopher Yuan Zhiming points to parallels between the death of the Sage in Lao Zi, and the death of Jesus.  These I have checked carefully, and verified. 18th Century French Jesuits found many more such parallels, which I would not vouch for. Jaroslav Pelikan is struck by parallels between the righteous man in Plato's dialogue with Glaucon, who dies a violent death for his righteousness, and Jesus on the cross, and this parallel, again, can be  easily verified. 

So what is my point? 

(a) Begin with the actual documents, not with anyone's claims about them, or summary of them.  I'd love to see the quotes, in context, and with source clearly referenced.

(b) You will find parallels.  It is impossible not to find parallels, even if all cultures were hermetically sealed and historically distinct as planets in different solar systems.  The human mind will find parallels, and the mass of data will produce them. 

(c) Some of the parallels between Jesus and vague, misty savior figures in other cultures seem to be far closer and more significant than one would expect by pure chance.

(d) But few of them is as obviously historical as is the life of Jesus in the Gospels.  They have the look of myth being instantiated, become real, made flesh and dwelt among us, in the life of Jesus.

(e) It is impossible that all of these (and other) parallels influenced the Gospels directly.  Not just improbable, but impossible.  Some other explanation must be found for at least some of the parallels.  And since there are strong parallels that cannot be explained historically, Occam's Razor suggests that one requires historical evidence to be sure that even strong correlations really mean historical causation.  One can less easily dismiss the Suffering Servant in Isaiah on the grounds that the Gospel writers might have invented Jesus after reading about him -- because there are other parallels that they could not possibly have read, first.   

(f) Similiar events often happen in myth and in history both.  So the fact that a claimed historical event in some ways resembles a mythological event, does not mean it cannot be historical in fact.  Sometimes it clearly is historical. 

(g) One Christian explanation for similarities that goes back to the Gospels themselves, is that God has prepared the world for the Gospel in prophetic words, images, and actions that are fulfilled by Jesus.  Thus Jesus is the "lamb of God" or Passover Lamb who takes away the sin of the world.  He is the "serpent in the wilderness" to whom people look and are saved.  He is the Second Adam, Abraham's Seed who will bless all peoples, Son of David, the Messiah, the Suffering Servant, and so on. 

Early Christians applied this principle to Greco-Roman tradition as well, as have thoughtful Christians in Asian traditions, and thinkers like C. S. Lewis. 

This, too, is an issue that I've written a lot about elsewhere, and won't foist on you, here. 

But the next step is to find the original passages being referred to, so we can compare them concretely.  Such comparisons almost always prove interesting.