for any biblical scholars, please watch the documentary before criticising something which i can't defend.

Nice theory, but doesn't explain how JC got his Mexican name...

lol. The Bible says there is no end to philosophizing. People will come up with anything to explain away the fact that there is a real God of the universe, he loves you and wants to have a relationship with you, he's offering you a choice--to accept or reject his gift.

This is a pretty old theory, ora, so I'm sure a little googling will find you the refutations you desire.

@Semck, i just wanted discussion, not some outright refutation - I was raised in a catholic country, going to a catholic school, so the story of jesus is one with which i am familiar. As such it is interesting to see another take on it. I do want to share this version as much as hear commentaries about it.

That's nice Mujus, but i don't think this has anything to do with your claim that 'there is a real God of the universe...' - nowhere did i claim that your Jesus wasn't a prophet, son of God, or that God didn't exist. So you can take your off-topic preaching and p*** off.

I've seen that documentary...

And then I realized--

I didn't care. :)

I suppose if you're into all that it's an interesting idea...maybe...but as for me, I just don't care all that much...

Fake. Gay. Stupid.

@KoD: lazy, boring, post somewhere else if you've nothing interesting to add.

@"I'm sure a little googling will find you the refutations you desire."

Actually i found some interesting stuff, i'll try to summarize:

"Most accounts of Jesus in India derive a Russian Author and Doctor, Nicholas Notovitch, who claimed to visit the monastery of Himmis(Kashmir) in 1888. Notovitch said that he found written verses that described the presence there of Jesus known as "Issa." Jesus supposedly arrived in India at the age of fourteen and returned to Judea at the age of twenty-nine.

When appearing in 1894, Notovitch's account became immediately and widely controversial. Christian churches denounced it as a hoax. The British Church Mission in India employed a professor to find and bury the documents described by Notovitch...an interview of the Himmis monastery's abbot who insisted that no documents about Jesus existed and that Notovitch never visited there."
(from: http://www.thezensite.com/non_Zen/Was_Jesus_Buddhist.html )

I take it that Mormonism's version of Jesus' afterlife is equally uninteresting/gay/valid...

But, i think the interesting point is, at the time of writing a number of Christian chruches attempted to suppress this. Refutation can likely be found online, but they occurred in more extreme form 100+ years ago when the theory first came to the attention of the western world...

+1 Troll is +1ing!!

From wikkipedia,

"The German orientalist Max Müller corresponded with the Hemis monastery that Notovitch claimed to have visited and Archibald Douglas visited Hemis Monastery. Neither found any evidence that Notovich (much less Jesus) had even been there himself, so they rejected his claims. The head of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as a liar.

...

Bart Ehrman (2011) notes that all scholars now consider Notovitch's book as a hoax."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christianity_and_Buddhism#.22Jesus_in_Little_Tibet.22_theories

@orathaic,

"The British Church Mission in India employed a professor to find and bury the documents described by Notovitch"

Amazing, given that modern scholars don't even believe the documents existed.

@semck, my claim doesn't say the documents were buried, it says a church hired someone to do that.

If the documents didn't exist, as modern scholars believe, then The British Church Mission may have simply hired someone to find and bury the evidence.

At this point, who knows whether he returned saying either 1"i have succeeded", or 2 "There were no document to supress."

@ora, fair enough. The broader point, though, is that you're now/still pushing a theory that rests almost entirely on a forged book.

I like this quote:

"The most ancient of the Buddhistic records known to us contain statements about the life and the doctrines of Gautama Buddha which correspond in a remarkable manner, and impossibly by mere chance, with the traditions recorded in the Gospels about the life and doctrines of Jesus Christ." - (14.) De Bunsen, The Angel Messiah of Buddhists, Essenes and Christians (London: 1880), p. 50.

Watched the documentary, have two questions:

1) I never heard any mention of Jesus speaking about his period in the east as part of his inspiration. It's remarkable that instead of confronting the jewish faith with a new faith, he seemed to mix the two, claiming to be the holy person the jewish people were waiting for while teaching eastern teachings.

2) If he was so well-trained by the Buddhists, why does he always speak of God? And why do Buddhists nowadays not have a God (as far as I know?)

If the story is true, then Jesus seems to have adapted both his personality and his story to the people he found himself with to get his message across most effectively.

so to push the point, it matters not whether the book was entirely forged.

