[HN Gopher] An ancient Indian Buddhist monk buried in Athens
___________________________________________________________________
An ancient Indian Buddhist monk buried in Athens
Author : gumby
Score : 129 points
Date : 2023-03-26 22:13 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (greekreporter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (greekreporter.com)
| qersist3nce wrote:
| Why the ancient world seems mysterious and completely orthogonal
| to our modern ways?
|
| At some point in history, "something" happened, I don't know
| what. Like Augustus a Roman emperor, was initiated into the
| mystery of two goddesses? What was _that_? The Sage caste of
| india could just decide to self-immolate? Why not other people of
| india and why certain caste did stuff? Why Marcus Aurelius was so
| wise and unique?
|
| Why later kings and heads of states and general people were not
| like this?
| Micoloth wrote:
| > Augustus a Roman emperor, was initiated into the mystery of
| two goddesses? What was that?
|
| Yeah right? That is weird now. But I'm pretty sure the
| simplified version of what happened to that is is: christianity
| + germanic invasions..
|
| > The Sage caste of india could just decide to self-immolate?
|
| Fanatism has existed for a long time and "honorable suicide"
| too.. In that case it was about reincarnation.. I guess in
| modernity it's less common because we have better options?
|
| > Why Marcus Aurelius was so wise and unique?
|
| I'm pretty sure he was not more wise and unique than lots of
| wise and unique people living today.. He just happened to be
| the literal emperor, and wrote a book. Also they had a Lot of
| really shitty emperors though..
| leroy-is-here wrote:
| Seeing and sight are two different things and used to be taught
| as such.
| yamtaddle wrote:
| > Like Augustus a Roman emperor, was initiated into the mystery
| of two goddesses? What was that?
|
| Probably normal mystery-religion/club shit. We'll do the secret
| rituals, teach you our secret signs, impart some secret
| knowledge. Ta-da, now you're a 10th degree freemason, master-
| elect--er, I mean, are initiated into the mysteries of Juno or
| whatever. There are surviving fairly-old mystery religions (in
| addition to the alluded-to imitators of that sort of tradition,
| like the freemasons). They tend to be really shit at
| proselytizing and to not do great in a globalizing world in
| competition with bigger religions that are good at gaining
| converts, so it's a dying breed of religion, but hardly a
| mystery (ha, ha). Between that and limited ancient accounts, we
| can make a decent guess at the general kind of thing Roman
| mystery cults were up to.
|
| > Why Marcus Aurelius was so wise and unique?
|
| Eh, he wrote a pretty-good book on an existing philosophy that
| he'd been taught. Not nothing, but not exactly revolutionary.
| Epictetus, Seneca, and others preceded him. Anyway, a lot of
| that book doesn't get quoted in tweets, because it's not-so-
| wise-seeming stoic physics, metaphysics, and
| religion/cosmology. It's just the pithy bits of ethics and
| right-living that people really like. Meanwhile, in a few
| hundred years, Rome produced, what, two emperors whose writing
| we still care about at all, with IIRC 3ish volumes between them
| that are still read by ~anyone? Again, not nothing, but also
| not _that_ out-there.
| lostlogin wrote:
| > The Sage caste of india could just decide to self-immolate?
| Why not other people of india and why certain caste did stuff?
|
| I think others did it too (or had it done to them?). I'm not
| expert and risk mangling a description of the ritual, but
| Sati/Suttee was where widows sat on their husbands funeral pyre
| or were buried alive.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)
| jaldhar wrote:
| The Greek authors naturally were not completely versed in the
| ins and outs of Indian traditions so they confused different
| social phenomena. There was no "Sage caste" but there were
| different orders of monks following different philosophies.
| They are loosely grouped together as Shramanas and they
| generally believed that this world was illusionary and full
| of suffering and the task of religion is to find a way out.
| Some of the more pessimistic ones thought that the only truly
| nonviolent way to do it is by suicide. This is an official
| dogma of Jainism to this day (though Darwin has moderated
| actual practice considerably.)
|
| Sati is a different social custom from a much later time
| period.
| otikik wrote:
| Exchange student
| abc_lisper wrote:
| Buddhist philosophy is practical and seems some what out of sync
| with the Hindu thought at that time. Buddha lived around the same
| time as Socrates. I can't help but wonder if some of the ideas
| were not cross-pollinated. Don't get me wrong. There are many
| similarities between the cultures, even 1000 years ago. Al-
| Biruni, an arabic scholar, well versed in Greek thought, said as
| much. He thought Indians were on par with Greeks in Math and
| Science, but didn't advance as much because the
| language(Sanskrit) depends on analogies and metaphors a tad too
| much ie, not being quantitive and exact. I feel even today,
| Indian culture relies heavily on analogy.
