500 years between buddha's death and first written biography of his life

Buddhism is a philosophy that was mysticised and turned into a religion. The same applies to Christianity to a degree, but Christianity was from the start both religion and philosophy.

What does that even mean?

Because Buddhism has some actual philosophical rigor behind it rather than "believe in me because my dad will beat you up in the afterlife if you don't."

Use this one instead

>Christianity doesn't philosophy

Even though your post is technically correct in nailing the substance of what Christianity is; I don't like the way you said it, and will now accuse you of ignorance.

>You just "don't get it", bro.

>literally just cites wikipedia
might as well not cite anything, you'll look like less of a fucking loser

It has philosophy in it, but for the most part the crux of its arguments is "God said so."

Proverbs has some wisdom in it, but a lot of its wisdom is "be afraid of God." Ecclesiastes actually stands out as a philosophical piece, but it's one of the shorter books of the Bible.

What part are you asking for clarification of? As best as we can understand from a modern perspective, Buddhism at its inception was not a philosophy that concerned itself with mysticism or religion beyond a person's potential relationship with such things, though it certainly had a metaphysical component. As Buddhism spread and mutated, Buddhism became integrated with local polytheistic beliefs and other mystical features, forming many sects and deviations.

Christianity, on the other hand, was always a religious movement, with Jesus a deviant from conventional Jewish theology and religious practice from the very start. Philosophy later sprang from Christianity, but Christianity itself was only ever philosophy in the most basic and practical sense of the term, as all religions essentially are.

I'm not really sure what the point of this dickwaving is anyway. For none of the other texts does the accuracy to the original copy matter.

The question is not really whether Jesus existed or not. We have external sources confirming that. The questions are rather insofar people conceived him as the Messiah and whether there was just one person like him or if the literal Jesus is a merging of several persons.

Personally, as a non-christian, I think its obvious that the Jesus in the scripture was modeled to appease a Greek speaking educated Jewish audience (icucourses.com/pages/037-01-christ-prefigured-in-the-old-testament). I mean if this is NOT the case then Plato foresaw the coming of Christ and I find that very, very hard to believe.

This is plain wrong tho. I mean reading the Sermon of the Mount and not seeing the philosophy in it is sort of weird. And I am not even a Christian.

>Christianity, on the other hand, was always a religious movement, with Jesus a deviant from conventional Jewish theology and religious practice from the very start.
Wrong. At least partly. He keeps confirming the teachings of the old testaments over and over and tells the Jews that they disobeyed Got. I many aspects Jesus was a reactionary or anti-Greek purist in the vein of the zealots.
Also you can't talk about "Christianity" before the death of Jesus. There was no such thing. The teaching of Jesus were, for a long time, a strictly Jewish debate. It takes some decades until "Christians" are conceived as a new religion (Flavius Josephus).

"Surviving" copy mostly means that what survived was the stuff medieval monks copied. It's hardly a surprise they read and copied the NT more than any other text. It says little about the reliability.

Of course there was no Christianity before the death of Jesus, but referring to the religious movement Jesus led in other terms is oblique and awkward. And you're correct about the nature of his teachings during his life; I should've said contemporary instead of conventional.

But the actual argument here is about the differences between Buddhism and Christianity, and that one started as a nonreligious philosophy, while the other was a religious movement that eventually morphed into its own religion.

Well for one thing, Buddha's existence to Buddhism is way less important than Jesus's existence to Christianity. Buddha could be anyone, the important part is the life philosophy, enlightenment, etc. Whereas Jesus is literally the savior of the human race and a manifestation of the creator of the universe.

The other part is that Buddhist-dominated regions simply care less about hard evidence than Christian-dominated regions do, and have weaker scrutiny.

Probably because Buddhists don't act like half the autistic faggots christcucks do

I read Richard Carrier's book on the historicity of Jesus, and it is quite a bit more suspect than what most people assume. As for why the historicity of Jesus is questioned so fervently, it is a Western World problem. Further in Carrier's book he discusses how it is irrelevant whether or not Jesus existed because the agreed upon texts that aren't forgeries, aren't forgeries.

>What I find weird is that some secular retards don't doubt the existence of anyone but Jesus.

Well, "the secular retards" are usually concentrated in the West, and it shouldn't surprise you that children always rebel against their parents.

Nothing would change if it turned out there wasn't really an Indian man from around 400 BC who preached the Eight Fold Path and supposedly attained enlightenment. In fact a few Buddhists would welcome the fact that the historical Buddha never existed.
Christianity on the other hand is based almost entirely around the existence and sacrifice of a Jewish man from 1st century Roman Judea.

