Freethought Nation

19 thoughts on “Buddhism’s Relation to Christianity”

1. Having been born into Buddhism and later assimilated into a Christian church; the whole objective presentation of Jesus and his teachings was wholy copacetic . The methods of worship,,, especialy the materialistic ones ,and the subjective interpretations confounded my intellect, and seemed unholy . This view has changed since . Perhaps the highest form of worship is one of all creation, especially humans, cause we should treat each other with dignity and respect , ( everyone poops their pants at least once,even Buddha and Jesus were babies once before they grew up)- peace

   1. “everyone poops their pants at least once,even Buddha and Jesus were babies once before they grew up”

      Not if they never existed.

      Nice – not, uncouth really; why the need to take a dump in the very first post of a very interesting blog? How juvenile. It ruins it for everybody else who would prefer to have an adult conversation. I’d like to request to the moderators that that disgusting part be removed from the comment, please.

2. When does Christ Con Vol. 2 come out?

   1. It has been under discussion at the forum:
      The Christ Conspiracy: The Greatest Story Ever Sold, 2nd Edition ([url]http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=26&sid=7be0dfc5e5d425dec20fce0bb249a925[/url])

      1. Thanks! :cheer:

3. Theraputta
   Acharya

   At http://www.freeratio.org/showthread.php?p=7379465#post7379465 I raised your review in a discussion started by Mountainman about the Therapeuts. You will see the buffoonish response of Stephan Huller. This is a useful audience to explain that the Therapeuts were influenced by Buddhism.

   Robert

   1. Thanks, Robert, but I’m not sure why I would be interested in the opinions of “buffoons.” This misogynistic individual you name appears to have emotional issues that I’m not really interested in.

      But I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself with that nest of “sh*theads,” as Earl Doherty ([url]http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=27318#p27318[/url]) has labeled the jealous harpies at that forum. I would add mentally disturbed to that observation. Hopefully, their rancidness will not rub off on you, but you might want to take some precautions, like garlic, perhaps.

      1. Your review provides a clear etymology to link the major Buddhist movement, the Theraputta, with the Therapeuts of Egypt. The identity between the Egyptian Therapeuts and the Buddhist Theraputta is obvious in name, meaning, date, location, method, culture and purpose.

         Many people remain locked in what we could call a ‘white racist’ paradigm, in which influences from outside the west are denied. This is a key theme in Bernal’s [i]Black Athena[/i]. So, people claim that Philo says the Therapeuts were a Jewish group, even though Philo said no such thing, and only emphasised the strong Therapeut interest in Judaism. This desperate Judaising of the Therapeuts taps into a bigger cultural myth of western autonomy from the east.

         The genetic evolution of monasticism out of India is a key scientific theme here. I have always thought of the myth of Jesus as representing the good east against the evil west. So your proof that the Christ Myth is backstopped by centuries of Buddhist mission to Egypt shows how the barbaric Romans were stepping into and destroying a high culture. The essence of Christianity is Buddhist.

         I will keep the garlic in mind for any rancid conversation with the harpies. Maybe I should just wear a mildewy shirt. 🙂

         1. Love the mildewy shirt reference – hey, it happened to me too in the Yucatan, same stench! Luckily, they had that laundry service. Peeyew! Not sure even that odor will protect you from those rancid minds, unfortunately, so stay on your game.

            Re the Buddhist-v-Jewish debate about the Therapeuts, the brilliant Rev. Dr. Robert Taylor – he of the infamous blasphemy conviction for preaching Jesus mythicism from the pulpit in 1820s England – called this monkish sect “mongrel Jews” and “Hebrew-descended Therapeuts,” after a fashion. ([i]Diegesis[/i], v, 68, 92). Their texts were significantly Jewish, but they also evidently included Isis the Healer in their worship, which is fitting for a healing sect/cult.

            Lockwood surmises that they are influenced by Buddhists, beginning centuries earlier, and not necessarily Indians themselves. I would concur that the Therapeuts would appear to be the end product of a Jewish sect that incorporated Gentile practices and ideas, including various Buddhistic traditions and doctrines. Again, the Egyptian religion was highly influential, as was the Greek, including via the Greco-Egyptian hybrid god Serapis.

