Badiou, Buddha & the Origins of Christianity
Posted by Mike E on October 5, 2010
“Religious ideas are historically, internationally, interculturally, ‘memetically’ connected. Understanding that allows us to both reject them (logically) and to respect them as inevitable (if there is any inevitability in history) products of human interaction.”
The following essay is assembled from three comments made by Gary.
Here is the passage that Gary builds on, taken from the “Three Quick Examples of Leftist Pseudo-Science“)
“The RCP writing team says:
‘Badiou cites the resurrection of Christ as a canonical event. Paul and Christianity constitute, in turn, the subject and the truth in fidelity to this event….
[and then in a footnote] ‘Alain Badiou’s method of formalism—whereby radical differences in content are obscured under formalistic constructs—is wildly at play in his conception of the event, as is obvious with such examples as the resurrection of Christ, the French Revolution, the Paris Commune, October 1917, and May ’68. The resurrection of Christ and its ‘subject’ of Paul, if one ‘buys’ Badiou’s interpretation, led to the first universalism—the ‘truth’ of Christianity, an oppressive religion that has caused great harm for centuries, a weight and shackle on the masses consciously knowing and changing the world, on approaching the world scientifically and fighting for their emancipation.’
“These passages touch on Badiou’s complex theory of events, the emergence of truth processes from such events, and the role of militants in the propagation of such truth processes. But this passage… is designed for misdirection. An uninformed reader might think that Badiou is using “truth” in the same way as orthodox Marxism (i.e. as something corresponding to reality), and that therefore Badiou is implying that Christ was actually resurrected, and Paul was spreading objective truth (or that Badiou is ignoring that the Catholic Church has a long history of oppressive acts).”
* * * * * *
By Gary
The implication that Badiou believes in the “resurrection of Christ” is just ridiculous. Can RCP members/supporters really believe the atheist Badiou has said that or believes that?
The man states clear on page 1 of his book on St. Paul:
“For me, truth be told, Paul is not an apostle or a saint. I care nothing for the Good News he declares, or the cult associated with him.”
Badiou is arguing that Paul did something with monumental historical ramifications. He shows how Paul took a Judean sect that might have died out in Roman Palestine, reinterpreted it and delivered it to mixed Jewish and Gentile communities in Anatolia and Greece insisting that the message of Jesus was a universal one.
That is important. At least, to people with an interest in the history of thought and human society who not paralyzed by dogmatism, it is important.
My own take on this (which is slightly different from Badiou’s because it’s based on historical research rather than philosophical investigation) is that Paul was did something truly extraordinary. He took a small Judean sect, based on the idea the recently crucified Jesus was the Messiah as well as in some sense “the son of God” and made it into an international belief system challenging the authority of the Roman Empire and the class system of the time.
Avakian can only see that Paul didn’t directly condemn slavery. (How many writers of the first century did? How many could envision a world in which people weren’t bought and sold—including highly articulate emancipated slaves?) What the RCP folks don’t get, because they don’t take the time to study and to think, is that Paul worked closely with slaves (in fact most of the people he mentions by name in his epistles have slave names) and that he was extremely unusual in his time in asserting equality (“in Christ”) between ethnicities, classes and genders.
Of course that didn’t mean he embraced an Enlightenment-era or twentieth century notion of equality. It’s actually not clear what he thought about slavery. In the letter to Philamon, one of the epistles modern scholars think most likely to be authentic, he mentions to the man he’s addressing (clearly a slave-owner) the slave Onesimus who had apparently fled and stayed for a time with Paul. Paul urges Philamon to receive Onesimus back into his household, “no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother.”
Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (maybe the earliest of his epistles, ca. 55 CE) is crucial to understanding him and the history of Christianity. He starts out by recounting about how he’d quarreled with Peter, a disciple of Jesus who headed the early Christian movement in Jerusalem. (Paul unlike Peter had never met Jesus in his lifetime but thought he had had a vision from him after his death. While persecuting Christians in some way he’d had some sort of “vision”—maybe an epileptic seizure—that changed his whole view of the nascent Jesus movement.) Paul recounts how he berated Peter for dissociating himself from non-Jewish followers of Jesus, specifically by not sitting at the table with Gentile Christians eating foods proscribed by the Laws of Moses. Paul insisted that those laws no longer pertained, and that the rite of circumcision was no longer applicable. Then he states
“There is no longer Jew nor Greek, there is no longer slave nor free, there is no longer male and female…”
His point was: you didn’t have to be a Jew and follow those exacting laws in order to be part of this new movement. Paul argued that the creator of the cosmos had changed his mind and opened up the prospect for salvation to everybody. Paul’s work, even if it was all based on religious delusion, was a significant moment in the history of thought.
The Impact of World Religions
To point out the obvious: there have been tens of thousands of religions in world history, located among the huge variety of human cultures, designed to explain why we’re here, why there is thunder and lightning etc., But there have been only a handful of missionary, WORLD religions of any significance. You can count them on your fingers: Buddhism, Christianity, Manicheism (which died out), and Islam.
Paul was probably aware at least vaguely of the Buddhist missionary presence all down the Silk Road. The meme of a world religion spread by missionary activity already existed and may have inspired him. The idea of propagating an ideology by concerted action, through organization (something wholly new in the ancient western world but very familiar to modern communists!) and doing it out of what the Buddhists called “compassion’ and what St. Paul called “love” or “charity” (agape) was important.
In short, to disparage Paul, and Badiou’s assessment of Paul and his achievement of making Christianity a force in the Roman Empire (and beyond), is just ignorant.
And while commenting on Badiou: obviously the man is not heading up a political movement. He is a mathematician, philosopher and academician who has a sense of social responsibility and commitment to the global communist movement as he perceives it. He deserves appreciation and respect, not pompous uninformed “polemic.”
It’s not as though the revolutionaries of the world are regrouping to solicit Badiou’s leadership, deserting Bob. To treat Badiou as a kind of Kautsky, as a political opponent challenging the “new synthesis” with a counter-revolutionary alternative, would be hilarious were the RCP not so serious in depicting it as such. It reminds me of that slogan some years back, something to the effect of, “Which vision will prevail, that of George Bush, or that of Bob Avakian?” as though the people of this country or anywhere thought that question made any sense. It’s just very sad.
The arrogance and solipsism of the man is written all over this.
More on the influence of Buddhism on Christianity…
TNL writes:
“I remain fascinated by the potential influence of Buddhism on the birth of Christianity. Do you have more to share on that?”
There was a huge trade relationshio between South Asia and the Roman Empire from the 1st century BCE. Pepper, cinnamon, textiles. There was a massive outflow of Roman silver to India, a huge trade deficit. Silk Road trade through the Parthian Empire as well as the Indian Ocean. Inevitably these trading contacts produced marketplace conversations about religion. They could be occasioned even by a Roman subject in Egypt receiving a coin from the Kushan Empire with a Buddhist image on it and the name “Buddo” (Buddha) in Greek letters.