| anukin wrote:
| The facts are spot on. The conclusions are a bit off though.
| Ancient Indian civilization was pretty advanced in theoretical
| mathematics and was able to calculate the expansion of sines
| and cosines before Taylor's theorems. It also had an
| understanding of sines cosines etc. The main area where it fell
| behind was the engineering aspect of theorems. Other than few
| civil engineering marvels, Indians never discovered things like
| antikythera mechanism or aqueducts like ancient romans. This
| could partially be blamed on education being limited to few
| people as a direct side effect of caste system. The few who
| worked as smiths were not versed in theorems. Those who worked
| on theorems were never versed in engineering. They also did not
| cross pollinate that well. All owing to failure of education
| system of country. A curse it still suffers from tbh.
|
| As for Sanskrit it was never the language of masses. Pali or
| Prakrit would have been the language of masses during time of
| Al biruni. Sanskrit is an elegant language but was again
| limited in access to few by the caste system.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| Both your comment and the parent comment seems biased and in
| a way parallels jingoistic comments overhyping Indian
| achievements (but in the opposite direction).
|
| Was there any objective metric by which ancient Indian
| engineering was behind others?
|
| There are other Indian achievements that have no parallels
| elsewhere in a similar time. But you can't overgeneralize
| from them in the other direction either:
|
| https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20170110-indias-
| ancient-e...
|
| https://mymodernmet.com/kailasa-temple-ellora-caves/
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| These far post-date the engineering constructions in Rome
| and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze age
| civilization, including the Indus River Valley civilization
| itself. Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the
| Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that
| the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who
| didn't tend to live in fixed structures. At some point
| people starting creating permanent structures, and they are
| architectural marvels of course, but those achievements do
| not seem to co-ordinate with the vedic mathematics in the
| same way that Greek, Egyptian, and Roman mathematics co-
| ordinate with Greek, Egyptian, and Roman engineering
| marvels.
| jaldhar wrote:
| Whether or not you accept "Aryan migration" it would have
| occurred at least 1000 years or more before the period
| under discussion so I don't see the relevance.
| cscurmudgeon wrote:
| > These far post-date the engineering constructions in
| Rome and Greece--not to mention Egypt and other bronze
| age civilization, including
|
| That has zero relevance to the statement about Al Biruni
| unless he magically travelled back in time and was stuck
| in some x-00 BC and couldn't see newer developments in
| India.
|
| Also strange is the fact that around Al Biruni's time
| Hindu numerals were adopted by Arabs (and that we all use
| now). Maybe he did go back in time!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu-Arabic_numeral_system
|
| > Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the
| Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that
| the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who
| didn't tend to live in fixed structures
|
| What? No, the Mahabharata has elaborate descriptions of
| palaces, cities. Even Ramayana mentions palace. And
| nomads, usually, don't have palaces or cities lol.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lakshagriha
|
| Lets leave all that aside and come back to this question:
|
| Was there any objective metric by which ancient Indian
| engineering was behind others?
| akprasad wrote:
| > Its clear from ancient texts and stories like the
| Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Bhagavata Purana that
| the Aryans were a nomadic, tribal cow-herding people who
| didn't tend to live in fixed structures.
|
| Do you have examples of stories to support this point? I
| ask because the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, at least,
| are deeply concerned with cities, city life, and the
| politics of cities, and nomadic life within them is a
| salient point only insofar as its main characters are in
| exile from the cities they wish to return to.
| jaldhar wrote:
| A couple of observations
|
| 1. Indian advances in Mathematics are several centuries in
| the future from the period under discussion. And they owe
| quite a bit to interaction with the Greeks though patriots
| might not want to admit it.
|
| 2. Pali wasn't a "language of masses" either. It was a trade
| language of Western India that became the literary language
| of the sthaviravadi Buddhists. Other sects used Sanskrit or
| other Prakrits. Shakyamunis mother tongue was Magadhi yet
| another Prakrit.
|
| 3. Sanskrit was the most prestigious language though at this
| point it didn't have the monopoly it would later have. No it
| wasn't a mass language either but more people had access to
| it than you might think.
| joe__f wrote:
| Phyrro supposedly travelled to India, but he was later than
| Socrates I think
| gumby wrote:
| I think the people who settled both regions, bringing the
| wheel, a language family, and other cultural structures
| probably left a common foundation that perhaps lead to further
| parallel development and/or facilitated cross fertilization.