            It is quite possibly that the Therapeuts were among, at least, those “Jews” who Emperor Hadrian supposedly discussed in the letter to Servianus as worshiping Serapis.

            As you know, I discuss many of these issues in [i]Christ in Egypt[/i] ([url]http://books.google.com/books?id=Iaqe9CG_s6cC&printsec=frontcover&dq=christ+egypt&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7EEPUarqH4biigKmjoGADg&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=therapeuts&f=false[/url]), in which I called these sectarians the “hybridizing Therapeuts.” It might be helpful to review the chapter on Alexandria. I also have chapters on Alexandria in both [i]Christ Conspiracy[/i] ([url]http://books.google.com/books?id=KnIYRi3upbEC&printsec=frontcover&dq=christ+conspiracy&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ykEPUe3DCO7FiwKN_IHoCQ&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=therapeuts&f=false[/url]) and [i]Suns of God[/i] ([url]http://books.google.com/books?id=rey19p_ycHUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=suns+of+god&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ekEPUenQD9DrigLEnYCABw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=therapeuts&f=false[/url]), both of which include discussion of the Therapeuts.

            It appears that the Therapeuts were eventually merged with the Syrian Gnostics as well, along with many others from around the empire who ended up at Alexandria, which was quite obviously a multinational hub of the sort that would create the eclectic Gnosticism.

            It might be useful for me to excerpt the chapters from these books on the Therapeuts and create a single monograph.

4. Some in that thread at freeratio are very confused across 20 pages worth. That Stephan Huller fool appears to want to obstruct discussion. It’s like he’s unaware that nobody is twisting his arm forcing him to post in there. Why doesn’t he just stop posting if he hates the discussion so much? His attacks tossed at Acharya are juvenile and totally uncalled for.

   The thread below would cure (pun intended) them of their confusion:

   Therapeuts and Ancient Usages of the Greek Word Therapeuo ([url]http://freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=4181[/url])

5. The Theras
   It is evident that the Therapeuts were not influenced by Buddhists as much as they actually were Buddhists. My monograph shows that the Egyptian medical texts, as with the alleged founding texts, are not nearly as ancient as scholars pretend. I have covered the many Indian trees and plants imported to Egypt around 600 B.C. At this very time the Egyptians only began writing texts and started to base their weeks on seven days, their calendar on the moon, etc. just as the Buddhists.

   Although the new scholars haven’t the skill of our past scholars, I suggest that scholars actually read Philo instead of just recycling old claims made by others, perhaps they will note that his teacher Banus was also said to wear bark clothes, which the early church fathers associated with the Sramana, or Buddhists. (Banus, Bennu, Bhanaka, Fenius, Pheonix, Sans, ‘baniya’- a beggar, SPHINX, or SUBHANAKA; the Thera-naga magically made a syringe tunnel, or theranaga [just as Mahosadha]).

   Banus was also said to live off of tree fruit which was also said of the Buddhists. The Therapeuts also kept their right shoulder uncovered and were known to sling the right arm up in the outer robe, just as the Theravadin monks. Good luck finding a single etymology to therapeut, the Buddhists, who resolve the infinite into a singularity, were much to synchronistic and against the limitations of language to assign a single etymology to a lot of their technical words. In one of the first sermons Buddha was said to redefine Brahmin and Sramana and the Memphis, or Ptah-ist priests who created Ptah, also, besides being the grand taksa, the potter, etc.., all of which are said about Buddha, punned off of Ptah. The 24 four Ptahs, the “24 prophets” came after the legend of 24 Buddhas. .

   My work has placed them in Delphi, Samos, Rhodes, Memphis, and many other places when Amasis became king of “both lands”, a phrase that Cambyses also used to include lands from Egypt to the Hindu Kush..

   The Homeric Hymn to Apollo proves to be another cryptic Buddhist work. The tree (or the Buddha) bending down to the mother, is found in the earliest of Buddhism, but also the tree bends down to help Buddha.