Educated people in the Roman Empire knew something about Buddhism, the first world religion. In the writings of Clement of Alexandria–an encyclopediac mind in the 190s, and a Christian–there are references to monasticism in India (this was before Christians had developed a monastic tradition), and to “Buddha” as a revered man. St. Jerome (who translated the Old Testament into Latin) wrote in the 390s about “Buddha” being born out of the side of a virgin, showing that that myth was not unknown in the Roman Empire.
In the 4th century, in the life time of a person, Christianity was legalized (312), standardized (325—the Nicene Creed), and then made mandatory (for all but Jews) around 380.
During that period, 4 changes were implemented in the now-institutionalized Christian movement: clerical celibacy, monasticism, the veneration of saints (as intercessors between believers and God), and the veneration of saints’ bones. Every basilica (formerly Roman public buildings, now churches) had to have saints’ bones under the high alter.)
The adoption of the celibacy rule mirrors the Buddhist celibate tradition. The institution of the Christian monastery, in all its trappings, replicates the earlier Buddhist one. It is impossible to imagine this a coincidence. The rule code, tonsure, habit, schedule, rule by the bell—all of it—replicates Buddhist precedent.
The saint is the boddhisattva, the enlightened being who having died stays active in the cosmos helping believers out.
The display and veneration of bones from saints
The bone thing (which has been largely abandoned by Christians, including Roman Catholics) was the essence of Christianity in the Middle Ages. People went on pilgrimages (another Buddhist meme) to handle sacred bones and gain religious merit. There was no precedent for this in Judaism or Roman religion. But the Buddhist stupas are built over the bones of revered figures. The fact that every basilica had to have sacred bones under the alter is an obvious borrowing from the stupa.
That’s my opinion at least. The main point is that religious ideas are historically, internationally, interculturally, “memetically” connected.
Understanding that allows us to both reject them (logically) and to respect them (as an inevitable–if there is any inevitability in history)as products of human interaction.
Christianity in its primitive form was not a product of a dislikeable person, as Bob wants us to think. Nor was official Roman Catholicism from the 4th century an effort by evil people to entrench an oppressive worldview. It was a synthesis of ideas that no one in particular controlled, but just evolved due to the exchange of ideas on the trade routes and the needs of the Roman state.
William Dhalgren said
Interesting connections, Gary. I’d noticed the similarities between Christian and Buddhist hagiography before, but never directly linked them. I wasn’t aware of the quotes from Clement or Jerome either; what were their opinions of the Buddha? IIRC, most pagan intellectuals tended to view him as espousing something similar to the classical Athenian philosophical tradition; how did their Christian counterparts feel?
It does seem to me, however, that a great deal of Christian monastic practice has precedent in the ancient Mediterranean, with or without Buddhist influence. And there are very direct social and political reasons for monasticism emerging when (3rd-4th centuries) and where (rural Roman Egypt and Syria) it did.
First, I guess, there were well established Greco-Roman religious and philosophical traditions, predating Christianity, that emphasized self-denial and asceticism as a means of achieving sanctity or gnosis. Orphism prescribed processes of self-regulation (vegetarianism, as well as other dietary restrictions), identifiable clothing (clean white robes), and ethics (nonviolence). While not as rigorous as monasticism, in many respects, these did require a radical break from an established civic and religious world based around public animal sacrifices and martial service to one’s city-state. Orphikoi certainly seemed to think of themselves as a distinct collective group, and in some locations seemed to experiment with forms of communal living.
Similar examples had multiplied by the Roman Era. And while there was no formal rule for Christian monasticism until 356 (the Rule of Saint Basil), proto-monastic movements originated 75 years or so before that in rural Egypt, with some degree of material and theological support from the peasantry. Hagiographies (like the one of Saint Anthony) connect this movement to the intense anti-Christian persecutions under Emperor Diocletian; it was no longer safe to be a Christian in a major city. In any case, there had been semi-monastic Greco-Egyptian pagan communities out in the desert well before this, mentioned by Philo. The Egyptian desert (unlike Syria) is way too harsh to support a solitary hermit, and any ascetic life would need to be both collective and heavily regulated.
Previously, rural Egypt had suffered an almost total collapse of its traditional religious infrastructure due to temple budget cuts and almost continual economic crises. Many villages had no full-time priest or functioning temple, which provides some context for the seemingly easy spread of Christianity across the Egyptian countryside. A single spark, as they say…
None of this is to discount Buddhist influences on Christianity, which I think are extremely likely. This was simply to point out some of the other “memes” in circulation in the Mediterranean world.
Gary said
William, thanks for your comments.
I was commenting (in response to a post by Mike Ely) on the RCP’s trite dismissal of Badiou, and in particular his work on St. Paul. In stressing his transformation of Christianity into a world/missionary religion, I noted how it emulated the earlier missionary religion, Buddhism.
Then in response to a question from “Tellnolies” I gave a rather rushed concise view of how I think Buddhism affected Christianity. This is of course a very complicated historical question and I don’t know if I want to use this forum to address it in detail.
But as for how Christians viewed the Buddha, and how other factors influenced monasticism: I think Mani had a lot to do with it. The “Persian prophet” (216-276) founded a religion synthesizing Zoraoastrianism, Buddhism, Judaism and Christianity, the main Buddhist aspect being a monastic order of proselytizers. There were Manichaeans in both Syria and Egypt by around 270 century and I think their monasteries are the bridge between the Buddhist and Christian monastic traditions. Iain Garner has written about a “manistan” or “Mani house” that may have been a monastery near Fayum, Egypt, around 290. By 312 there were Manichaean monasteries in Rome.
There are some ancient reports of Christian monastic life in Egypt in the 3rd century but they are not very reliable. The movement only took hold after 300 (and then spread rapidly to Gaul and even Ireland and farther afield). It is as though the priests at the Council of Nicea had gazed across the Parthian border (there were Buddhist monasteries as far west as the Persian Gulf) and though, “That’s a good model. We can emulate it.”
Men and women without family ties totally commited to propagating a belief system, both by preaching and providing vital social services (such as medical care). Living in big institutions receiving the support of powerful wealthy lay-people. Repositories of whatever written works continued to be permitted. It all made sense.
From the 330s or so (Hegemonius’ Acts of Archelaus) Christian worls associate Mani with the Buddha, saying that his teacher had called himself a “new Buddha”. Then there are various versions of the story, all tending to suggest (if you read them carefully) that Buddhism entered Egypt via the Hejaz plain (i.e., by Indian traders—wherever you had south Asian traders in the first century throughout the Indian Ocean they were accompnaied my missionary monks).
St. Cyril of Jerusalem and Ephiphanius of Salamis mention a link between Mani and some ‘buddha’ figure. As late as the 6th century a bishop on the Greek island of Lesbos had the masses under his control declare a public anathema against both Mani and Buddha!
All of that suggests some memetic connections, in my opinion.