|
| India had wide trade and cultural interchange between Southeast
| Asia, the Middle East, and even the eastern Mediterranean at
| least as far back back as Harrapan times.
| n1b0m wrote:
| From my understanding, before being influenced by Hellenistic
| culture the Buddha was never represented in human form.
| wahern wrote:
| Greek statuary apparently had tremendous influence in Eurasia
| generally, including as far as Japan. The Greek wind god,
| Boreas, seems to have become (or at least been the source for
| depictions of) the Japanese wind god, Fujin:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F%C5%ABjin
|
| Regarding your point specifically:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhist_art
| progmetaldev wrote:
| Thank you for posting these Wikipedia articles. I honestly
| had no idea that there was this combination of ideas
| between Greek and Buddhist thought and art, but looking at
| some of the art, it's much easier to see the influences
| while having this in mind.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Al-Biruni was Central Asian/Khwarizmian (related to Persian),
| not Arab.
| fooker wrote:
| > language(Sanskrit) depends on analogies and metaphors a tad
| too much ie, not being quantitive and exact
|
| This is absolutely true.
|
| You will find a bunch of modern keyboard warriors who have not
| studied Sanskrit literature vehemently disagreeing with this
| based on some misplaced sense of pride.
|
| Sanskrit is --syntactically-- a very exact language with no
| room for debate. The flip side of this is that every dialect
| got labelled as an aberration (literally!) with no hope of
| mainstream adoption.
|
| Now moving on from syntax, Sanskrit semantics is intentionally
| loosely defined. So much that you are discouraged from
| interpreting it yourself. The usual argument for that is that
| you would have a teacher who will teach you the correct
| interpretation. Obviously this did not scale, and caused
| knowledge to get lost wholesale over time.
|
| A concrete example is the grammar rules of the language itself,
| which is supposed to be exact and well defined. Well, it turns
| out that these rules were only written down in terms of
| mnemonics (similar to remembering the first letter of
| trigonometric identities to recall it), and people have
| interpreted these mnemonics in different ways.
| akprasad wrote:
| > Sanskrit semantics is intentionally loosely defined
|
| I have studied Sanskrit literature extensively and do not
| know what this means.
|
| > people have interpreted these mnemonics in different ways
|
| Your implication is that people interpreted these mnemonics
| differently due to misunderstanding these rules. The
| mainstream scholarly response is rather some version of
| pryogshrnnaa vaiyaakrnnaaH ("grammarians take refuge in
| usage"), i.e. that different grammarians working in different
| eras and time periods were forced to reconcile the
| Ashtadhyayi as a fixed document with the slight divergence in
| contemporary usage -- that is, that they followed usage and
| intentionally reinterpreted rules to fit usage.
|
| For an example of how this accounts for Patanjali's readings
| in particular, see [1].
|
| [1]: https://web.stanford.edu/~kiparsky/Papers/markers.pdf
| fooker wrote:
| >I have studied Sanskrit literature extensively and do not
| know what this means.
|
| This means a sentence can often have many different
| meaning, not just the literal one suggested by the words.
|
| The idea is you either accept multiple meanings or settle
| it through debate.
|
| I am not criticizing this, this is fundamentally what makes
| literature and poetry interesting.
|
| But this makes it really difficult to draw a line between
| philosophy and science.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| Perhaps this was intentional, or supported by having
| teachers and a stronger oral history/tradition? Just as
| with Buddhism, I always felt there wasn't as much of a
| clear divide between philosophy and science as you find
| in western thought. You seem more well versed than I in
| this topic, so thought I would throw this out there in
| case you have any insight into this (or I easily could be
| misinterpreting).
| fooker wrote:
| That is exactly right.
|
| The claim from the Greek historian is that this is what
| caused eastern science and engineering to stagnate
| compared to Greek/Roman efforts.
|
| I am inclined to agree, of course it is not really
| possible to prove any causality here.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| This is one of those topics where we can only dream of
| where we could currently be, had these traditions been
| allowed to continue and the knowledge shared.
|
| Being from the western world, with a deep curiosity in
| eastern thought and practice, these types of thought
| experiments are very interesting to me, but also
| depressing when you look closely at the reality of how
| things played out.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Yes, it was disappointing to me to learn at some point
| that you can't actually read much of the great classical
| and vedic compositions without assistance of a
| commentary. Although the commentaries themselves are
| fairly exact.
