Earlier today, I was listening to Evangelical Christian Radio while doing errands (my phone is broken and I live deep in Red America) and the pastor, Alistair Begg, was making the argument that the synoptic gospels are totally unique in what they are. The format is unprecedented. They're not biographies. They're not systematic theology. It's just a direct witness to Jesus Christ. And so on. Therefore, they're historically valid and true, etc.
But if you have read the Pali Canon or other collections of sutras and agamas, it's almost blindingly obvious that the structure of the pericopic episodes found in the synoptic gospels aren't really unique at all.
As a random example:
From Majjhima Nikaya 55 (trans. Thanissaro): I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha, in Jīvaka Komārabhacca’s mango grove. Then Jīvaka Komārabhacca went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, “Lord, I have heard it said that ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action.’ Those who say, ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action’: Are they speaking in line with what the Blessed One has said, are they not slandering the Blessed One with what is unfactual, and are they speaking in line with the Dhamma so that no one whose thinking is in line with the Dhamma would have grounds for criticizing them?”
Compared to say, Mark 7 (trans. NIV):
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles. So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
And so on and so forth. The parallels don't end there, but I've probably gone on long enough of a rant. And this wouldn't even be the first time something like that happened in the Greek world. Pyrrho very likely did something very similar. Plus, the phenomena has modern equivalents as well. Look at how many mindfulness courses and therapy interventions in the West just file the serial numbers off of Buddhism (e.g. CBT, ACT).
So yeah. The pieces are all there, but literally be damned by others if you put them together.
You didn't actually point to anything substantial; you kind of hand-waved at what you presumed "eastern religions" posit, but there are literally hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies that do in fact have very different attitudes towards the divine and basic metaphysics. The very first sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya--the Brahmajāla Sutta--has a section where the Buddha directly enumerates and engages with 62 of them present just in his neck of the world. Sectarianism, too, is as prevalent in the East as it is in the West. None of these things are monoliths. The world is large.
I honestly don't think you have the wisdom, the charity, or breadth of experience to understand or appreciate anything that I've written. And that's okay. You have a very real and meaningful investment in dismissing a priori the claims that I'm making, which is entirely understandable, especially for a Catholic who takes their faith seriously, as it would be for anyone else whose beliefs are jeopardized by implication. That's exactly the firewall that I'm talking about.
I don't expect the firewall to fail, in any case, so don't worry there. Catholicism is lindy. And if that firewall ever does fall and any of what I've written is integrated into the Standard Narrative, I'm sure Catholicism will also adjust to it, just like they've done every other time it has happened.
In your previous post, you claimed something different:
>>> [T]here is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import from the east.
This is a different claim entirely.
Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'. One way we know this is by looking at its differences with eastern ideas. What would first-century Christianity make of the denial of diachronic identity (the self is an illusion), or the denial of the idea that God is personal? You accuse me of 'hand waving'. I'm not sure where I do this. Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?
There's quite a bit of mind-reading (in the CBT sense of the word) in your post that I don't really want to respond to because it doesn't advance the argument.
You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.
>Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written. If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.
>Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?
I do contest that -- specifically because proto-Rabbinic Judaism was specifically categorized as a monotheistic religion that was largely recognized and exempted from Roman suppression because of its connection with temple Judaism. That Christians were persecuted by the Romans was not solely due to their monotheistic (or rather anti-polytheistic) beliefs, but that it was rapidly becoming expressly a gentile and proselytizing religion.
In any case, you first argue (wrongly) that "eastern ideas" can't be syncretic to Christianity because of a lack of personal deity, then you argue that Christianity is unique and was persecuted specifically because it denied personal deities.
In one breath, you treat theism as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and “eastern ideas”; in the next, you treat religious exclusivity as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and Rome. But those are entirely different axes, and neither establishes anything about the historical provenance of the ideas under discussion.
I would really like to continue to be charitable to and engage with you, but you have a continued fixation on the Roman attitudes of 1st century CE as evidence of an argument based on what was happening in the Mediterranean world in the 2nd century BCE--again, entirely reasonable from someone catechized within the Church--and the ability for you to even provisionally evaluate my argument on its own terms seems insurmountable. You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue.
I think you presume that I am ignorant of Catholicism and the history of orthodoxy. I'm not. I was raised by a traditionalist father who ran around with SSPX back in the 80s and then the FSSP. I ceased being Catholic for the same reason Cardinal Newman said "To be deep in history is to cease being protestant." Well, it turns out that history is much, much deeper than Newman supposed and doesn't end with Polycarp, Clement, and Ignatius.
If you honestly want to seriously engage with my position, here are the questions that would help clarify where we actually disagree. You obviously don't need to answer all of them if you don't want to (and there's a non-trivial possibility you won't even have read this far before noping out), but these are the substantive points I don't think you've addressed:
Where is your evidence that the Buddhist traditions relevant to this discussion posit that “the self is an illusion” in the undifferentiated sense you're invoking? Which Buddhist school, which period, and which text or tradition are you talking about? If you're going to use that proposition as evidence that Christianity could not have incorporated Buddhist material, you need to establish what Buddhist position you're actually comparing it to.
Likewise, what do you mean by “Buddhism denies that God is personal”? Which Buddhist traditions, which period, and which conception of God are you referring to? Why should the theological position of those particular traditions be treated as representative of “eastern ideas” generally?
How do you explain the independent emergence of a gender-inclusive monastic tradition in Christianity that so strongly resembles the general form of Buddhist monasticism found throughout its various sects, especially given that we have evidence of Buddhist missionary activity in the region predating the emergence of Christianity? If you think the resemblance is coincidental, what is your positive account of the parallel development? What historical mechanism do you propose produced the same unusual institutional configuration independently?