Orphism may have fed into Christian monasticism but it was never an organized monastic movement. (And many have suggested it too–and Pythagoras–was influenced by Indian thought.)
These are just some sketchy responses to your comments. My point here on this (political) site is not to unload a lot of historical detail with footnotes etc. I’ll do that elsewhere. But i just want rather to argue for the importance of intellectual work like Badiou’s in the face of anti- or posturing pseudo-intellectual responses to such work by dogmatists attatched to a personality cult.
entdinglichung said
another influence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat
Avery Ray Colter said
Well I might still believe that the Nicene Creed was part of a process of an oppressive government to further its rule. I have Jewish ancestry, and we tend to mark this as one of the points in which Christianity lost much of its Jewishness and became Constantine’s baby, an instrument for his own imperial purposes.
What I can say about Buddhism, and I don’t know how much evidence has been amassed for this, is that I have heard a theory that Yeshua (Jesus), during the period of his life which was not documented in the New Testament, might have gone down the Silk Road himself and lived in Buddhist surroundings. Part of this theory is a mention among I think Tibetan Buddhists that there were writings about a visitor named “Isa”.
anar-kick said
Paul fails
I’m sorry but for those with authentic visions of human interaction the general prescriptive is something to make war on for obvious reasons(is-ought gap) Would it have been such a bad thing if those jewish sects died, especially considering that jesus was such an individualist himself, the best thing an organizing principle can do is die when its context has run out. There is nothing to celebrate about the missionary position, its a function of leviathan and it represents a terrible evolution compared to all the other ancient forms of conquest, civilization was about to die out because the old might makes right rules were waning 2000 years ago, the plebian age was unfortunately an successful resuscitation.
tellnolies said
Anar-Kick makes a number of extraordinary claims but provides no support.
The first question I have is how s/he determines who’s “visions of human interaction” are “authentic”and who’s are not?
My second question is which “other ancient forms of conquest” does Anar-Kick think was the best?
The third one is what evidence does s/he have for the claim that “civilization was about to die out because the old might makes right rules were waning 2000 years ago.”
Behind this primitivist bombast, however, is a real question which is “on what basis do we view the rise of world religions like Buddhism, Christianity and Islam as positive developments in human history?”
The first thing that needs to be acknowledged is that the rise of civilization and later of world religions involved a process of what might be called cultural homogenization in which the diversity of a world divided into innumerable tribes and clans was reduced. Sort of. In another sense it made possible an incredible flowering of new kinds of cultural variation. While there was great diversity of cultural expression between the myriad primitive hunter gatherer societies, that diversity was nonetheless seriously restricted by the low level of technology and corresponding simple division of labor based mainly on age and sex. From the vantage point of a literate culture able to see the whole tableau it looks like a beautiful mosaic, but lived from within the limitations were enormous and I have no doubt would have been experienced by our modern neo-primitivists as a kind of soul-crushing totalitarian conformity. Imagine spending virtually the entirety of your (mercifully shorter) life with your 12 closest relatives, your cultural horizons determined by the stories and songs they know and their talents in fabricating simple objects by hand.
The displacement of these cultures by civilization and then by world religious civilizations occurred by many means, often murderously violent. Civilization has no monopoly on the impulse towards mass murder but its enlarged technological repertoire did make it more effective than its competitors. But it also won by persuasion and seduction. Cities have always been magnets for rebel spirits seeking escape from the cramped horizons of the small community.
Civilization made possible a variety of cultural expression unimaginable within a hunter gatherer band. You can call it inauthentic if you want, but the very category of authenticity is an invention of the civilzed mind.
There was a very ugly underside to life in a band or a clan, and that was that the circle of empathy towards other people was restricted. What distinguished the world religions from what had gone before was precisely an attempt to extend that circle to the whole of humanity, taking in slaves, women and distant peoples. To be sure, this ideal was frequently constrained by other social structural logics that insisted on reproducing inequality, but the very idea of a common humanity was rightly percieved as revolutionary by people living in the world the world religions emerged from.
Technological development is an unavoidable consequence of the fecundity of the human mind that arises from our social nature. That development makes possible great cultural accomplishments and great crimes. The rise of idea systems that insist on the fundamental equality of humans was the first moment in a long struggle to subordinate the explosive power of human technology to a consciously elaborated vision of a better world.
The appreciation of cultural diversity that leads us to feel a sense of loss over the costs of civilization is itself a conquest of civilization.
History does not go backwards, but there is a name for those who organize their politics around the desire to return to the past, whether to the 19th century to the Middle Ages or to the Paleolithic. We call them reactionaries.
RW Harvey said
Oh, boy, this is way too convoluted for a single post… but let’s begin anyway:
TNL writes: “History does not go backwards, but there is a name for those who organize their politics around the desire to return to the past, whether to the 19th century to the Middle Ages or to the Paleolithic. We call them reactionaries.” Nor does history “go forward” and most especially not in some mechanical and simplistic way that equates paleolithic with bad/backward and modernity with good/progressive.
Part of your own argument is undermined when you correctly note that violence has dogged humankind throughout, so what makes Holocaust ovens and nukes symbols of progress?
TNL writes: “Technological development is an unavoidable consequence of the fecundity of the human mind that arises from our social nature.” Not so fast here. If there were 100,000 or more years with hardly any technological advancement, whatdoes thta say about our human nature? Perhaps technology comes first from out turning human bodies and the environment into dead objects that can be dissected, tinkered with, and then reassembled… maybe technology emanates precisely from our hyper-individualized and objectifying capability and as such demonstrates more neurotic pathology.
TNL writes: “What distinguished the world religions from what had gone before was precisely an attempt to extend that circle to the whole of humanity, taking in slaves, women and distant peoples.” How one makes the leap from conquest and enslavement (which you quaintly call “taking in”) to demonstrations of human empathy is completely beyond comprehension.
Cities have indeed lured, and seduced, and they have also led to enormous exploitation of the countryside in order to be maintained.
Yes, of course, from today’s vantage point primitive cultures may look totalitarian, but no less or more than modernity — unless you have been seduced by the shiny trinkets of mass distraction and therefore labor under the belief that these indicate some kind of individual freedom and expression.