|
| It reminds me a lot of Greek drama, except there even if
| the grammar is funky, you can usually deduce how the
| language is being stretched and why, even if its very
| difficult and technical. In Sanskrit that isn't always an
| option, you just have to know from context why and how
| certain words are being used after having already studied
| the language for decades.
| fooker wrote:
| >Although the commentaries themselves are fairly exact.
|
| Now the problem is that these descriptions are colored by
| the philosophy and opinion of the person writing it,
| often heavily because of the lack of cross pollination of
| ideas.
|
| For example, the ISKCON descriptions of the verses of
| Gita are often completely orthogonal to the main
| philosophy of Gita, but the interpretation is technically
| as valid as the literal interpretation.
| fooker wrote:
| >that they followed usage and intentionally reinterpreted
| rules to fit usage.
|
| Makes sense.
|
| What I was touching upon was the culture of leaving things
| up to interpretation though, not just this particular
| issue.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| Alexander the Great started his conquest around 335 bce and made
| it all the way from Greece, across Persia, and into India. Trade
| increased, and new greek settlements were set up along the way.
| There was a big exchange of ideas and culture, including Buddhism
| being introduced to the West. I think that the exact lineage of a
| lot of the ideas introduced then has been lost, and it's no
| longer possible to trace them with great fidelity. But I also
| think that Indial religion, including Buddhism, has had a great
| impact on early Western civilization.
| fatneckbeard wrote:
| I think there is a lot we can still learn, but the areas where
| the artifacts exist have succumbed to geo-political conflict
| between the great powers that surround them. Such as
| Afghanistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, etc.
| progmetaldev wrote:
| Even in the current era we have groups such as the Taliban
| and ISIS destroying cultural artifacts and knowledge. One can
| only hope there is still knowledge contained somewhere safe
| that we might uncover and be able to share.
| gen220 wrote:
| Diodorous stated that Alexander intended to inter-migrate the
| people of his conquered empire, to facilitate cultural exchange
| and unity between the Asian and European peoples who were by
| then his de facto subjects. [1]
|
| Interesting to imagine what that counterfactual world might
| have looked like.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_the_Great#Last_plans
| progmetaldev wrote:
| It's an interesting thought experiment to think of where we
| might be culturally and intellectually had there been an
| actual exchange of thought, without rulers taking advantage
| of people for profit. We can say the same thing even now, but
| back then it seems like those ideas are what built the
| foundation of our modern world. If that exchange had been
| allowed to flourish, we might be a much more civilized world.
| lostlogin wrote:
| The later history of The British East India Company left me
| disappointed and angry and what was destroyed and lost in
| India.
|
| I think it was the below book.
|
| Key passage from the review "Company officials engaged in a
| systematic orgy of asset-stripping Bengal, contributing to one
| of Bengal's worst famines, killing millions. Rather than
| organise effective tax or famine relief, as was common among
| Indian rulers, the Company maintained its tax harvesting to
| sustain a high share price."
|
| Ultimately their pillaging and destruction damaged the company.
|
| https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsereviewofbooks/2020/01/14/book-rev...
| nextos wrote:
| At the start of British colonization in India, India's GDP
| was ~30% of the world's GDP.
|
| This had dropped to 2% by Independence of India in 1947...
|
| I think pillaging is an understatement. It was a systematic
| transfer of wealth, probably like no other.
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| Well yes and no, that 30% was during a high-point of the
| Mughal empire and before the widespread development of
| industrial capitalism. Its certainly the case that Indian
| society may have turned out differently if not for the
| British, but maybe not for the better, it was a society
| descending into factionalism and civil strife as that
| empire collapsed, the British simply stepped in and took
| over primarily to secure their trade interests, because
| they couldn't trust the local kings and warlords to do so
| anymore. In doing so, and then later establishing a
| government, they introduced modern medicine, education,
| roads, the rail network, and other critical infrastructure,
| as well as industrial capitalism.
|
| This is not to excuse the British, but perhaps India
| would've been better off without them, perhaps not, the
| alternative, if there wasn't a single government, could've
| been a patchwork of dysfunctional extractavist states, like
| what you see in Africa. It may have been possible for a
| large south asian society to organize itself in an
| egalitarian fashion, but unless some miracle happened they
| would've been overrun by foreign capitalists, who had far
| more power than any other class in history, because South
| Asia is incredibly labor and resource rich, and at the time
| the only parts of the world that had even developed
| industrial capitalism were in the "west", Europe and the
| US, not to mention the only place that avoided that fate,
| Japan--the latter being moreso an exception that proves the
| rule (and which, after all, turned fascist during WW2).
