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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]
Z. P. Thundy has surveyed the similarities and differences between the birth stories of Buddha by Maya and Jesus by Mary and notes that while there are similarities such as virgin birth, there are also differences, e.g. that Mary outlives Jesus after raising him, but Maya dies soon after the birth of Buddha, as all mothers of Buddhas do in the ...
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.
A History of God is a book by Karen Armstrong that was published by Knopf in 1993. It details the history of the three major monotheistic traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, along with some details on Buddhism and Hinduism. The evolution of the idea of God is traced from its ancient roots in the Middle East up to the present day.
The Buddha's tribe of origin, the Shakyas, seems to have had non-Vedic religious practices which persist in Buddhism, such as the veneration of trees and sacred groves, and the worship of tree spirits (yakkhas) and serpent beings (nagas). They also seem to have built burial mounds called stupas. [87]