What is your explanation for the specific structural and narrative parallels between Christian ascetic literature and Buddhist material that predate or are plausibly independent of the Christian tradition? It appears you might have inferred that I was speaking about the content of Mark 7 and MN 55, but I wasn't. I was speaking specifically about the recurring structure found in both. I'm not asking whether Christianity ultimately gives those narratives a different theological interpretation. I'm asking what you think accounts for the historical similarities.
How do you account for the presence of Indian philosophical material in the Hellenistic world independently of Christianity? In particular, what do you make of the evidence concerning Pyrrho and the Greek encounters with Indian philosophers? If you reject the possibility of influence on early Christian intellectual culture, what is your explanation for why those demonstrable pre-Christian channels of transmission are irrelevant to the hypothesis?
If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?
> You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.
You wrote:
>>>>> The problem is that there is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import *from the east*.
This claim is predicated on the term "east" (in its philosophical sense) refering to something real. If it's impossible to associate concepts with 'the east', then your own assertion is as meaningless as mine.
In any case, the word 'east' (in this sense) can't be accurate in the way 'grass' or 'human being' can be accurate. It has multiple meanings, unlike them. But it doesn't follow from this that it has no meaning. One can assert things of 'the east', in the way that one can assert things of 'communism' or 'protestantism' or 'long-haul flight' -- other terms where one could argue over the meaning. If we can't assert things of the east, then we can't assert things of those terms either.
But we can assert things of these terms. There is a common agreement about what they mean that's sufficient for meaning to be shared. We can say 'Protestantism teaches salvation by faith alone', or 'Communism calls for the abolition of private property', or 'transatlantic flights are long haul', even though there may be some examples of all of these where the predications are wrong.
It's the same for the term under discussion. Most if not all of the meanings of 'the east' used in discourse today[0] contain the ideas I asserted (illusory self, etc). Therefore your argument -- that my assertion that certain ideas are 'eastern' is meaningless -- fails. Had it succeeded, it would have fatally undermined your main assertion.
>> Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
> You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written.
Re-read your words I just quoted, which is what I object to, and which I keep trying to come back to. Is the association really "not relevant"? I have asserted that a) certain ideas are commonly and correctly associated with 'the east'; that b) said ideas are anathema to Christianity, in fundamental ways, and therefore c) your claim that Christianity is a 'syncretic import from the east' is false. That is pretty much my whole argument[1]. If you can show that either of my premises is wrong, you nullify my objection to your statement. It's not only relevant, it's central.
> If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.
I could easily deny that though. Only one tiny and very new sect believes it. You can't claim that about my assertions, you've merely claimed they're not relevant.
> You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue
I was responding to your point where you stated the opposite. The disagreement, or the dialogue, is over which belief is true.
> If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?
There is influence in a certain sense, clearly. But your statement is much stronger. You asserted that Christianity is a syncretic import from the east, not that it was influenced by it in some sense, which is obviously true.
[0] Remembering that words exist by convention!
[1] This includes my statement about the Roman persecutions. My point when bringing this up was to show that Christianity considered itself the only way for everybody, which also undermines your assertion that it's syncretic, and is also a major difference from the east. My point was not that monotheism or anti-syncretism was the cause of the persecution. I'm neither asserting nor denying this: it's not relevant to the discussion.
(EDITED slightly to hopefully improve clarity a bit)
I wish you well, and hope your faith grows to be as secure as St. Thomas Aquinas's before his death and not as Bellarmine's during his life.
If you're at all interested in looking into the topic more deeply, I'd highly recommend this paper, showing just how deeply transmission west into the Hellenic world occurred, including bilingual koine Greek and Aramaic translations of Buddhist material:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345171245_When_the_...
There are possibly deeper, more controversial parallels--Naraka (Hell), punarjanman aka reincarnation (gennēthē anōthen or "born again"), Dhamma (Logos), the Triratna (the Trinity), dukkha/kamma (Khowba (חובא) -> opheilema/harmatia or debt/trespass), āpatti-paṭidesanā (confession), arhat (hagios or saints), etc. ad nauseam--but as you've seen, even provisionally entertaining these notions is beyond the ken for most in the West, whether academic, religious, or otherwise. Elsewhere in Buddhist thought there are also forms like Pure Land that end up resembling certain strains of later Christian forms, despite independent genesis.
But ultimately, whether my perspective is true or not, or whether the metaphysical claims between the traditions differ (they do, especially at this point in time), the right course of living isn't really that different broadly between the two traditions--focus on one's own conduct rather than others, do good for others in the world and not merely oneself, forgive others, and always keep in mind that there is a moral law in the universe that is inescapable in its consequences. If you struggle to do it yourself, find others pursuing the same goals, and you'll eventually find the way.
As far as I am aware, Christianity is the only non Indian religion to advocate for monasticism or asceticism. It's really only Jainism and Buddhism that advocate for it other than Christianity (Hinduism picked it up from Jainism and Buddhism).
That being said, your reaction is exactly what the guy above was saying was an issue.
You conflate Buddhism with Roman polytheism. Buddhism is not dogmatic. Buddha is a man who saw idolatry all around him and quickly determined it was ineffective and false. A core part of Christianity is that God needs to reveal himself. Being before Christ, Buddha would not have known about the resurrection or that such a thing was possible. He made some observations and literally said if he was wrong ignore him. While many modern day incarnations of Buddhism are dogmatic and some have descended back into the very superstition the Buddha advocated against, the core story of Buddha is complete the opposite of Roman polytheism.
Again we see the parallel with Christianity where a bunch of people were marginalized for advocating against Hindu Polytheism, with Buddhism eventually winning the support of the great empire of the time (the mauryans).
I read the entirety of 3m4r's posts in that thread and nowhere did I see any hint of such an implication