Why should Jews like Jesus? Do Christians like Muhammad?

Yeah, but my point was that both movements are so damn murky that it is very hard to judge on their characters.

To be fair Jesus didn't raise an army and go about killing everyone that didn't agree with him while Muhammad was a literal Warlord that did just that.

>To be fair Jesus didn't raise an army and go about killing everyone that didn't agree with him
His followers did though

But he didn't and he is who the question was about.

this user is correct

Technically the question is about his instrument of execution.

To be fair, that just proves Jesus was a heretic, because YHWH is a war god, and previous prophets have been literal warlords. Muhammad being a warlord is not at all unusual in the context of Abrahamic prophets.

Christianity is a cult of personality surrounding Jesus. It needs some fairy tale boogeyman performing miracles or telling everyone to do what he says or his skydaddy is going to send you to hell.

Buddhism is a philosophical religion whose founder's existence is irrelevant to its teachings. It relies instead on self evident truths, personal experience, and logic to reinforce its message.

The fact that Christianity was first conceived as a power-structure, while Buddhism was a philosophy should tell you everything you need to know about which one is a scam and which one is genuine.

It's really ironic to read someone analyze Christianity like a Marxist, but refuse to do so for another religion.

It's pretty clear what kind of motive you have that's for sure.

The hagiographies of the Buddha are irrelevant to his historical existence. There is simply no way that a library's worth of material about the teachings of a man named Guatama was memorized and orally transmitted for ~200 years without there being a single, actually existing historical personality at the center of it. That just doesn't happen. It's one thing to propagate a text through writing, and another to get thousands of monks to chant sermons in unison for generations.

It's not mere accident that the scriptures and teachings of the other Śrāvakas are lost to history while the Buddhists succeeded in preserving their own. It required a massive undertaking that was only possible because the Buddha's followers had the example of Vedic memorization to follow and many bhikkus were born and educated as Brahmins themselves.

In fact, it's not hard to see that the Mahāyana could only have began through writing, because the nature of oral transmission makes textual interpolation by a single monk almost impossible. That is why the Mahāyana sutras are in ornate Sanksrit and often make explicit reference to their status as written texts. The Nikāyas/Āgamas don't, because writing didn't exist at the time that they were standardized and composed.

>Christianity like a Marxist

Just compare the Noble Eightfold Path with the Ten Commandments.

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noble_Eightfold_Path#The_Eightfold_Path

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_Commandments#Terminology

One is based on self-evident truths, the other says that the sabbath is holy, because reasons. And if you don't agree, skydaddy is going to send you to hell.

Christianity is a joke, it lacks any sort of logical or philosophical meaning. Jesus can be described as a staunch humanist, promoting socially-liberal ideas before they were defined as such. Funny, because most ardent Christians today are socially backward.

You're cherrypicking.

What about Karma? How the fuck does that have "logical or philosophical meaning"?

Buddhism has plenty of metaphysical things that requires faith. The fact that it seems more logical and philosophical to you is simply because you're biased.

>beg to feed, only possessing what is essential to sustain life
>no sexual acts
>giving up home and adopting the life of a religious mendicant
In what way are these self evident truths you pathetic Buddhaboo?

Your reading of the NT is sloppy, underdeveloped, and lazy. It's also far from self-evident that the nature of existence is dukkha and not sukha. This the Buddha assumed as axiomatic. If we deny this premise there is no reason to listen to anything he taught.

The Buddha's moral metaphysics is inseparable from the doctrine of rebirth. Without rebirth there is no "fruit (phala) or result of good and bad action (karma)," and there is no dukkha to free sentient beings from. You can't mock "skydaddies" and assume the literal
reality of metempsychosis in the same paragraph. You're either an empiricist or you're not.

Humanity always wanted deep understanding of the universe.

People tend to take it so far as to thinking they know the ultimate truth.

We don't know the ultimate truth.

Buddhism and Christianity are tools of the mind and can be used for whatever purpose, but they are both guilty of presenting themselves as the ultimate truth.

We don't know the ultimate truth. However we have a lot of machinery in our brain that handles this by religious/mystic/etc processes. Look up the Johns Hopkins psilocybine experiment.

As a teacher of religion, this kind of buddhism is actually academically referred to as Google Buddhism, where westerners pick and choose what they can easily grasp of buddhist teachings and then claim that their understanding is all that buddhism is, thus ignoring all metaphysics, all demons and good spirits, basically everything that doesn't fit their hollywood notion of "enlightened easterner."

