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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.
An account of Buddha's life is translated into Greek by John of Damascus and widely circulated among Christians as the story of Barlaam and Josaphat. By the 14th century, this story of Josaphat becomes so popular that he is made a Catholic Saint .
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]
A statue of Siddartha Gautama preaching. Since the arrival of Christian missionaries in India in the 1st century (traces of Christians in Kerala from 1st-century Saint Thomas Christians), followed by the arrival of Buddhism in Western Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries, similarities have been perceived between the practices of Buddhism and Christianity.
The early texts also depict the Buddha's explanation for becoming a sramana as follows: "The household life, this place of impurity, is narrow—the samana life is the free open air. It is not easy for a householder to lead the perfected, utterly pure and perfect holy life."
The history of Buddhism can be traced back to the 5th century BCE. Buddhism originated from Ancient India , in and around the ancient Kingdom of Magadha , and is based on the teachings of the renunciate Siddhārtha Gautama .
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.
Since the chart combines secular history with biblical genealogy, it worked back from the time of Christ to peg their start at 4,004 B.C. Above the image of Adam and Eve are the words, "In the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" (Genesis 1:1) — beside which the author acknowledges that — "Moses assigns no date to this Creation.