Why it may be useful to compare the origins of Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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ABuddhist
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Why it may be useful to compare the origins of Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism

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Mahayana Buddhism and Christianity arose in similar religious environments (even though they are quite different religions - no Christian contemporary to the Buddhist Nagarjuna would have written treatises refuting the existence of souls or uncreated creator gods). Both arose within sectarian environments in which their "parent religions" (Judaism and so-called Hinayana Buddhism) were centred around canons of texts but were nonetheless religious minorities (Judaism versus Greco-Roman religion and so-called Hinayana Buddhism versus Hinduism). Both involved communities of devout men gathering for religious discussion, prayer/meditation, consideration of scriptures, and experiencing of visions that were taken seriously. Both movements produced four types of written scriptures in response to these impulses (although certainly each produced other types of scriptures also): letters to others setting forth doctrines and guides to right conduct, such as Nagarjuna's Letter to a Friend and Paul's letters; hymns espousing their doctrines (such as the hymns within Pauline letters and Nagarjuna's hymn in praise of dharmadhatu); accounts of the lives of their founders from birth until death (GMatthew and GLuke for Christians, and the anonymous Lalitavistara Sūtra and Aśvaghoṣa's Buddhacarita for Mahayana Buddhism); and texts based upon visions (the Revelation to John and many Mahayana Sutras - most notably the Sutra of Golden Light). Both movements produced extraordinary missionary impulses that allowed them to expand beyond their homelands to a degree unprecedented by their parent religions, even though both Judaism and so-called Hinayana Buddhism had had success in converting foreign elites (cf., King Menandros the Greek ruler of Bactria, who became a Buddhist monk and whose conversion seems to have triggered the use of Buddhist symbolism in one form or another on the coinage of close to half of the Greek kings in India who succeeded him, and Queen Helena of Adiabene). Both movements condemned their parent religions as inferior in many ways (the term Hinayana literally meaning inferior vehicle, opposed to the great vehicle of Mahayana Buddhism). Both movements developed what seems to have been a minor industry (if I may introduce levity) of fabricating texts and attributing them to a great master from the past (Nagarjuna among the Buddhists, Paul among the Christians). Both movements used a key scripture in which ideas alien to the teachings that they attributed to their founders were presented as their founders' teachings (The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines Sutra for Buddhism and the Gospel of John). Humans being prone to the same impulses and guided by the same motivations, it seems that studying one movement may help to explain another. Such a thing is not unprecedented within Religious studies. Dr. David Chrisopher Lane (Professor of Philosophy at Mount San Antonio College and a Lecturer in Religious Studies at California State University, Long Beach), the scholar of Radhasoamite religions (a form of Sikhism, to simplify dramatically) openly cites the dynamics of Early Christian leadership in explaining and hypothesizing about the development and maturation/fragmentation of Radhasoamite leadership in his book “Radhasoami: A Critical History of Guru Succession”.

As for sources, I can easily cite a few sources from Buddhist studies in order to prove that the parallels that I am citing are not imaginary. Jan Nattier a (non-Buddhist) scholar of Mahayana Buddhism, has provided much discussion, both oblique and direct, about the model of Mahayana Buddhism's formation that I have discussed, as has the Buddhist scholar Mu Soeng (a former Zen monk and teacher who is the scholar-in-residence at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies); to take a specific example, Nattier summarizes scholarship about the development of the Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines Sutra (from a monk's discourse to Gautama Buddha's discourse) in her excellent book "A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path according to The Inquiry of Ugra (Ugraparipṛcchā)" [University of Hawaii Press; New edition (May 31 2005)]. In order to address your concerns that a former Zen monk and Buddhist teacher may have biases, I must inform you that Zen Buddhism is a form of Mahayana Buddhism fundamentally based upon Mahayana Buddhist sutras that Mu Soeng and others concede arose due to visions of Buddhas - even though the Zen Buddhist sutras (Diamond, Heart, and Lankavatara) are presented as actual discourses by Gautama Buddha upon the Earth.
Last edited by ABuddhist on Tue Nov 30, 2021 6:29 am, edited 5 times in total.
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mlinssen
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Re: Why it may be useful to compare the origins of Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism

Post by mlinssen »

It's fun to have you back Ben!
ABuddhist
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Re: Why it may be useful to compare the origins of Christianity and Mahayana Buddhism

Post by ABuddhist »

mlinssen wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 2:24 pm It's fun to have you back Ben!
I am not Ben, but was he interested in Buddhism? I am a Barbarian Borderland's Buddhist, nothing more.
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