It's hard not to notice the huge difference between the most ancient strata of the Indian canons (the Samyutta Nikāya/Samyukta Āgama, portions of the Sutta Nipata) and the Mahāyana sutras written 500-1000 years after the Buddha's death. One gives the impression of a unique and powerful thinker and the other does not. I can hardly call myself a Buddhist because I don't believe the things he claimed were mandatory articles of faith, but I greatly appreciate how he was able to merge metaphysics with axiology with a grace that few thinkers in world history have achieved, and articulated a persuasive third alternative between moral legalism and antinomianism, or dogmatism and nihilism.

> in actuall Budhist lands
because its the traditional Religion and people tend to don't fuss about such 'details'
> in the West
mostly because Left wing Teenagers who feel the spiritual void Left by the Regression of Christianity seek for a religion to attend, al religion is fine except Chrisitanity because that would make them conservative. they have two main options then: Go for Islam, wich actually 'few' people do because that requires them to actually do something (Stop doing drugs for example). And then some Exotic religion like budhism, than they can feel smug about themeselfs and can claim that they are spiritual and interesting while in fact they do nothing than post Buddha Quotes on Facebook and """Meditating"""" (doing drugs and claiming you are enlightend)

that's actually smart since people in the west know a lot less or almost nothing beyond the name buddha but are much more likely to know more about christianity, so they speak about things they know. Kind of obvious desu.

people think the buddha existed because they cannot imagine so many suttras created at once and without a buddha

also, the existence of a buddha does not matter and there are several buddhas in any buddhism

>or fucking Homer existed
Homer being almost surely a fictional character is taught in school, bringing him up is not a smart choice debate-wise.

>Left
Regular ass citizens
>Right
Terrorist group.

This.

It's not surprising that Christians would be so interested in preserving the copies of original texts, the whole religion depends on it.

Jesus asking you to worship him as your only god is much more demanding than Thucydides telling you about the Peloponnesian war. Therefore having the original biography of Jesus in tact is that much more important.

Jesus lived a life that wouldn't have generated records. He wasn't an important, powerful person. He was a carpenter for most of his life and a teacher for the three years covered in the New Testament. He was a humble man of humble origin.

>teacher of religion
>obvious anti-Christian bias
>possibly the poster claiming Jesus would be considered a "humanist liberal" by today's standards

Gosh if this is true your students are in trouble. I understand everyone has their opinions and biases but your so over the top it's ridiculous. Does such a term exist as "Google Christian?" because it easily would apply to you.

>humble man
>No one can have access to Yahweh except through me

lol dude you need to get out more often

Oral tradition

Barlaam and Josaphat

Buddhism is taken seriously even by Christians.

K E K

Westerners are too lenient on trusting the traditional dating of Oriental work, probably to give them validation just so the Greeks don't look as dominant in their innovation of the humanities and lead people into beliefs of any racial supremacy of them (which I'm not saying they are racially superior, but over the past half-century Westerners have been made it important to highlight any period where minorities shined in some contribution of something in a specific time and place where Westerners clearly dominated). Just look up descriptions of the Vedas and Chinese literature dating and how they credit them:
>Vedas are given credit as being composed 2000-1000 years ago despite being hella long and Sanskrit not being developed by c.150 and composed and canonized in writing centuries later
>Chinese literature is given credit as being composed in the 1000-600 era, despite not getting tied to realistic writers and historians until 400 bc and writings becoming predominant in collection and documented by 200-100 bc figures.
Imagine if we applied the same standards to them as we did with Homer and other Greek writers with dating.
>"Oh, Homer can't be from the bronze age as it's unlikely oral composition could've been passed down that far. Therefor he must be in 700 B.C. because we believe the Phoenician alphabet was crafted in 1000-900 b.c. and therefor the Iliad and Odyssey must've been crafted in 700 b.c. because the first example of Greek alphabet writing is 750-700 bc and so therefor Homer/his works must've been around that period even though we state that it's unlikely that he written them down or people were literate enough to read texts of his at that time" --basically the whole gist of their excuse of his dating
>"same with Hesiod and the Homeric Hymns, and Orpheus (who must've been entirely fictional because some later writers included him in myths!)
If we applied the same standards to them, they (especially the Homeric Hymns) could be stretched to the bronze age

>nobody has a problem with the existence of Buddha, Muhammad, Socrates or Sulla.

Those four were famous in their own lives. There are no contemporary sources about Jesus.

>Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is a true story because there are many copies of it

Prove that neither Socrates nor Buddha were invented by their supposed students

One of the earliest existence of Buddha is made through Ashoka's pillars. Buddha's teachings are all across those pillars.

Buddha was a poorfag (Gautama before the life of renunciation was a richfag). Most followers of Buddha pre-Ashoka were literal beggars with no ownership of land/food/house/etc. They had given up all things. Only through oral tradition did it survive up until the Ashoka's reign, where the Buddhist dharma was spread all across India/Greek Empire/China/etc.