| _dain_ wrote:
| i think the industrial revolution happening in the
| intervening period might have had a little something to do
| with that
|
| (and don't give me the "bengal was about to
| industrialize!!!" crap)
| nsenifty wrote:
| Industrial revolution was funded by the colonies, both in
| providing resources and the market for the finished
| goods. For instance, the British starved the local
| textile industry in Bengal (which had accounted to 30% of
| global textile market) by exporting the raw cotton back
| home and dumping the products in India.
| 988747 wrote:
| [dead]
| [deleted]
| miles wrote:
| Reminded of this Wikipedia entry:
|
| Greco-Buddhism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Were there not Buddhist monks in Egypt too at some point?
| jaldhar wrote:
| Yes. Romaka in Sanskrit literature is Egyptian Alexandria not
| Rome as one might think. It was the major port of trade
| between East and West during the Graeco-Roman era and an
| intellectual center thanks to the library. Indian
| philosophers were known to have been present there. (Though,
| again, we don't precisely precisely know if they were
| Buddhists or some other sect.)
| rjknight wrote:
| These people, from whom we get the modern usage of the term
| "therapy": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therapeutae
| DiscourseFan wrote:
| I'm writing a whole thesis right now on the connections
| between Ancient Indian Philosophy and Psychoanaylsis. It's
| almost done, maybe I'll post it here for you guys to read.
| macrolocal wrote:
| Their influence feels notable in Pseudo-Dionysius, especially
| his Mystical Theology.
| Archelaos wrote:
| I do not think that there is a direct connection here. There
| are some vague similarities to some Buddhist doctrins, but
| that is only very much on the surface. The whole train of
| thought of Pseudo-Dionysius is Neoplatonic. Pseudo-Dionysius
| is primarily exploring the limits of theological speech and
| doctrin with the toolset of "classical" European philosophy
| and his contemporary theology. Much is just a "Christianed"
| paraphrase of Proclos.
| libraryatnight wrote:
| What would I read to better understand what you're
| discussing here?
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| If you're the kind of person who likes reading original
| sources, you're in luck[1]!
|
| > The surviving writings are four treatises and ten
| letters. The four treatises are: 1) On the divine names
| (DN) (Peri theion onomaton, in Greek; De Divinis
| Nominibus, in Latin), the longest work of thirteen
| chapters that deals with affirmative or kataphatic
| theology, namely, the names attributed to God the creator
| in scripture and also in pagan texts, but also exploring
| the limits of language and therefore also involving
| negative or apophatic theology. 2) On the celestial
| hierarchy (CH) (Peri tes ouranias hierarchias, in Greek;
| De coelesti hierarchia, in Latin), a work that examines
| how the nine choirs of angels (in scripture) are to be
| understood in lifting us up to God. 3) On the
| ecclesiastical hierarchy (EH) (Peri tes ekklestiastikes
| hierarchias, in Greek; De ecclesiastica hierarchia, in
| Latin) that examines the various orders and liturgy of
| the church as relating us to God through a divinely
| appointed but human hierarchy. And 4) On Mystical
| theology (MT) (Peri mustikes theologias, in Greek; De
| mystica theologia, in Latin), a brief but powerful work
| that deals with negative or apophatic theology and in
| which theology becomes explicitly "mystical" for the
| first time in history (By mystical here we do not mean an
| extraordinary or private experience of transcending one's
| self in the modern sense of the term, but simply
| "hidden". On this see Bouyer, 1949; Vanneste, 1959;
| McGinn 1994). There follow ten letters that provide
| helpful comments upon topics in the above four treatises,
| especially letter 9 on what Dionysius calls symbolic
| theology of which works 2) and 3) above (CH; EH) form a
| substantial part. The ten letters appear to be arranged
| in a roughly hierarchical order, letters 1-4 being
| addressed to a monk (a certain Gaius, also the name of
| one or more of St. Paul's companions), letter 5 to a
| deacon, letter 6 to a priest, and letters 7 and 9 to
| hierarchs or bishops. Letter 8 disrupts this order since
| it is addressed to a monk charged with disrupting the
| hierarchical order itself!
|
| I'd expect the Secret History of Western Esotericism
| Podcast(SHWEP) to cover him at some point in the near
| future, but the host hasn't quiet reached that point in
| the timeline yet. When he does, expect a much more
| digestible source of information.
|
| 1. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pseudo-dionysius-
| areopagi...
