The Churches and Modern Thought An inquiry into the...

I have indicated a few of the more striking parallels in other religions besides Krishnaism and Buddhism. Did space permit, it could be shown that there are also parallels to the teaching of Christ, the darkness at the Crucifixion, the descent into Hell, the Resurrection, the claim of Jesus Christ to be “Alpha and Omega” (according to the Revelation of St. John), the prophecy of the Second Coming, the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, the doctrine of the Trinity, the worship of the Blessed Virgin, the Christian symbols (cross, triangle, I.H.S., fish, serpent, dove, and lamb). I cannot understand what the Christian cause can gain by ascribing the parallels in Hindoo mythology to Christian sources, when there is all this mass of evidence for parallels that are quite as extraordinary (though less numerous) in those ancient religions where the priority to Christianity cannot reasonably be denied. Certainly the Krishna and Buddha parallels are extremely numerous and strikingly exact; but a policy which seeks to explain them in a different manner from that adopted in the case of the same phenomena in other religions, while it serves to confirm the suspicions of the sceptic, is doomed eventually to failure. This being so, it is unnecessary, I think, to enter at any great length into the controversy.

In Mr. J. M. Robertson’s book, Christianity and Mythology, there is a scholarly investigation from which I extract the following leading points23:—Hindoos, as Professor Tiele urges, could perfectly well have borrowed, if they did borrow, from Egypt before Christianity was heard of. There is hardly a leading detail in the Krishna birth legend which is not variously paralleled in other early non-Christian mythology. The more we collate the main Christian myth-notions with those of Krishnaism, the more clearly does it appear that, instead of the latter being borrowed from the former, they are, not indeed the originals from which Christianity borrowed, but always presumptively the more ancient, and in one or two cases they do appear to be the actual sources of Gospel stories. The lateness of the Purânic stories in literary form is no argument against their antiquity. Scholars are agreed that late documents often preserve extremely old myth-material. The leading elements in the Krishna myth are inexplicable save on the view that the cultus is ancient. The close coincidences in the legends of Krishna and Buddha are to be explained in terms of borrowing by the latter from the former, and not vice versa. I should add here that the denial of the “Christian accretions” theory does not convey also the implication that the Bible story was borrowed from the Krishna and Buddha myths. On the contrary, the strong probability is that there has been little or no borrowing either way—that there is a common source for both in earlier Aryan and Semitic myths.

In the Introduction to his standard work, The Romantic History of Buddha,24 Mr. Beal refers to the legends concerning the pre-existence of Buddha in heaven—his miraculous incarnation—salutation by angels—recognition by Asita (Simeon)—presentation in the Temple—baptism by fire and water—disputation with doctors—temptation in the wilderness—life passed in preaching and working miracles, etc.—and frankly admits that, “if we could prove that they were unknown in the East for some centuries after Christ, the explanation would be easy; but all the evidence we have goes to prove the contrary.” Regarding the parallelisms with the Apocryphal Gospels, he says: “It would be a natural inference that many of the events in the legend of Buddha were borrowed from the Apocryphal Gospels (compare, for example, the Gospel of the Infancy, chap. xx.: ‘Our Lord learning his alphabet,’ with the account given in chap. xi. of this volume), if we were quite certain that these Apocryphal Gospels had not borrowed from it.” In his later work, Buddhist Literature, Mr. Beal modifies his position.

Neither Max Müller in his Introduction to the Science of Religion, nor Forlong in his Short Studies of the Science of Comparative Religions, nor Senart in his learned work, La Légende du Buddha, nor Seydel in his Evangelium von Jesu and his Buddha Legends, nor Pfleiderer in his Urchristentum, supports the theory of Christian accretions. Bunsen, in his Angel-Messiah, maintains (p. 18) “that, according to Sanscrit and Chinese scriptures and the stone-cut edicts of Asoka and the Senchi Tope, certain legends about Buddha circulated in India and China, not only before the apostolic age, but more than three centuries earlier,” and that “among these legends the most ancient are those which refer to the incarnation of Buddha as the Angel Messiah.”

