Arthur Lillie
The Influence of Buddhism on Primitive Christianity
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Table of contents
PREFACE.
INTRODUCTORY.
CHAPTER I.
CHAPTER II.
CHAPTER III.
THE GREAT BANQUET OF BUDDHA.
CHAPTER IV.
CHAPTER V.
CHAPTER VI.
CHAPTER VII.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHAPTER IX.
CHAPTER X.
CHAPTER XI.
PREFACE.
A
volume that proves that much of the New Testament is parable rather
than history will shock many readers, but from the days of Origen and
Clement of Alexandria to the days of Swedenborg the same thing has
been affirmed. The proof that this parabolic writing has been derived
from a previous religion will shock many more. The biographer of
Christ has one sole duty, namely, to produce the actual historical
Jesus. In the New Testament there are two Christs, an Essene and an
anti-Essene Christ, and all modern biographers who have sought to
combine the two have failed necessarily. It is the contention of this
work that Christ was an Essene monk; that Christianity was Essenism;
and that Essenism was due, as Dean Mansel contended, to the Buddhist
missionaries "who visited Egypt within two generations of the
time of Alexander the Great." ("Gnostic Heresies," p.
31.)The
Reformation, in the view of Macaulay, was the struggle of layman
versus monk. In
consequence, many good Protestants are shocked to hear such a term
applied to the founder of their creed. But here I must point out one
fact. In the Essene monasteries, as in the Buddhist, there was no
life vow. This made the monastery less a career than a school for
spiritual initiation. In modern monasteries St. John of the Cross can
dream sweet dreams of God in one cell, and his neighbour may be Friar
Tuck, but to both the monastery is a prison. This alters the
complexion of the celibacy question, and so does the fact that the
Christians were fighting a mighty battle with the priesthoods.The
Son of Man envied the security of the crannies of the "fox."
He called his opponents "wolves." His flock after his death
met with closed doors for fear of the Jews. The "pure gospel,"
says the Clementine Homilies (ch. ii. 17), was "sent abroad
secretly" after the removal to Pella. The new sect, not as
Christians but as Essenes, were tortured, killed, hunted down. To
such, "two coats," "wives," daily wine
celebrations were scarcely fitted.Twice
has Buddhism invaded the West, once at the birth of Christianity, and
once when the Templars brought home from Palestine Cabbalism, Sufism,
Freemasonry. And our zealous missionaries in Ceylon and elsewhere, by
actively translating Buddhist books to refute them, have produced a
result which is a little startling. Once more Buddhism is advancing
with giant strides. Germany, America, England are overrun with it. M.
Léon de Rosny, a professor of the Sorbonne, announces that in Paris
there are 30,000 Buddhists at least. A French frigate came back from
China the other day with one-third of the crew converted Buddhists.
Schopenhauer admits that he got the philosophy which now floods
Germany from a perusal of English translations of Buddhist books.
Even the nonsense of Madame Blavatsky has a little genuine Buddhism
at the bottom, which gives it a brief life.The
religions of earth mean strife and partisan watch-cries, partisan
symbols, partisan gestures, partisan clothes. But as the daring
climber mounts the cool steep, the anathemas of priests fall faintly
on the ear, and the largest cathedrals grow dim, in a pure region
where Wesley and Fenelon, Mirza the Sufi and Swedenborg, Spinoza and
Amiel, can shake hands. If this new study of Buddhism has shown that
the two great Teachers of the world taught much the same doctrine, we
have distinctly a gain and not a loss. That religion was the religion
of the individual, as discriminated from religion by body corporate.
INTRODUCTORY.
In
the Revue des Deux
Mondes, July 15th,
1888, M. Émile Burnouf has an article entitled "Le Bouddhisme
en Occident."M.
Burnouf holds that the Christianity of the Council of Nice was due to
a conflict between the Aryan and the Semite, between Buddhism and
Mosaism:—"History
and comparative mythology are teaching every day more plainly that
creeds grow slowly up. None come into the world ready-made, and as if
by magic. The origin of events is lost in the infinite. A great
Indian poet has said, 'The beginning of things evades us; their end
evades us also. We see only the middle.'"M.
Burnouf asserts that the Indian origin of Christianity is no longer
contested: "It has been placed in full light by the researches
of scholars, and notably English scholars, and by the publication of
the original texts.... In point of fact, for a long time, folks had
been struck with the resemblances, or rather the identical elements
contained in Christianity, and Buddhism. Writers of the firmest faith
and most sincere piety have admitted them. In the last century these
analogies were set down to the Nestorians, but since then the science
of Oriental chronology has come into being, and proved that Buddha is
many years anterior to Nestorius and Jesus. Thus the Nestorian theory
had to be given up. But a thing may be posterior to another without
proving derivation. So the problem remained unsolved until recently,
when the pathway that Buddhism followed was traced, step by step,
from India to Jerusalem."What
are the facts upon which scholars abroad are basing the conclusions
here announced? I have been asked by the present publishers to give a
short and popular answer to this question. The theory of this book,
stated in a few words, is that at the date of King Asoka (B.C. 260),
Persia, Greece, Egypt, Palestine had been powerfully influenced by
Buddhist propagandism.Buddha,
as we know from the Rupnath Rock inscription, died 470 years before
Christ. He announced before he died that his Dharma would endure five
hundred years. (Oldenburg, "Buddhism," p. 327.) He
announced also that his successor would be Maitreya, the Buddha of
"Brotherly Love." In consequence, at the date of the
Christian era, many lands were on the tip-toe of expectation.
"According to the prophecy of Zoradascht," says the First
Gospel of the Infancy, "the wise men came to Palestine,"
expecting, probably, Craosha, as the Jews expected Messiah. The time
passed. Jesus was executed. His followers dispersed in consternation.
The conception that he was the real Messiah was apparently long in
taking definite form.First
came a book of "sayings" only. Then a gospel was
constructed—the Gospel of the Hebrews—of which only a small
fragment can be restored. This was the basis of many other gospels.
At the date of Irenæus (180 A.D.) they were very numerous. (Hœr i.
19.) As only the Old Testament, at that time, was considered the
Bible, the composers of these gospels apparently thought it no great
sin to draw on the Alexandrine library of Buddhist books for much of
their matter, it being a maxim of both the Essenes and the early
Christians that a holy book was more allegory than history.But
before I compare the Buddhist and Christian narratives, I must say a
word about the early religion of the Jews.
CHAPTER I.
Moses.
Until
within the last forty years the Old Testament has been practically a
sealed book.
It
found interpreters, no doubt—two great groups.
The
first group pointed to its useless and arbitrary edicts, and
pronounced them the inventions of priests inspired by fraud and
greed.
The
second group practically admitted the arbitrary and useless nature of
most of the edicts, but maintained that they were given by the
All-wise, in a book penned by His finger, to miraculously prepare a
nation distinct from the other nations of the earth, for a special
purpose. They were "types" of a higher revelation, a
"better covenant."
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
Lesen Sie weiter in der vollständigen Ausgabe!