Time to break out books by Elaine Pagels, Paul Shepherd, Ellen Dissinayake, Ernest Becker, Norman O. Brown, Joseph Campbell, and, oh yeah, throw in a little Freud…
anar-kick said
TNL
I find it funny that you read primitivism into anyone that has a problem with civilization, while I have my sympathies I can tell you I am no primie, if you want a frame of reference I have recently taken a liking to Terrance McKenna(with some reservations),he’s something of an inverted John Zerzan in that he wants the old values of the paleolithic epoch reborn in a technosphere, between him and JZ I probably gravitate more toward TMK if only because I don’t think line drawing serves anarchy very well plus I’d like the future Teslas of the world to be accommodated as much as possible, I also accept the fact that some movement toward immortality and space travel is inevitable has been since the mushrooms started to expand our minds and evolve the brain,there’s a lot of ambiguities that come with this position of course on my part, I only wish that there be no reification or force and compulsion in this movement because when you mix those things with technology holocausts and homogenization aren’t far behind
I have no issue with human complexity as I see it as the brain simply wanting to model itself in various novel forms and fashions, I do not believe that civilization or more specifically the model that won out in messypotamia is the only form of complexity that humans can take, 10 000 years ago what you might call the hub model of centrality started to become more prominent and at best the complex forms those models took easily matched those of classical civilization what was key in all this is that dissolution was always possible, when the possibility dissolution is gone you have yourself a civilization. Civilization also betrays the emergent dynamics of complexity as I see it as largely a clustering phenomena of material force and compulsion and spiritual reification, if you look at some of the neo technological developments that are taking place in late modernity(things like scaled down peertopeer manufacturing) what you see is a return to a more dynamic form of complexity, and no this did not need a dialectical movement to happen, we are simply starting to overcome bad 10 000 year old habits.
In terms of expression while you do need to leave a small scale base I do not believe the city model should be that line of flight, what is needed is a sense of movement, I want a 3rd option between town and county/tribe/band, what this is I can’t say as yet perhaps that is for the revolution to decide, I’m not looking for a restricted band or the christian impersonal love of the neighbor, what I want is affinity or what Stirner called intercouse with the options of other lines of flight when it comes to human relations, something other then universal/particular is needed.
As for authentic, I admit its a loaded word, a term that the mediation of language forces you to use, for me it is simply more individuated human interactions and experience.
As for waning civilization I look at what was potentially going to replace Rome, had the Northern European parts of Eurasia not been conquered I think you might have had a more messy decentralized but interesting area of evolution.
As for history I say it goes in circles and we do old things in new ways.
Spirit of Zwickau said
The view of Paul as a progressive historical figure is a mistake. From the Jewish cultural perspective, commenting on an early Christianity as “a Judean sect that might have died out in Roman Palestine”, were it not for the gentile Paul, is strongly reminiscent of the ‘Wild West’ narratives of modern North America, where the indigenous people can assert themselves politically only with the maverick leadership of a charismatic European hero.
“In the 4th century, in the life time of a person, Christianity was legalized (312), standardized (325—the Nicene Creed), and then made mandatory (for all but Jews) around 380.” And Christianity no longer became a force of militant national liberation for the Jewish people against Roman state, but instead became a new ruling ideology for the Roman empire, that demanded even greater physical, intellectual, and spiritual loyalty among Jew and Gentile alike.
To compare Paul to Buddha, who was an apostle of authentic human liberation, is a serious folly.
Gary said
“Spirit of Zwickau” (whoever you are):
I can’t make much sense of your post and think are rather confused.
First of all Paul was not a gentile as you state but a Jew from Tarsus. My point was that he was a Jew converted to the Jewish-Christian movement who sought to expand it into the gentile world. You totally missed that point apparently.
And do you really think there is a single “Jewish cultural perspective” or “Jewish” assesment of Paul?
Badiou himself is a Jew. (Not a religious Jew but of ancestry, which is a complicated issue.) And Badiou does in fact see Paul as a “progressive historical figure.” You disagree with him. But there is a wide range of opinion in modern scholarship among Jews on Paul’s role in world history. (Pinchas Lapide, Hyam Maccoby, Alan F. Segal, Daniel Boyarin, Mark D. Nanos, Pamela M. Eisenbaum…)
As for comparing Paul to the Buddha, I see no folly there. They were activist proselytizers, energetically conveying ideas to the (whole) world thinking that they were correct and healing. Our assessment of the content of those doctrines aside, they were doing something unusual in human history: creating religious movements aggressively incorporating as much of humankind as possible.
This is what Badiou means by universalism. He’s right.
RW Harvey said
If that is universalism, then is not imperialism or globalization forms of universalism? In that case, how do we assess movements towards universalism, good, bad, neutral, other?
Dave Palmer said
Certainly there are many parallels between Thomas á Kempis’ “The Imitation of Christ” and Buddhist thought: the idea that life consists of suffering, that suffering can be overcome by renouncing one’s attachment to created things, etc. And the practice of the Brethren of the Common Life (the community which Thomas á Kempis belonged to) was similar to that of some Buddhist monks.
But I don’t think that means that Thomas á Kempis, an early 15th-century German monk, was even dimly aware of Buddhism or the Buddha. I doubt that even highly educated Europeans at that time had much knowledge of other parts of Europe, let alone Asia.
Instead, I think there are certain themes that are common to religious contemplation that are reflected in both Buddhism and in the strain of Catholic religious thought represented by Thomas á Kempis.
Similarly, I don’t think it’s necessary for Paul to have been well-versed in Buddhism for there to be similarities between Buddhism and Pauline Christianity. I think it’s more likely that Paul would have been aware of Buddhism than, for example, Thomas á Kempis was. But as someone who, by his own testimony, purposely avoided interactions with non-Jews until several years after his conversion to Christianity, I doubt that any knowledge of Buddhism Paul might have had could have been very deep.
Gary said
RW Harvey, responding to Badiou’s contention that St. Paul represents a kind of “universalism” states:
I think this is mixing apples and oranges. The teachings of Paul were/are an ideology, which spread widely in the ancient world, particularly (as Marx, Engels and Lenin emphasized) among the most oppressed, for almost two centuries before Christianity was embraced by the Roman state. They are not the productions of state power. Imperialism and globalization on the other hand are structures rooted in capitalism and the power of an oppressing class.
On broader issues raised in these posts:
I made some scattered comments in response to Mike’s piece on “leftist pseudo-science,” in which I defended Badiou’s interpretation of Paul and expanded on it. Those comments, which Mike edited into a kind of essay (altho I hadn’t really intended to write an essay) appear above and I won’t repeat much of what I said there. I’ll just repeat the suggestion that missionary religions are rare in world history, are memetically connected and that Paul was one of those rare people largely responsible for one of them.
The RCP claims,
Aside from insinuating that an atheist philosopher actually accepts the “resurrection of Christ” as an historical fact (a dishonest smear) this avoids the issue of whether Christianity (or what many call “the Jesus movement” because there were so many variant versions of early Christianity) was or was not in fact a “universalism.”
The RCP writers don’t even make an effort to even think about the definition of the word “universalism” as used by Badiou.