   “The Buddha, after his abluations, bathed in that water; the branch of an arjuna tree (Nagarjuna’s tree) bent low, so that he could seize it. When the Buddha wanted to clean his patched robe, Indra provided him with a big stone to thrash his wet clothes on” An introduction to the Ajanta Caves: With Examples of Six Caves, p. 143

   Tree bends down for Maya, Apollo (at Polycrates dedication), for Pentheus (probably acted at Scythopolis). The tree (Butm) bends down for Mary and for Prophet Muhammad when it was said that (Bahira) witnessed his greatness, and many more ancient figures

6. Thanks for the interesting contentions. I would like to see the documentation for the Indian trees and other plants in Egypt by 600 BCE. In fact, that claim opens up a whole other field of study: The migrations of invasive species.

   I have little doubt that, once Indians were aware of the incredible buildings and other cultural artifacts in Egypt, many made the journey there, just as tourists do to this day.

   I don’t know what you mean about Egyptians only writing texts around 600 BCE. The Book of the Dead, Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts are far older than that, as are many other inscriptions. Some of these texts are written on papyrus rolls, not just on walls, if that is what you are suggesting.

7. Not buying those dates yet, perhaps you could help
   Dear Acharya,
   You wrote “I don’t know what you mean about Egyptians only writing texts around 600 BCE. The Book of the Dead, Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts are far older than that, as are many other inscriptions. Some of these texts are written on papyrus rolls, not just on walls, if that is what you are suggesting”
   Have you considered any type of critical analysis on the dating to these, and other, Egyptian texts? Have you taken into account our historians expectations of a, no, dependency on, a chronology compatible with the Bible? Have you considered that some of the scholars on whom we have depended may have had ideas, even vague, about racial superiority?
   I have spent the last several years analysing the Egyptian texts held against other ancient texts. I have concluded that the whole chronology of Egypt before Amasis II is such a house of cards that it can only stand in our closed academic bubbles. The specific texts you mention, although dated to before 1000 B.C., are only texts and scrolls which were written after 600 B.C.., and which, like other traditions, claim an exaggerated antiquity. If you claim that the scripts used in the texts you cited were used by the Egyptians well before 1000 B.C., knowing their exploits too far off places, how is it that that type of script, Brahmi, Greek, Phoenician, Kharosthi, is only seen after 600 B.C.?

   My claim that the ankh, the pink lotus, Ptah, etc.. , cannot be dated before Amasis II, according to traditional chronologis, appears so outrageous, that it may gives Egyptologist the opportunity to write such theories off as fringe.

   My monograph “Jesus’s Godama Sources” deals with the dating of these texts and also with the effects produced from our past, and present, dependency, on biblical chronologies. Although I offer only new research, and although scholars today are blinded to such a belief by those on whom some of their work is built, many fair-minded scholars and freethinkers have already arrived at very similar conclusions!

   “I do not maintain that India was, in the first instance, peopled by a colony from Egypt; my intention being to demonstrate, if possible, when and whence Brahmanism was introduced in India, and who the principle Gods belonging to it really were; nor do I desire to conceal the fact that my view of the connection between Egypt and India is at variance with most authors and critics who have treated the subject: civilization and religion is considered by them to have been brought from India to Meroe south of Egypt, and thence to have descended with the stream of the Nile into Lower Egypt.” The Madras Journal of Literature and Science, V.22, p, 278

   1. Thanks, but it doesn’t matter whether or not you “buy into” those dates. They are the mainstream dates, and they seem to have very good reason, as they are based on a chronology that is accepted currently by mainstream consensus, albeit the debates continue.

      However, it would seem that DNA evidence should confirm at least the general era in which the pharaohs lived, after which would follow when their edifices were built and texts by or about them, or during their reign, were written. Carbon-14 dating is used widely that also confirms the general eras of the pharaohs, and many Egyptologists today are Bible [i]skeptics[/i], so they don’t just adhere mindlessly to the chronologies of those trying to defend the Bible.

      While the consensus may be in error when it comes to whether or not blatantly supernatural and patently mythical figures truly walked this earth, there appears to be little reason to doubt these general dates and propose that the numerous texts in question were written much later.

