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.
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.