(Slight digression: actually some biblical scholars—especially in the Dutch “school of radical criticism” question the very historicial existence of Paul, something Badiou takes for granted. They think Paul’s letters were actually produced by the shipmaster Marcion—who was definitely a historical person—who flourished between maybe 110 and 150. Marcion, from Sinope on the Black Sea, was very wealthy and had great influence on the Christian movement in the eastern part of the empire. He was the first to compile the epistles of Paul, combine them with a version of the Gospel of Luke, and produce the first New Testament. In response, another faction of Christians produced their own compilation including the other three gospels and letters attributed to other disciples of Jesus. Marcion attempted to break away thoroughly from Judaism, claiming that the angry, brutal, punitive god of the Old Testament could not have been the real father of the loving forgiving Jesus. He was, rather, a lesser deity and the REAL father of Jesus was one whose personality was beyond imagination or description. Marcion demanded that all Christians be celibate, i.e., constitute a religious order like the Buddhist Sangha of monks and nuns. The Marcionites may actually have been the majority of Christians in Syria for some time. If the Dutch scholars are right, this Marcion rather than Paul is the real “universalist.” Imagine a shipmaster having his crews in their visits to places like Ephesus and Antioch circulate an early version of the New Testament! It reminds me of Chinese crewmen during the Cultural Revolution passing out Red Books in local languages in places like Hamburg and Rotterdam. Marcion was condemned as a heretic by mainstream Christians and when the latter gained power an effort was made to destroy all his books.)
(I think by the way that there was a substantial trade relationship between the Kushan Empire and that coast of the Black Sea and at least one historian has suggested that Marcion would have had dockside conversations with Indians. This might help explain the firm Buddhist-like celibacy meme.)
I should maybe point out that the whole effort of Paul (whose historicity I accept) took place in the context of Judean communities thoughout the Roman world (in Galatia and Ephesus in what is now Turkey, in Thessalonika and Corinth in Greece, etc.) We tend to think in terms of a “diaspora” of Jews from Roman Palestine after the rebellions in the 60s and 110s. But there were already a million Jews in Parthian Mesopotamia, and a huge percentage of the Alexandrian (Egyptian) population were Jewish.
That is to say: dispersions had occurred before the famous Diaspora following the Jewish Revolts, and had a lot to do with voluntary migration and trade. Jews living outside Judea (Roman Palestine) had synagogues from India to Spain. And while we don’t today see Judaism as a missionary religion, and the fundamental tenet of the religion (about ‘birthright” and the descendents of Abraham being the “Chosen People” of God), there were many non-Jews (gentiles) attracted to the Old Testament, which had been available in Greek translation since the third century BCE. They thought it was older than Homer’s works, hence more authoritative, and it does of course have some moving narratives that appealed to non-Jews. Non-Jewish Roman subjects friendly to the Jewish community were welcome to attend synagogue services. Jews wanted allies, and if Gentiles wanted to be like them, they graciously accepted their interest. Some Gentiles actually converted.
(The main issue was circumcision. It was embarrassing for a non-Jewish male to go to the gymnasium or public bath with that appearance. But quite a number of men apparently converted to Judaism in the first century and submitted to the operation. This issue of the non-necessity of circumcision to the Chistian convert is central to Paul’s whole discussion. He thought that to demand this procedure and to impose Mosaic dietary laws on non-Jews interested in Chistianity was wrong. He thought the non-Jews close to the Jewish communities in Anatolia who were God-fearing and attracted to the new Jesus movement—which was splitting the synagogue congregations—should be told the “new convenant” makes all those old laws irrelevant. Christians are “discharged from the law” [Romans 7:6]. This is a key part of his “universalism.”)
As for the issue of Buddhist impact on Christianity:
In his comment, Dave Palmer doubts (while noting “many parallels between Thomas á Kempis’ ‘The Imitation of Christ’ and Buddhist thought”) whether even highly educated Europeans at that time had much knowledge of other parts of Europe, let alone Asia.” He states, “Similarly, I don’t think it’s necessary for Paul to have been well-versed in Buddhism for there to be similarities between Buddhism and Pauline Christianity. I think it’s more likely that Paul would have been aware of Buddhism than, for example, Thomas á Kempis was. But as someone who, by his own testimony, purposely avoided interactions with non-Jews until several years after his conversion to Christianity, I doubt that any knowledge of Buddhism Paul might have had could have been very deep.”
I don’t disagree with Dave. I doubt that Paul knew much about Buddhism, but he may well have had a vague awareness of an expanding aggressive religious movement beyond and even within the Parthian Empire (the great rival of Rome to the east, which also had a consistent trading relationship, in such commodities as horses and leather). And I think someone in the first century might actually have been more aware of Buddhism than someone in the mid-15th century when Thomas a Kempis lived, simply because of the vitality of trade (pepper, cinnamon, silk etc.) between the Buddhist world and the Mediterranean/European world in the earlier period. Trade was both through the overland routes (through and around Parthia) and the maritime route through the Indian Ocean to Yemen or Axum and then up the Red Sea to Berenike or other ports and then through the Nile city of Coptus up to Alexandria. (Archeologists have recently discovered the remains of teak from the hulls of boats that can only have come from India at the Berenike site.)
Any historical materialist should be open to the idea that religious concepts and practices travel through trade. Jerry Bentley has shown effectively how world religions followed trade routes. Certainly Buddhist monks from south Asia piggy-backed on the caravans heading through the Hindu Kush into Central Asia and Afghanistan. That helps explain how Buddhism spread throughout Asia. It also spread by maritime trade to the Persian Gulf where there are still sites bearing Sanskrit-derived names suggesting there were Buddhist monasteries there—that far west, in Persia.
Given that Buddhist missionaries were highly motivated (rather like Christian missionaries or communist revolutionaries—and again I want to emphasize that the missionary impulse is not the norm in world history but a meme associated with rather few movements); that Buddhism was spread through trade; that the most active artery of the “Silk Road” was not the one through Central Asia but that leading from Balkh (in what is now Afghanistan) to Antioch (Syria, on the Mediterranean); and that everywhere that there were Indian traders in the first and second centuries there were Buddhist monks travelling with them—it seems reasonable to assume substantial inter-cultural, inter-religious contact.
(The author of the gospel of Luke may well have lived in Antioch and there are in that gospel narratives and parables that could well be derived from Buddhist literature. Some scholars have in the last couple decades persuasively argued this.)
In my comments on the RCP’s minsunderstanding of Badiou, I mentioned in passing my belief that missionary activity is itself a meme and that Buddhism was the first world religion spread by such activity.
Christianity was the second such religion (and spread in some similar ways, through earnest conversations, simple rituals, the circulation of texts, the provision of certain services based on compassion). Some think Zoroastrianism was the first missionary religion but I question that, since it was confined for the most part in the Iranian cultural zone and made no effort to communicate through the translation of sacred tests. (Buddhists in contrast emphasized the need to speak to people in their own languages, and translate sacred texts into local languages.) I would say Buddhism was the first missionary religion, and Christianity the second. It was followed in the 3rd century by Manichaeism, founded by the Persian Mani, who deliberately fused Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Christianity. The chief feature of Buddhism found in Manichaeism is monasticism.
There is an obvious memetic flow here. Then came Islam, which plainly constitutes the caravan merchant Mohammed’s reinterpretation of Judaism and Christianity.