      If one would like to know more on the Egyptian chronology, there are many good sites to study. Wikipedia has a decent chronology. If you disagree with the mainstream chronology, I suggest you take your arguments to Wikipedia and see if they pass muster.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_chronology ([url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_chronology[/url])

      Otherwise, I will stick with the mainstream perception on this issue, because, as it says on the Wiki page, a firm establishment of a chronology is a “task wrought with problems.” Therefore, I will allow the professional Egyptologists and chronologists to work this problem out, as I have little time to become a specialist in this field.

      I am certainly unconvinced of other arguments as this time, which seem at times to emanate from a desire to establish fallacious priority, domination and supremacy.

8. Dear Acharya,

   I certainly respect your certainty! Who knows, maybe I need a good serapis, I mean therapist! My theoria is that they wont have therue serum!

   Alexandria and other locations in Egypt became cosmopolitan at the time of Amasis II. Here’s my lame joke: “So a priest of Ptah, Phut, Battus, Vates, Buto, Bootes, Botheus, Bata, Buddas and Pytha all walk into an ancient Alexandrian Inn to convert each other. They all say the same thing at the same time, “You will only be saved when you call upon the name of my God” :s -hey wait, ptah was only trying to be funny! :Pinch: 🙁

   You wrote

   “I am certainly unconvinced of other arguments as this time, which seem at times to emanate from a desire to establish fallacious priority, domination and supremacy”
   –When a text, scroll, inscription, etc… is accused of being dated to the wrong time, and when these texts and inscriptions have complex parallels with a religion that claims to be parasitic, would you call the investigation of a possible connection “establishing domination”, or just investigating and authenticating claims? Also, as the establishment of domination and supremacy operate at present, do you mean to write that the arguments “seem to emanate from a desire to establish that there “was” some sort of “domination” or “supremacy”?

   You wrote;
   However, it would seem that DNA evidence should confirm at least the general era in which the pharaohs lived”-{I was referring to the dating of texts you mentioned “after which would follow when their edifices were built and texts by or about them, or during their reign, were written”. My monograph shows how and why Ptolemy Philadelphus, Cambyses (Kambhoja) and Amasis II literally wrote themselves in as god- kings.

   You wrote “Carbon-14 dating is used widely that also confirms the general eras of the pharaohs, and many Egyptologists today are Bible skeptics, so they don’t just adhere mindlessly to the chronologies of those trying to defend the Bible.”

   Do they depend on, or have they been the least bit critical, of their Christian predecessors whom, according to what I read into your belief, have fallen victim to moulding history around a biblical chronology?

   Also, when you write “Bible sceptics”, do you mean to imply that any sound scholarship could arrive at a non-sceptical Biblical view (inasmuch as there is one coherent view running through the separate compiled books)?

   As you may know, the name Egypt is said to have the meaning of the house of the spirit of Ptah, technically when we express “Egyptian this or that”, we are speaking about a state formed under the religion of the god Ptah. .If you will only accept “mainstream” authority on the dating of Ptah, I have many “mainstream” and “current” authorities that are not certain about his date. There can be no douct that the Buddhist influence on Egypt is central to understanding early Christianity but first we must hammer (Egyptian ‘pt’-LAW, Persian ‘bt’ arm, or LAW) down a bio on Ptah and Phut.

   Given his relative ubiquity in the archaeological record, Egyptologists have long realized the importance of Ptah in the religious beliefs of the ancient Egyptians. However, this does not belie the fact that the craftsmen god is relatively ill-defined, mythologically speaking. This paucity of references (and the disjunction between this fact and the archaeological record) implies one of several possibilities: That the god was a relatively later incorporation into the pantheon, that it was caused by “a lack of function in the mortuary sphere,” or that it was motivated by a “desire on the part of the Heliopolitan theologians to minimize the position of the Memphite deity.- Ptah-New World Encyclopedia