| macrolocal wrote:
| It's a stretch. But remember that Plotinus only signed up
| to march against the Sassanids to learn Kushan philosophy
| better! And their ideas on apophatic theology already show
| up in the Enneads, eg. in his negative treatment of
| material beings.
| jrumbut wrote:
| I stumbled on this article by accident some time ago, and I
| can't recommend it enough.
|
| I'd be interested to hear it appraised by someone whose
| knowledge of the subject didn't come (primarily) from
| Wikipedia.
| jaldhar wrote:
| The individual named in the article was a shramana of some type
| but more likely to have been a Jain than a Buddhist IMO. Customs
| such as going about naked and ritual suicide are more established
| amongst Jains (though not completely unknown amongst Buddhists.)
| The area around Baruch is a stronghold of Jainism to this day.
| dhruval wrote:
| For people that didn't make the connection, the inscription
| says "Zarmanochegas, of Barygaza" which is the greek name for
| Baruch. (an ancient port city in Western India)
| amriksohata wrote:
| Many Indians have folklore stories of Jesus visiting India and
| taking a mix of Buddhist literature, even early days Christianity
| believed in reincarnation until it was removed. And of course
| Buddhism took its roots from Hinduism
| edgyquant wrote:
| > early days Christianity believed in reincarnation until it
| was removed.
|
| I've never heard of this, do you have some further reading?
| amriksohata wrote:
| Lots of evidence early Christians believed in it just a
| sample:
|
| https://epubs.utah.edu/index.php/historia/article/view/578#:.
| ..
| Bootvis wrote:
| Your earlier comment generalises a bit too far though. Some
| early christians is not the same as early Christianity.
| Interesting fact nonetheless.
| qersist3nce wrote:
| I'm interested in this too.
|
| I've heard an account, that some Byzantine queen-consort was
| told by a soothsayer that she (the queen) in her pervious
| life, was a witch.
|
| So the queen asked/persuaded the king to remove this from
| Christianity.
| gumby wrote:
| I admit I'm not too well versed in the literature but I think
| I learned in world civilization class that one of their gods
| came back to life (and opened its own tomb and walked out)
| after ritual execution by the Romans. That puts reincarnation
| at the center of the story.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| Resurrection is different thing than reincarnation though.
| gumby wrote:
| Sorry, I am not well versed in the finer subtleties of
| the domain's jargon.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| This is usually sourced to the notorious forgeries by Nicholas
| Notovitch and Holger Kersten, the latter of which especially
| overlooks the elementary fact about Rozabal (in Srinagar) that
| "Yuz Asaf" is a very believable gloss of "bodhisattva",
| especially given medieval Arabic terminology. See Shahristani,
| al-Biruni, etc.
| [deleted]
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| There are many springs and wells across the UK and Ireland that
| claim to have been visited by, blessed by, or used by Jesus to
| perform miracles[1] There's Japanese folklore that Christ
| visited Japan, and is even buried there[2]. And perhaps most
| notably, the Mormon church claims that Jesus visited the
| Americas after his resurrection[3].
|
| Historically, there's no evidence that Jesus travelled more
| than 200 miles from his birthplace. Folklorically, he's been
| everywhere that believers have been. Given the supernatural
| nature of these claims, it seems likely that you should believe
| whatever you feel is right. It doesn't seem a stretch to his
| abilities that Jesus appeared to many peoples across many
| places given the magnitude of his power and purpose, from a
| christian perspective.
|
| [1] https://www.megalithic.co.uk/article.php?sid=8115 [2]
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-little-known-lege...
| [3]
| https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/liahona/2008/07/la...
| dragonelite wrote:
| I think i saw a youtube alt history docu once that postulated
| that Jesus might have been a buddhist monk.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Young Jewish man runs into a Buddhist or at least Buddhist
| ideas in his twenties, spends a while learning about them,
| comes back to the temple in his thirties and starts telling
| people how great it would be if they were just nice to each
| other and maybe focus less on rules and hypocrisy. Gets
| killed by a Roman state that's worried about uprisings and
| local Jewish leaders who don't like different ideas. His
| followers tell stories about him in the following decades
| focusing on it being better to be poor, repressed, the Roman
| state feels threatened by a powerful underclass religion so
| they coopt it, make it the state religion, and shape it to be
| useful to empire. Ultimately it kind of contributes to the
| already crumbling empire.
|
| All conjecture but reasonable enough.
|
| If you start with the premise that Jesus was a real person
| but not divine, I think the real story would look a lot like
| that.
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