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Early depictions of Christ (left, Asia Minor, Roman period), and the Buddha (Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara). Suggestions have been made that Buddhism may have influenced early Christianity. [1] Buddhist missionaries, sent by Emperor Ashoka of India to Sri Lanka, Syria, Egypt and Greece, may have helped prepare for the ethics of Christ.
Cassius Dio [20] and Plutarch [21] cite the same story. Historian Jerry H. Bentley (1993) notes "the possibility that Buddhism influenced the early development of Christianity" and that scholars "have drawn attention to many parallels concerning the births, lives, doctrines, and deaths of the Buddha and Jesus". [22]
[4] [6] Although Mahayana Buddhism expresses belief in Bodhisattva, this is very different from the notion of Creator God in Christianity. [6] [27] While some variations of Buddhism believe in an impersonal eternal Buddha or creative force, in general Buddhism sees the universe as eternal and without a starting point of creation. [28] [29]
Christ and Buddha by Paul Ranson, 1880. The Greek legend of "Barlaam and Ioasaph", sometimes mistakenly attributed to the 7th century St. John of Damascus but actually written by the Georgian monk Euthymius in the 11th century, was ultimately derived, through a variety of intermediate versions (Arabic and Georgian) from the life story of the Buddha.
The Gospel of Buddha is an 1894 book by Paul Carus. It is modeled on the New Testament and tells the story of Buddha through parables. It was an important tool in introducing Buddhism to the west and is used as a teaching tool by some Asian sects. Carus believed that the modern world required a new Religion of Science.
In pre-modern times Buddhist scripture was written on thin slices of wood (Palm-leaf manuscript or Bamboo). The leaves were kept on top of each other by thin sticks and the scripture is covered in cloth and kept in a box. The issue of how to determine if a teaching is a genuine teaching of the Buddha is present in the earliest Buddhist scriptures.
"Bible scholars claim that discussions about the Bible must be put into its context within church history and then into the context of contemporary culture." [ 140 ] Fundamentalist Christians are associated with the doctrine of biblical literalism , where the Bible is not only inerrant, but the meaning of the text is clear to the average reader.
In Islam, Jesus (Isa) is considered to be a messenger of God and the Messiah who was sent to guide the Descendants of Israel (Bani Isra'il) with a new scripture, the Gospel . [ 24 ] [ 25 ] The Quran mentions Jesus by name 25 times—more often than Muhammad [ 26 ] —and emphasises that Jesus was a mortal human who, like all other prophets, had ...