The existence of a Buddhist influence in Christianity is interesting to me, regarding it's origin, some might claim divine intervention, others are more likely to claim various buddhist monks travelling through Judea at the time when Jesus was alive.

Also, the teachings of Jesus in his "western period" seemed to be extremely directed toward "spreading the faith". Were his teaching in his "eastern period" so different? And if so, why didn't Buddhism spread out over the world just like Christianity did?

@Redhouse, i think the Buddhist understanding could be translated as god, or a higher spiritual reality.. and depending on your interpretation of what god means they could be the same thing.

I don't know what Jesus meant when he spoke of God. But I don't think that you will find most Buddhists calling themselves Atheists (though some do, some call themselves Christians)

Perhaps not, but the idea of a heavenly father / creator is extremely present in Christianity. Does Buddhism have this same vision of God, as in a unitary and supreme being responsible for the creation of the earth?

em, i think you'll find Buddhism did spread over the world just like Christianity. From northern india across China to Japan...

interesting...

And where Islam didn't replace it, there is still Buddhism in a few areas of south east Asia (and the Republic of Kalmykia, a Russian Republic, the only Buddhist nation in Europe. though they migrated there in the 17th Century rather than spreading...)

@ora, the idea of a Buddhist influence on Christ is strained to say the least -- there is no evidence of such a thing. You "find it interesting" in the same way 9/11 truthers "find interesting" the various coincidences they advocate, and it's just as persuasive. Christ's life and teaching are extremely unlike Buddha's, unless one goes through and ignores all the differences (such as His Personal Theism, which rh points out above) and emphasizes the similarities. At which point, one could find striking similarities between any two lives.

I haven't watched the documentary you linked, but I have seen one on this topic. Hell, it may have been this one. I haven't even followed the link.

It's a very romantic story, but I see no reason to take it more seriously than the tradition that Jesus went to England with his uncle or however it goes. Watch the loads and loads of wonderful documentaries (nearly all treating the Bible as literature) on documentarystorm.com to see how this Buddhism theory has very little to it.

@Semck: well if i was trying to convince my people, who were raised on a Jewish monotheistic god then I think a replaced monotheistic 'personal god' would be an easier sell than an atheistic version of Buddhism.

Look at something like Mormonism, it takes pre-existing doctrine and adds something to it, making conversion variously easier (or in a modern context harder... infact it has turned some people away from Christiantiy entirely)

Islam similarly preaches that Jesus was a Prophet, thus if you've already heard about the teachings of Jesus this doesn't completely contradict them... it simple supplements these beliefs. Much easier sell, imho.

Well the thing is, orathiac, that this is a matter of history and deals with facts, not opinion. You don't even have to read, just watch competent documentaries which talk about other early influences like esoteric Jewish sects and the gnostic tradition. Buddha Jesus just doesn't hold water.

@ora, sure, but the point is just, there's no EVIDENCE for it. Notice the following distinction. (a) Suppose Christ's teachings were identical to Buddha's in every way. Then we would have a good case that there was borrowing from Buddhism. (b) In the event, however, they are not -- there are similarities, and some massive differences. There is therefore no evidence FROM the teachings that he meant to teach Buddhism. Now, if there were independent evidence that He did intend to teach Buddhism, then your special pleading would be allowed. As it is, though, there's not -- none whatsoever -- so you're committing the fallacy of paring down his teaching to the parts that seem similar to Buddhism, saying that that's what he really meant, and then saying that the rest was just window-dressing -- AND USING THIS as evidence that He did intend to teach Buddhism, so that the whole process of paring down was justified in the first place. Needless to say, this is completely illegitimate. The fact is, there's no evidence for your fancivul story.

actually i'm committing an appeal to authority, rather than knowing enough about my claims to make them myself.

I don't know enough about either the teachings of Buddha or Jesus to compare and contrast. Though i think the teachings of both have been filtered down through thousands of year of tradition, translation, and propoganda.

@Invictus, yes, there was a gnostic tradition, and Essenes, the Mandeans, Mithraites, It is possible that several of these were influenced by Buddhist tradition and that Jesus was familiar with some of them.... This would go a long way to explaining the parallels while avoiding anything particularly controversial...