alt Hacker NewsThe two Christian saints who are the Buddha
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This reminds me so much of the Raglan hero archetype rank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rank–Raglan_hero_archetype
So many stories, many people believe are true and build whole religions around, are really just repeated stories with many details changed to fit the local culture and traditions.
It's crazy so many of the world's politics and problems stem from what might actually just be the same story said in a different way... or even of a fan fiction on top of existing fiction.
I get the author's not trying to write a watertight syllogism, but the point he's trying to make (his last sentence) doesn't follow from the obvious fact that beliefs can influence each other.
Christianity and worldviews typically associated with the 'east' (as I've seen them discussed here and elsewhere) disagree in both their view of the 'building blocks' of reality, and in their 'big picture' view. They disagree on base questions like if there is really a "you", or whether change is real, or whether the material world is real, or whether multiplicity is real, or whether the truth of A implies the falsehood of not-A, and so on. (I've heard all of the above answered in the negative here.) And they disagree on 'big picture' things like the goal of human existence, the nature of the Absolute, what it is to live a good life, whether evil is the result of illusion or is (in addition to this) a defect in the will and caused ultimately by an indescribably malevolent being, whether a human being can reach a 'blessed' state by his own power, etc.
So the differences are vast and essential, on both the macro and micro levels. The fact that some beliefs and practices influence other beliefs and practices doesn't change this.
(The emergence of the "18 year old who just read Dawkins for the first time and thinks science disproves sky-daddy lolz" atheists on this thread is also most unfortunate.)
It’s quite ironic how the assimilationist nature of high church Christianity has ended up becoming what early Christianity was in opposition to. Early Christians were non-conformist, to the point of execution, and were sometimes even seen as anti-social. A thousand years later, Christians are incorporating obscure tales from the East.
I think this is another argument for a separation of Church and state. It allows people to challenge when religious teaching goes awry without fear of persecution.
Some history, as this stuff is interesting to me. The two referenced saints predated formal canonization. They were approved in the 16th century. The Roman Catholic Church removed these two saints in the 20th century. There is some confusion because there is another Saint Josaphat (Kuntsevych), and another Saint Barlaam (the martyr, 4th century).
The Therapeutae sect is another good example of this phenomenon, although because it touches the root of several Abrahamic traditions so thoroughly, scholars and others are much less likely to declare an authoritative relation between between early Buddhism and the Therapeutae.
However, anyone who has more than a passing familiarity with the history of early Buddhism, the Therapeutae, and the religious developments of the 1st century BCE/1st century CE can't ignore how improbable the independent development of the latter's practices are, and how influential they became to various groups in the Middle East that later claimed they arrived at them independently.
Ya know, the Divine sometimes works in mysterious ways. While it is possible these two fellas were a ripped-off Buddha story, it is also possible that they were actual people who lead these lives so that people who were Buddhists had some examples of how to adapt their previous Buddhist tendencies to Christian ones if they had an experience that caused conversion. Is there evidence to suggest they were not real people, or at the least, a large absence of evidence?
The OCA (Orthodox Church of America) has a hagiography page regarding them.
https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2014/11/19/100292-saints-ba...
The article doesn't touch on why this is an actual saint rather than a minor local cult like Saint Guinefort[0], the saint dog[1].
The reason, AFAIK, is that the early church didn't have a process for canonization, it was just all local cults. By the time they decided to establish a proper process (proof of miracles, witnesses, devil's advocate etc) many local churches had their own saints, and they decided to basically accept all the ones already in use and only start enforcing rules for the new ones. So the idea that "there's a holy man in the east who did this and that" resulted in "eh, sure, let's write down Saint Jehoshaphat too".
Christianity-as-trivia is a lot of fun.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Guinefort
[1] not to be confused with Saint Christopher, the dog-headed saint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Christopher#/media/File:...
I love how the article is “isn’t that neat?” and never touches upon any self-awareness that perhaps many religions are nothing more than stories.
whoever came up with this website name is definitely not Italian, as you would rather say "Signor Galilei".
I find it incredible how many people have died in the name of minor variations in their monotheistic beliefs that are all based on the same foundational stories and yet here is a one of those foundational stories that has totally non-theistic source. I struggle with the hypocrisy of religion sometimes.
Every serious religion worth considering is different and distinct in its fundamental core claims, even if there is a significant influence and overlap on other levels.
No amount of pseudo-philocophical and quasi-historical research can change this basic fact.
Naive attempt of some buddhists to reduce (in their eyes of course its the highest compliment) other religion figures to mere "buddha" label is nothing but silly, laymen kitchen theology. It is disrespectful to both buddhism and other religion.
This is pedantic, but isn't only Josaphat the Buddha?
St. Jehosophat is one of them.
Neither of them are currently recognised.
Churches are the worst thing i have ever seen. They demand people to pray instead of going to hospital as a result a lot of people died where I live.
They demand a cut even from a loan. Pathetic people praying on innocent people
I came across an interesting article once that claimed that Buddha was reconstituted into a mythical St. George
the fun-fact about any religion is since they are all completely made up, if you don't like the rules you can just make your own rules or religion
however in certain countries this gets you executed or imprisoned
Heresy.
[dead]
Get your facts correct. Buddha was more than 600 BC focus on the word "Before" while Christians and the Christian saints came after Christ.
Don't be an intellectual hodgepodge
"Christianity in particular has a history of absorbing other religions’ traditions" -- Tangentially related: I'm a Catholic, so I don't know much about other "distros", but the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia.
It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommon to see traditional Javanese processions integrated right into the mass. Like skin/mod in a game.