   “The name of Phut in its change to Phtha has undergone an extraordinary process, highly characteristic of the modes of thought that prevailed in very ancient times. Written with the final h (), which may be added to a Hebrew word without altering the sense, it represents the consonants of the verb, “to disclose,” “to reveal,” which in the Coptic texts is (nwts) “to write hieroglyphics,” It is this punning alteration of the name which has doubtless given the attributes of truth and stability, or confidence, to the god who bore it, and also the white garment in which he is always enveloped. But a yet stranger use has been made of this pun upon the name of Phut. His animal representative has been named after the action in direct antagonism with that of the human original. The hieroglyphic name of the bull Apis (hp), is the coptic verb (—), “to hide” [Sans. gupta] “to conceal,” which is a mere transcription of the ancient verb, (–) with the same meaning. The comparison of the two groups renders this contrast very apparent. It will be seen that one group is as nearly as possible an inversion of the other. The meanings are in like manner in antithesis. In the bull Apis, therefore, were concealed the attributes which were revealed in Phtha. The second character in this group was originally the initial of the word (–). It is a picture of the pent-house, or screen, behind which the priest was hidden during some religious ceremony, ” .” The monumental history of Egypt, Volume 1, p. 261p 264

   1. Thanks. I don’t have any “belief.” I just follow the science, as I have stated regarding the DNA, textual evidence, artifacts, edifices, linguistics and so on.

      And, no, the current Egyptologists are not building unscientifically on the work of their devout Christian predecessors. They have been adjusting the chronology all along, according to the hard science and artifacts they’ve been discovering or reexamining.

      I frankly think this is a lost cause. There is no good reason to be readjusting the Egyptian chronology so dramatically and removing millennia of their literacy and history.

      I feel like I’m having a discussion about Fomenko now. Again, if you go to Wikipedia and can gain consensus there, I may be interested. At this point, however, I will stick to the mainstream chronology, which is currently the most scientific.

9. Dear Acharya;

   I believe that you have mentioned before that “Buddhism” may be many thousands of years older than has been previously thought. Do you have any “scientific” evidence to support this claim? I have investigated this claim thoroughly and believe that this half-certain assertion goes unanswered because so called scholars have swallowed Egyptian chronology wholesale.

   You wrote:

   “ At this point, however, I will stick to the mainstream chronology, which is currently the most scientific”. Do you have a “scientific analysis of this mainstream chronology”, or are you sticking to it just because it is “mainstream”?

   You wrote
   “And, no, the current Egyptologists are not building unscientifically on the work of their devout Christian predecessors. They have been adjusting the chronology all along, according to the hard science and artefacts they’ve been discovering or re-examining””.

   Pray tell me, if you admit that their predecessors were unscientific, and you admit they are building “on”, however “scientific” for the present moment that new building is, it is still built on a pyramid of cards, or unstable assertions, which you unscientifically have taken as a solid foundation (unless you recognize major issues with accepted Egyptian chronology).

   You wrote:

   “There is no good reason to be readjusting the Egyptian chronology so dramatically and removing millennia of their literacy and history”- First we have to define who is “their”. Do you maintain that the tale of Bata and Anubis originally belonged to the Egyptians pre 1000 B.C.? What belongs to “Egyptians” today is what they brought into it from yesterday, and so on.

10. Dear Robert,

    You wrote:

    “”Many people remain locked in what we could call a ‘white racist’ paradigm, in which influences from outside the west are denied. This is a key theme in Bernal’s Black Athena. So, people claim that Philo says the Therapeuts were a Jewish group, even though Philo said no such thing, and only emphasised the strong Therapeut interest in Judaism. This desperate Judaising of the Therapeuts taps into a bigger cultural myth of western autonomy from the east.””

    Absolutely brilliant observation!

    Thanks a billion!

11. Still,
    Mankind purportedly originated from one locale. How can anyone be ignorant of shared ideas. Doesn’t matter. The broader picture will not be presented or accepted because of individuals and communities . The spice road anyone? Shared genetics planet wide anyone? Genetic memory anyone? ( look it up , science has proven it ) The stories and myths and facts are as boiled down as America’s youth. I don’t need individual dates to connect the dots so I’m not at odds with truth of the big picture. Perhaps those who choose to intellectualize too much are blinded by the glare of their magnifying glass and fail to see the whole picture? Doesn’t really matter , people are jaded , none more than egomaniacal scientists and religious scholars who are unable to accept that the facts present themselves to those who are able to observe them, even the simple . Citing few when a whole populated planet should have a say, there are family secrets held to this day because of egomaniacal scientists and religious scholars alike would have them put to death along with the knowledge they possess because it would shatter their truth. – peace

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