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Dear FTL22,
Great post as always, I thing Dr. Lindtner is the Cat's Pajamas!
B. Ehrman refers to the NT as a "writing" when it is a collection of separate works and scholars think that many of these separate works pulled quotes from an unidentified source. This is them basically admitting that they don’t have the original, or earliest, Gospel source/s.
Regarding the hundreds of early Greek gospels, and why we don't have as many sources for other ancient "western" traditions, it is a wonder anything survived the packs of book burning Christians and most of the surviving testimonies of other faiths have been long since bent out of shape by Christian hands.
There can be no question that several hundred years after the said of time of Jesus versions of the short gospels had started to become very popular but it is a mistake to compare such a short work, which is dependent on a historical savior, to the many different surviving sutras (many of these individual sutras greatly outweigh the NT books) which were much more widespread then the NT. Several times a month the ancient Buddhists, stretching from Afghanistan to China, would recite the Pratimoksa and there are similar accounts about them having memorized other Buddhist works such as the Vinaya and the Dhammapada. Most of the Buddhists were not concerned with an historical Buddha and they also had great liberty to incorporate some of the Buddha's teaching in their fables, even at the expense of giving Buddha a facelift suitable to the location.
In my book "Jesus' Godama Sources" I believe that I give good proofs showing that the Buddhists also created fables for the Egyptians, such as the Tale of Two Brothers (Anubis and Bata {Buddha, the female form being the Greek and Egyptian Buto whose oracle was consulted by Leto, or "Lotus", at the birth of Apollo}). Herodotus also mentions that the Egptians thought that the Apis bull of Memphis was another recent import designed to overtake the true Epaphus.
Scholars have long since recognized that a story Herodotus tells of Darius seizing the family of Intaphernes (“The fortunate [of] Indra”, he was said to have helped Darius kill Gomata) for execution may have been related to a Buddhist fable. Herodotus says that Darius came to pity them when the man’s sister wept to him. Darius offered to let one person go and the mother chose her brother as she said that she could find another husband and make other children; the exact same situation appears in Jataka # 67 except where the pardoning king is said to be the king of Kosala who pardons all the women’s family that were to be executed. Another western version was later to be found in the play Antigone. Mention is made here of a Persian trend, according to Herodotus, for noble women to hold a viewing so that the many princes can show themselves in front of the women. One mention is made of a likely husband who destroys his chances of marriage by dancing like a fool. Others have compared this account to a similar incident in the Dancing Peacock Jataka. The noble women being shown around to possible husbands was a well established practice in ancient India (see the Visakha Jataka and Siddartha’s marriage contest to win Yashodhara in the Lalitavistara which has been theorized to have been composed near Persia) and no such system as this existed in those parts of the Persian empire not connected with India and the nuptial contracts found in the ancient Persian inscriptions probably reflect the traditional Persian system of marriage.
The Dancing Peacock Jataka mentions Indian merchants traveling to the island of Baveru, which is probably the island of either Tyros or Arados, both which were under Babylonian (Pali ‘Baveru’, Old Persian ‘Babiru’) control and, to give an idea of how frequent Indian merchant ships sailed to far off lands, the reader is reminded that bottomry is mentioned in the Laws of Manu and in other ancient Indian records. The moral to the related Jataka is that there is always a female more beautiful or exotic than the next and this thought is often echoed throughout the Buddhists texts, where, a rich Buddhist householder, or king, that is attached to good looking women, is often shown a nymph from heaven whose beauty is said to be much greater than that of a human female.
Buddha's mother was named Maya and she was also known as Marica, and it should be noted that Jesus was alleged to have had a lover , sister, and mother named Mary, which is from 'mari' (marry). Moses is said to marry Mari and Abraham was said to marry his sister just as the Buddhists tell of the exiled Sakyan princes marrying their sisters (cousins).
Herodotus mentions that Cambyses (Kamboja/Cambodia) had a problem figuring out how to make a marriage with his sister legal under Persian law and also relates why Cambyses killed his brother Smerdis. The reader is reminded that the Ptolemies also married their sisters and that the most clever excuse for this supremacist act is given in the Buddhist account of the Sakya princes being expelled essentially due to a Queen’s jealously over the king’s rightful heir, a storyline which, although in its basic form represents historical happenings in any family, in this form is seen most strongly in Far Eastern traditions. It is added here that the Japanese Okikurumi is also said to marry his sister Turesh.