And while Islam was to an extent spread “by the sword” it should be understood primarily as a missionary faith too. It too spread largely through trading activity, into parts of Africa, Central and Southeast Asia and parts of China.
How do the links occur? It’s hard to reconstruct what happened, given the book-burnings that accompanied the triumph of Christianity. (There were quite likely
Sanskrit and Pali texts in the Library of Alexandria. Maybe Greek or Syriac translations of the Lotus or Heart Sutras. You’d think there would be, given the
volume of trade, the visits of Indian ships to Egypt, the Ptolemies’ hunger for books in all languages and requirement that all boats arriving on Egypt’s shores
should fork over all books for copying, the references in Greek literature to Indians in Egypt, etc.)
Clement of Alexandria, the leading Christian cleric in Alexandria in the 190s and a truly encyclopedic mind, described Buddha as someone “whom for his
exceptional sanctity [the Indians] have honored as a god.” He describes Buddhist monasticism (this, BEFORE the institution of Christian monasticism, which
begins around 300 in Syria and Egypt—the places most affected by Manichaean monasticism–some recent archeological excavation at Fayyum in Egypt
supports this.) Clement compares the Indian monks to “our Encratites;” a group of early Christian ascetics in Edessa, Syria who banned marriage. This is where
the gospel of Thomas was written, and other “Thomas literature” produced. That apocryphal gospel is situated mostly in India and strongly promotes
sexual abstinence (i.e., that of the Buddhist monk… ) Clement also refers to stupas: the Indians “honor a kind of pyramid under which they believe the bones of
some gods are resting.”
This was over 130 years before Roman basilicas became Roman Catholic churches, and they all had to have bones of saints under the altar. There was absolutely no Jewish or Roman precedent for this bone-reverence and it is hard to explain without linking it to Buddhist practice.
I am not saying there was direct conscious copying. It does almost look as though the priests at the Council of Nicaea were peering east, to parts of Parthia and the Kushan Empire, and thinking, wow, that model works! A network of monasteries, where the books that haven’t been burned can be preserved. Where the
Bible as we’ve recently decided it should be can be copied down into both Greek and Latin (just like the Buddhist clerics, especially the Iranian Sogdians, were translating Indian texts into Chinese). A well-organized hierarchically structured class of priests, nuns and monks who have no family commitments so they can
thoroughly service the Church (like Buddhist clerics did the Sangha). Procedures such as pilgrimages and bone-reverence…
The emulation needn’t have been conscious. But it could have been based on the observation of success. In the Book of Acts much emphasis is placed on how the early church was international, its believers on occasion “speaking in tongues.” It’s a kind of valuation of the need to speak different languages to spread the
gospel. (One recalls the story of how Brahmins berated the Buddha for speaking vernacular languages rather than the scared language of Sanskrit. He told them off; said that one had to speak the languages of the people.)
It’s often thought that the rosary (for which, of course, like so many other Christian practices, has no biblical support) arrived in Christian Europe at the time of the Crusades in emulation of Muslim practice. But prayer-beads were first used in India (probably among Jains) then spread among Buddhists. There are pre-
Islamic evidences (4th century) of prayer-bead use among Christians in Egypt. Were they knowingly emulating a foreign practice? Maybe not. This is how memetic transmission works. (In the thirteenth century, balladeers using versions of the lute from England to Japan did not know that that musical instrument in
its basic design was a north Arabian or Persian meme that just spread because it satisfied human needs. The same goes for the rosary. People used it without knowing its origins. Just like people could start revering bones or engaging in monastic life without realizing where such practices originated.)
Back to Dave’s statement about European knowledge of Buddhism in Thomas a Kempis’s time.
Just a few points/suggestions. There are references to “Buddha” (or some variation of the name) in connection with Manichaeism (and the need to repudiate it through public anathemas) In Europe from the 4th to 9th centuries at least. “Buddha” was seen as the teacher of Mani (indicating a crude understanding that Mani had integrated Buddhist ideas into his teachings). In the early 500s for example, a bishop on the Greek island of Lesbos had his flock mouth an “anathema formula” denouncing Mani as well as “Scythianus and Bouddas his teachers…. Terebinthus and Boudas, the teachers of Mani.”
The writings of Greeks at the time of Alexander’s invasion of the Indus valley positively depicting the Brahmin ascetics of India (it seems unlikely Buddhism had much presence there in the late 4th century BCE and none of the reports from those in Alexander’s campaigns seem to refer to Buddhists) were constantly circulated and expanded upon in the Middle Ages and the Brahmins (meaning Indian ascetics in general) had were treated favorably in literature (Plutarch, Dante). Indian thinkers were seen as virtuous pagans, consigned to purgatory or the highest stage of hell if not allowed into heaven.
Ratramnus, Benedictine monk of Abbey of Corbie in the Kingdom of the Franks and the greatest clerical thinker of his time compared (around 850) “the Brahman tale of the birth of Bubdam” with the story of Christ’s birth. He may have just been repeating something he’d read in Jerome (from ca. 390) but he’s not using Jerome’s version of the Buddha’s name but a version that suggests some exposure to Sanskrit.
From the 10th century versions of the “Josaphat [i.e. bodhisattva] and Barlaam” story entered Europe from the Caucasus and spread rapidly as far as Iceland.
There are a dozen translations. Marco Polo visiting Ceylon in the late 13th century encountered (and wrote down) a version of the story of the Buddha who renounced the world etc., and opined that this seems to be the story of Jospahat… Which of course is true! He just had the historical causality, the borrowing, backwards.
The rise of the Mongol Empire made travel between Europe and East Asia much easier than it had been in centuries, and in Marco Polo’s century monks from the Vatican on quite a number of occasions traveled to the Mongol court. Some of them were impressed by the close similarities between Christian and Buddhist practices (even sometimes, as in the case of the friar John de Plano Carpini in 1247, confusedly understanding the Buddhist scriptures as “testaments,” bodhisattvas as “saints” and the Buddha himself as “Jesus Christ.” He thought he was seeing a version of his own religion in the Mongol court.) Marco Polo himself in his work constantly refers to Buddhist institutions and practices with terms drawn from the lexicon of Christian institutions.
In 1287 envoys from the Mongol emperor Khubilai Khan having earlier visited Arabia, likely accompanied by Buddhist monks, met the Roman emperor in Constantinople as well the pope in Rome and kings in Genoa, Paris and the English king Edward I in Bordeaux. They were seeking an alliance against the Muslims to capture Jerusalem. At the same time 900 Genoese craftsmen were in Iraq, on contract, constructing warships for the Mongols’ intended attack on Egypt. In 1288 the Florentine Dominican missionary Riccoldo de Monte Croce encountered baxitas (probably Tibetan Buddhist priests) on the Mediterranean coast of Anatolia and described their rites similar to Christian ones. (Imagine that! Buddhists in southern Turkey, on the Mediterranean coast, in 1288.)