On page 10 of Rhys Davids’ well-known little work, Buddhism (published under the direction of the S.P.C.K.), we read: “There is every reason to believe that the Pitakas now extant in Ceylon are substantially identical with the books of the Orthodox Canon, as settled at the Council of Patna about the year 250 B.C. As no works would have been received into the canon which were not then believed to be very old, the Pitakas may be approximately placed in the fourth century B.C., and parts of them possibly read back very nearly, if not quite, to the time of Gautama himself.” On page 15 it is explained that, when the statements in the Sanscrit and Pali texts agree, the greatest reliance may be placed upon them, “not indeed as to the actual facts of Gautama’s life, but as to the belief of the early Buddhists concerning it.” Professor Rhys Davids enumerates the more important of these early beliefs, and they include many of the startling coincidences which I have noticed. The later beliefs he passes over for the most part in silence; but, speaking generally, he is of opinion that the greater portion, if not all, of the legends could be explained by hero-worship, mere poetical imagery, misapprehension, the desire to edify, applications to Gautama of previously existing stories or sun-myths, and so on. Nowhere does he state or imply that in any of the legends, early or late, there can be any application to Gautama of the Gospel stories of the life of Christ; while he considers M.

Senart’s theory of the almost complete dependence of the Buddha legends on solar myths “most interesting.” Now, it is just those very ideas of virgin-birth, resurrection, and ascension appearing in the later legends which were nothing more nor less than solar myths. In any case, whatever their origin, they were world-wide very many centuries before the Christian era; so any argument from the lateness of these legends is founded upon sand. In his Buddhism, as also in his article on Buddhism in the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Professor steers clear of the question of the parallels; but in his Buddhist Suttas, translated by him from the Pali and appearing in the “Sacred Books of the East” series, we read (in the Introduction, p. 165) that while he “ventures to disagree with writers who argue that the resemblances in the Pali Pitakas and passages in the New Testament indicate that the New Testament as the later must be borrowed,” he holds that the resemblance is due not to any borrowing on the one side or the other, but “solely to the similarity of the conditions under which the two movements grew” [and, the Rationalist would add, a similarity in the myths afloat is a part, and a very essential part, of the similarity of the conditions].

So also with regard to the lateness of the Krishna legends in literary form, it is futile to argue that they are, to use a familiar term, cribbed from the canonical and apocryphal gospels, when most of them are obviously plagiarisms of the ancient sun-myths. The Rev. Sir G. W. Cox, speaking on this subject in his Aryan Mythology, says: “There is no more room for inferring foreign influence in the growth of any of these myths than, as Bunsen rightly insists, there is room for tracing Christian influence in the early epical literature of the Teutonic tribes. Practically the myths of Krishna seem to have been fully developed in the days of Megasthenes (fourth century B.C.), who identifies him with the Greek Hercules.” [Megasthenes wrote a work on India, which was the chief source of the later Greek information on the subject.] Professor Monier Williams, the accepted authority on Hinduism, writing for the S.P.G., in his book, Indian Wisdom, and speaking of the Bhagavad-gita, says: “It may reasonably be questioned whether there could have been any actual contact of the Hindoo system with Christianity without a more satisfactory result in the modification of Pantheistic and anti-Christian ideas.” Again, he says: “The religious creeds, rites, customs, and habits of thought of the Hindoos generally had altered little since the days of Menu, 500 years B.C.” In his Hinduism (p. 19) he shows that “we may be justified in assuming that the hymns of the Veda were probably composed by a succession of poets at different dates between 1500 and 1000 years B.C.”

Whatever may be thought of the conclusions of the highest authorities regarding Krishnaistic and Buddhistic beliefs, I hope I may have so far carried the reader with me that he will be prepared to admit that there are very many striking resemblances to the Gospel stories in those ancient beliefs whose priority to Christianity is not disputed. Now that these resemblances are no longer attributed to a device of the Evil One, an explanation for them is urgently required. The explanation from the Christian side is the theory of a Progressive Revelation; and, apparently, there can be no other, if Christianity be true. The reader has been put in possession of a few details of the remarkable parallels, and he should apply this theory for himself to each and all of them, and see whether it furnishes a fair working hypothesis, whether his mind can accept the explanation now offered to him, and, I might almost add, whether he can honestly continue to call himself a Christian believer. Let him ask himself which is the more probable, that in the common mythos we have marvellous anticipations of the Bible stories, or that in the latter we have reproductions of the former?