"The critics have now declared that Herodotus has attached to the marriage of Agariste an incident derived from the Jataka of the Dancing Peacock already noticed (p. 106) Mr Arnold C. Taylor pointed out the paralelism between the story of the Dancing Peacock and the marriage of Agariste to Dr. R. W. Macan, Master of University College, Oxford, and the latter has endeavoured to show that, while the historical character of Agariste and her marriage with Megacles the Alcmaeonid is undoubted, the Greeks had attached to it an incident derived from the Indian tale. This Dr. follows Dr. Macan, but goes further and declares dogmatically that this passage of Herodotus (in which Pheidon of Argos is also mentioned) is "valueless” as regards his date. The story of Agariste's suitors only a Greek version of the Indian story of the shameless dancing peacock, and the personages are introduced regardless of chronology."-The Early Age of Greece, p. 113
A.M. Hocart, in his Buddha and Devadatta, states;
“Anyone who has the slightest acquaintance with kinship systems will immediately diagnose the case. It is the cross-cousin system, under which a man's children are expected to marry his sister's children, but not his brother's children. In technical language a man marries his cross-cousin, a term invented to express the fact that they are cousins through parents of opposite sexes. Such a form of marriage results in a system of reckoning kin, in which the maternal uncle is the same as the father-in-law, the paternal aunt as the mother-in- law, and so forth, as anyone can work out for himself on the above pedigree. This mode of reckoning kin is found in its typical form among the Tamils, the Todas, and other peoples of South India, among the Sinhalese, ancient and modern, the Torres Straits Islanders, the New Hebrideans, and in Fiji. With a trifling modification it occurs among the Seneca-Iroquois of North America species of the same genus, or roses between this and other species, are found broadcast from South Africa to America across the Pacific. I assume straightaway that all these systems have a common origin. If we maintain that they have arisen independently, then good-bye to all history of civilization. We might just as well be consistent and say that the resemblances between Latin and Sanskrit, or Mala- gasy and Hawaiian are accidental. If all these systems have a common origin,we are justified in drawing inferences from one to another, provided we observe the laws of evidence. Just as we compare the Latin pater, with the Sanskrit pitar, the Gothic fadar, and, so hark back to an original pater, so we are justified in placing the Sakya custom besides the Sinhalese, the Fijian, and the New Hebridean, and thus restore the original practice from which all these varieties are derived.”
“The antagonism of the Buddha and Devadatta is that of Good and Evil, which appear again in the persons of Osiris and Seth, Ahura Mazda and Angro-Minyus, Christ and Satan, the Devas and Asuras. If it is based on the rivalry of two intermarrying groups, may not those other antagonisms go back to the same source. In Fiji we have seen that the gods of intermarrying tribes over-reach one another just as their descendants do. May not the same have happened in other parts of the world, and the rivalry of the tribesmen be shared by their gods? I must insist that this institution is essentially religious: in Fiji the relation of tauvu is defined as "having gods in common;"and a man who resents the seizing of property by his cross-cousins is made ill by the spirits. In South Africa the pelting of the uterine nephew is part of a religious ceremonial. The story of the malice of Devadatta has only been preserved by the Buddhist religion. It is not therefore surprising that a feud, which is essentislly religious, should have been preserved in the annals of religion; nor that, once the custom had died out, the tradition should have been misunderstood, and an animus crept in which was not there before. Scholars may fail to see how a theory of good and evil can have arisen out of a mere system of intermarriage; but it is not a mere system of intermarriage; it is an elaborate theology of which the intermarriage of two tribes orfamilies is only one consequence. That theology is only beginning to unfold itself. As the picture becomes clearer and more detailed we shall cease to find it difficult to believe that the powers of good and evil go back to the ceremonial antagonism of intermarrying groups.”
Edward Pococke believed that the Tower of Babel (Gen. 11:2; “As men moved eastward they found a plain in Shinar and dwelt there”), which was built on a large plain, was a reference to the ancient geographic location in India known as Mawla, which was previously known as “Bopal”, as a district of Avanti (Sans. AvantiBhupala, the “Bills” of classical writers. I believe that they are currently called “Oujain”). The current name is probably due to the Malavas, or Mallas who moved there from West India. They are mentioned in the Mahaparinnibana sutta as being the group of people who held Buddha’s remains before Ajatasatru, who, like Vidudabha, became a Kosali king (‘kozya’) and held other western lands, possibly a branch of Turanians (Vajjis, or Bajjins), and the other clans claimed their portion, and the“Iranian” influences on the Kosalyins are also well known to doctors of Iranian studies (although the group of "Iranians", or, "Aryans", appear on the historical record just before the ALexandrian Christian Arius, they had long been a group of "Persian" Buddhists who also attempted to infiltrate the Medes . The Kambojas (Cambyses) also established themselves in this area and around the same general area the Yadu, or, Haihayas, are said to have overtaken power from the Nagas. As the Tower of Babel fable tells of men trying to built a tower reaching to the heavens, and such a reference may be built on the Persian attempt of world control (presumably via. synchronism) it should also be noted that when Buddha argued once against believing in a personal creator God he gives the illustration of men building a huge staircase that they say will reach to Brahma’s world. He then asks if the men building such a staircase, having never seen (or directly experienced) the world of Brahma, are wise or foolish. It should also be noted that in the Jatakas, which mostly only speak of rudimentary architecture, towers that reached high into the sky are described and the Lotus sutra tower will later be compared to similar described majestic and mythic towers appearing in Western literature. It is believed that the Kham people of Tibet built “Himalayan Towers” as a symbol of power. Leaving to the side any relation this has too many of the worlds ancients building large phallics, the same types of towers are said to exist in Ireland and in parts of Northern India and Central Asia.
Like many others, Ehrman errs greatly in limiting his sources to what he calls "western books"; as if there was a real East/West divide and I would like to ask him how he values the Babylonian sources which was known to the Scythians, Indians and later the Chinese among many other Easterners? The rise of this so called East/West divide starts when the Christian elites recognized a growth of "Oriental" systems flooding Europe even before the hordes of Central Asians pushed into Europe. It is also around this time that early Christian church fathers had the opportunity to compare Jesus to other savior figures, such as Terebinthus, "the NEW Buddas", which implies that they knew of an older Buddas, who was obviously Buddha.
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