I could go on. My point to Dave is that there may have been more knowledge than one might suspect. More contact between peoples and exchanges of ideas. The Franciscan monastic order with its begging bowls etc. seems very Buddhistic to me.
And whether or not there are direct exchanges, understood by those involved, there can be indirect historical transmissions. The printing press, paper, gunpowder all came to Europe from China without many people realizing their origins.
In the early 19th century, the western world came to understand that the various ‘idolatries” they found from Ceylon to Japan were actually part of a global religious tradition rooted in ancient India. The word “Buddhism” was coined. Soon scholars were exploring for connections between Christianity and Buddhism and the more radical inclined to think that Christianity was somehow a variant of Buddhism. (This was mistaken. The fundamental concepts differ; Buddhism rejects a creator god. But the notion that there was a profound connection was valid.)
In the 1870s a scholar revealed the Buddhist origins of the story of St. Josaphat and the Roman Catholic Church fairly quickly acknowledged the fact. That is, they accepted what I’m calling memetic transmission. Something had entered their tradition without them realizing it…..
This is a rambling scattered collection of observations and ideas. But I hope I’ve addressed some of the questions posed.
brad fuller said
Just wanted to say “thanks” to all contributors to this page for the wonderfully respectful tone in almost all comments, and for providing information and “arguments” for their positions.
It’s such a pleasant change from much of the web content I’ve seen on this sort of topic that I thought I should at least say thanks!!!
drew said
Huston Smith, an authority on world religions, has written positive reviews for speculative books by Gordon Wasson,founder of ethnomycology, declaring that the sacrament used in vajrayana/ tantric buddhism, Sanskrit Amrita- meaning immortality, an eastern cognate of the greek ambrotos and latin ambrosia, is one and the same with the judaic manna, or bread of heaven, that jesus serves at the last supper. The theme of edible immortality is by far the strongest connection between judeo-christianity and other world religions/ mythologies. Huston smith has since then written the book “cleansing the doors of perception” describing the abilities of certain edible plants to give a profound mystical experience. (i.e. feeling immortal) If Badiou is curious to what event could have caused paul to suddenly believe in the immortality of the soul, “death where is thy sting, victory..ect” than this presents a fairly clear answer to anyone who has had a profound spiritual experience thru psychedelics. In other words if badiou were to meet a peyote medicine man he would see that many tribes have exact methods for achieving this transformative event today which often include psychedelics. To make this practice universal is a matter of spreading the word to those skeptical of spirituality.
http://www.thelostword.dk
anar-kick said
Well as John Allegro argued(to the point of being blacklisted by the catholic intelligentsia) Jesus was probably a product of essene psychedelic adventures where they in their own way recalled the teacher of righteousness who existed over a hundred years before the supposed events on the nazarene(ie he was a mushroom)
Gary said
Drew,
The Huston interpretation interests me and I’ll check it out. But I think the evidence for what can be called Tantrism (= Vajrayana)is late (maybe 5th century) in northern India and even if as some suggest (early centuries CE) I don’t think it would be one of the schools that the Roman world would have been exposed to.
There are some interesting parallels though in the “Last Supper” narrative and the narrative about the Buddha’s death as contained in early (1st c. BCE) texts.
In Christian and Buddhist scripture alike, the savior’s death follows a last meal with the disciples that somehow augurs the sad event to follow. Jesus breaks bread and distributes it, telling his disciples that it is his body, to be sacrificed for them. He indicates that he knows who will betray him. In Matthew, Luke, and John Satan enters Judas and causes him to perform that act of treachery; he is depicted without any sympathy, although the Gospel of John has Jesus tell him, “What you do, do quickly” (John 13:27) as though Judas is involved in a preordained drama. The recently rediscovered Gospel of Judas in contrast valorizes Judas for facilitating Jesus’ departure from the material world.
The oldest account of the Buddha’s death is in the Digha nikaya. The coppersmith Cunda, a devoted supporter of the Sangha, offers to provide a meal to the Buddha and his monks. As he gives the first course (possibly truffles) the Buddha instructs him to withhold it from the others, and having tasted it, orders him to bury the rest of it because no one “could thoroughly digest it but the Tathagata [i.e., the Buddha].” Taken violently ill, the Buddha expires next to the Kakuttha River nearby. Cunda arrives at his deathbed, filled with remorse that his offering had caused the Buddha’s death. But Ananda speaking for the Buddha informs him, “That is your merit, Cunda, that is your good deed, that the Tathagata gained final Nibbana after taking his last meal from you! For, friend Cunda, I have heard and understood from the Lord’s own lips that these two alms-givings are of very great fruit, of very great result, more fruitful and advantageous than any other.”
Like Judas in the gospel bearing his name, Cunda performs a worthy act according to a predestined fate.
Ananda was the Buddha’s cousin and most beloved disciple. In that capacity he resembles Jesus’ disciple John, the disciple “whom Jesus loved,” who resting his head on the Lord’s breast at the Last Supper, asks to know who would betray him and cause his death. John with the other disciples deserts Jesus when he is arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane, while Ananda tends to the Buddha up to his parinirvana. But John is the first to reach the empty tomb after the Resurrection and before Jesus’ ascent into heaven. In Jesus’ final appearance to the disciples, on the shore of the Sea of Tiberius before ascending into heaven, he hints of John’s special status. The narratives are very different, but in each the holy man’s favorite disciple plays a special role in his passing.
drew said
i certainly agree that vajrayana developed later on, although Gordon wasson argues that the amrita/ambrosia is actually a new name for the rig-vedic beverage called soma, said to be the bestower of immortality. The beverage has another name Nec-tar meaning death overcomer. Zorosterianism or the religion of persia uses the exact same beverage in the ritual called hoama in persian. hoama/soma are cognates like amrita/ambrosia/ambrotos. Since the bible states that the three magi(three kings) were at the birth of jesus-and they followed a star from the east- this implies the possibility of vedic/avestan influence from the indo-iranian culture. Magi-is a persian word that became magician. A good example of far stretching indian influence is the vedic god Mitra who is seen as mithra in zorosterianism and also as mithras or sol invictus which was the character born on dec.25 worshipped by romans untill constantine converted.
The story of buddhas death is interesting indeed, Gordon wasson and Dr. Stella Kramsisch concluded that the meal was infact putika-an indian word for mushroom and an early synonym for soma. Cunda even hints that he served that particuliar meal to the buddha to increase his longevity, just as is characteristic of soma/amrita. In Daoism this beverage is known as elixir
From Gordon Wasson’s The last meal of the Buddha”
In explaining sukarama(1dai~ain this passage the Pali Commentary of the Dighanikctya. Sumarigala~~ilri..tini, Pali Text Society ed. (London. 1971), Vol. 11, p. 568. gives three different opinions:
” others say that it is mushroom grown on a spot trodden by pigs; still others have maintained that siikorarnocldavu is a certain elixir. They say that C’unda, the smith, having heard that the Exalted One would attain parinihhana that day (lit.. today) thought that it would be good if He could live longer after eating this (preparation). and offered it wishing the Master’s longevity.”
Thanks for your your response Gary, i enjoy the discussion
P.S. Ive read the vajrayana or lightning-boat is the only one of the 3 schools in buddhism that is fast enough to take one across the river in a single lifetime, implying that buddha must have taken that path if he indeed reached enlightenment in one lifetime.
Gary said
Drew:
I think Wasson was on to something. He was trained in journalism and economics rather than history but I think that he made a contribution to the study of the history of drug use and of psilocybin in particular. (I haven’t done ‘shrooms in years although I had a wonderful week with buddies on Kauai when I was 19, harvesting them in a cow pasture across from Hanalei Beach on a rainy night, avoiding the bulls. We mixed them with canned tuna the next morning and the impact hit just as I looked at the headline of a newspaper in the General Store announcing a major North Vietnamese advance into South Vietnam. Never had a mushoom beverage but a concoction is popular with college kids these days and I have been offered…) The idea that soma/hoama amritr/ambrosia derives from a mushroom (as opposed to being an alcoholic beverage) seems very plausible to me.
The Eleusinian Mysteries you allude to were indeed mysteries. I have visited the site at Eleusis and done some study of the rite. Those involved were not to speak of what happened, as they gained insight into the world beyond. But Christian writers subsequently stated that the rite involved consumption of some substance that was clearly psychodelic.
There was a delegation of Indians to the Roman Empire in 21 BCE, including a holy man named Zarmanochegas. (Zarmano probably a Greek rendition of Sramana, or Buddhist monk). They met Caesar Augustus who allowed Zarmanochegas to participate in the Eleusian rite. Soon thereafter, in Athens, the monk had a funeral pyre erected, sat on top of it, and had himself fried. It made a huge impact on the large crowd assembled and on his tomb constructed on the spot the inscription: “Here lies Zarmanochegas, an Indian from Barygaza, who immortalized himself in accordance with the ancestral customs of the Indians.” (This may explain St. Paul’s otherwise puzzling reference in 1 Corinthians 13:3 to self-immolation as an impressive thing.) In 165 the Cynic philosopher Peregrinus Proteus has himself publicly immolated in similar fashion, emulating Zarmanochegas.
Anyway I don’t think the ‘shrooms had anything to do with the reference, that appears only in Matthew, to the 3 Magi. The author of Matthew is depicting Persian astrologers who know the future; he is saying that the fate of the baby has been foretold—not just in the books of the Hebrew prophets, but by non-Jewish authorities. “Magi” indeed is the origin of our word “magician” and while in Matthew it has the positive connotation of a wise man (hence the common reference to “the three wise men of the east” although that expression doesn’t occur in the New Testament) in the Book of Acts, by the same author who wrote Luke, Simon Magus (Simon the Magician) is depicted in a very negative light. And in Christian “heresiological” literature from the second century Magi (Zoroastrians) are negatively depicted.
drew said
Gary, Hey thanks for looking in to it, i feel most are unable to accept such hard to believe concepts. I think we were both lucky enough to have experimented as kids and so we are more prepared and open minded to the idea. I think i agree that the magi were in the bible to describe the anticipation of the awaited savior through astrology. I had almost forgotten about simon magnus, whats interesting is i believe the bible says that they were both bapbtised by john the baptist. implying that they were taught the same way but simon strayed from the good path.
The info on zarmano having a funeral pyre is incredibly interesting along with peregrinus proteus.
the most revealing part of the bible in regards to the mushroom is the song of solomon.
Just as interesting to me is that jesus and simon were baptised by water and”fire” also called chrism. Sula Benet figured out in 1936 that the word calamus was mistranslated for cannabis in the king james bible. Meaning that the holy oil recipe involved concentrating over 2 pounds of cannabis into a liter or two of olive oil. Combining fat with cannabis activates the thc an enables one to rub it on their skin to get high. The hebrew word for cannabis is kanehbosm.
The fact that the jews set up a tabernacle or tent in the woods to light insensce, use holy oil, and eat manna, is very compelling to me. Knowing that messiah and christ translate to anointed one only strenghthen my interest. cannabis is called Ganja(ganges) or more commonly bhang in buddhism and hinduism and is still used today by those abstaining from alcohol as means of relaxation.
Some scholars say that theraveda is a sanskrit cognate for the greek theraputai, said to by part of the essenes by philo, and the origin for the word therapy
carl ruck seems to have picked up where wasson left off- Even connecting the practice to alchemists, rosicrucians, and freemasons
Dan-merkur is an author who has focused on manna
chris bennet has focused on biblical cannabis.
If indeed christianity and buddhism used the same sacraments, even tho different religions, do u feel that if every hindu, buddhist, daoist, christian, jewish and muslim person were to realize it that it could have a profound effect in changing the world? Im not sure i believe that its possible to change the world without first changing our minds. I feel that mushrooms and cannabis serve as a sort of psychoanalytic tool to better achieve this mind transformation. I think that the sixties encompassed this kind of idea but lacked these fundamental concepts that could have made the cultural revolution more farspreading. Personally i considered myself agnostic/athiestic the day before my first experience and the day after, i felt quite spiritual. My brother who is an athiest, told me he thought his first experience was like “being kissed by god”
Most people are unaware of a certain chemical called dmt, which is present both in psylocibin mushrooms, the ayahuasca vine used by amazonian shamans and the human bloodstream. Dr Rick Strassman in his” Dmt the spirit molecule” discusses the possibility of dmt being responsible for all mystical experiences. It is just about the most powerful psychotropic chemical in the world. He theorizes that it is produced by the pineal gland. Located near the spot where hindus paint a red dot between their eyes. This chemical temporarily is in excess when one fasts, does strenueos activity such as a pilgramage, uses cannabis, or meditates. one can study the brain waves while someone is on it and rather than the waves slowing down expressing unconsciousness like in sleep or under influence of alcohol. While being on dmt or psylocibin mushrooms the waves are of higher frequency( alpha or gamma) suggesting that the person on dmt is more conscious than one who is not.
Thanks for your response, it’s nice to know that the idea is interesting to some people.
heres an online copy of one of wasson’s last books
drew said
http://www.scribd.com/doc/25805495/Persephone-s-Quest-Entheogens-and-the-Origins-of-Religion
anar-kick said
Just to add the late Terrence McKenna is also full of win
drew said
Buddha and jesus were alike in that they believed in overthrowing the cast system. In Hinduism Brahmans actually put laws down against eating mushrooms, probably for supply, Of course a major difference between jewish and christian mass is that for jews, only the highest of priests or kings were allowed to enter the “holy of holies” or inner room of the temple were they could eat manna. In christianity however jesus offers this manna to thieves and prostitutes. The anointing in the past was reserved for priests and kings, but both buddha and christ were revolutionaries in that they strove to give these sacraments to anyone who asked. This is what breaks these religions from others as being world religions.