Roughly 200-300 years after Buddhas death is where the real spread of Buddhism began. However during Alexander's war with NW India, Buddhist/Jain/similar type of Sramana philosophy spread to Greek. ~50 year difference between Alexander/Ashoka reign.

Also this

>press.nationalgeographic.com/2013/11/25/birth_of_buddha/

They actually re-discovered the ancient tree where Buddha was birthed to his mother. Re-discovered because it was already known even during the 1st century AD to the Chinese pilgrams. Now they've dated the ancient tree to 6th century BCE.

>find a structure at a tree people 7 centuries removed claim was where he was born
>THAT'S WHERE HE WAS BORN
Faulty logic

Lumbini(the place of shrine) also has one of Ashoka's iron pillar marking the birth place of Buddha, in writing.

And its right next to the shrine/temple too, hope that clarifies it.

The story of birth of buddha was known during Ashoka's reign and the pillar was erected right next to the site of the tree/shrine/temple.

2 Corinthians 8:7-9

The actual physical/historical existence of the Buddha is not particularly important to the tenets of Buddhism, especially since, - in that belief-system - salvation is a state that the individual must reach completely on his own, whereas the entirety of the Christian faith all depends on the idea of Jesus Christ - as described recorded in the NT - existing.

Christianity falls apart otherwise.

> whereas the entirety of the Christian faith all depends on the idea of Jesus Christ - as described recorded in the NT - existing.

>Christianity falls apart otherwise.

You could make a hermetic argument Christianity is about giving birth to the Christ within you and becoming one with God/transcending the world.

>"hermetic argument"

In other words, convoluted apologetics.

for socrates at least we have the writings of xenophon who was not his student, and numerous playwrights make fun of him in reference (most notably aristophanes)

not sure about buddha though

>within you
You'd be called a heretic. That's the gnostic argument isn't it?

>what is the alchemical tradition

web.archive.org/web/20120128200109/http://blogs.dickinson.edu/buddhistethics/files/2010/05/prebish-article.pdf

During the last half-century, scholarly Buddhological inquiry has produced
a series of utterly stunning publications on the period immediately
following the Buddha’s death, focusing especially on the early councils.
Through the work of Paul Demiéville, Marcel Hofinger, Erich Frauwallner,
Étienne Lamotte, André Bareau, and myself the once mysterious history of
the early Buddhist councils became clearer. Bareau’s Les premiers conciles
bouddhiques and my own “A Review of Scholarship on the Buddhist
Councils,” carefully detail all the specific events of the first, second, and
third councils, as well as the non-canonical council which occurred between
the second and third council, and which was the occasion for the beginning
of Buddhist sectarianism. Further work by Janice Nattier and me refined
Bareau’s presumptions in Les sects bouddhiques du petit véhicule, and offered
what has now become the definitive statement of the beginnings of
Buddhist sectarianism, arguing that the initial sanghabheda focused solely on
matters of Vinaya, but rather than representing disciplinary laxity on the
part of the future Mahāsāṃghikas, resulted from attempted Vinaya
expansion on the part of the future Sthaviras (“Mahāsāṃghika” 237-272).2
In 1988, however, all the hard sought certainty that the above research
seemingly promised disappeared in the aftermath of a major Buddhist symposium
convened by Heinz Bechert at the University of Göttingen. Bechert
had become convinced that the widely accepted dating of the historical
Buddha, placing his life between 563 and 483 B.C.E., was incorrect. His symposium
brought together scholars from throughout the world to examine
this issue from every position, discipline, and language imaginable.

>You'd be called a heretic. That's the gnostic argument isn't it?

No, it has nothing to with Gnosticism doctrinally except a belief in the gnosis (I'd Imagine).

It's more a way of looking at the world. Sort of like perennial traditionalism.

If you read the works of saints and theologians you'll find Christianity has always had varying flavors of mysticism, alchemy and hermeticism. We can admit Christianity has been watered down to most people in the past few decades or centuries (depending on how you view it) but it isn't convulted so much as it's obscure to most people.

Anthropologists,sociologists, art historians, philosophers, and historians compared
their perspectives. Epigraphical evidence was examined. Although
the symposium participants offered dates for the Buddha’s death ranging
from 483 B.C.E. down to 368 B.C.E., most participants suggested that the
Buddha died within approximately a few decades on either side of 400 B.C.E.
Eventually three volumes entitled Die Datierung des Historischen Buddha were
produced, diligently edited by Bechert.
On the surface, this new dating for the Buddha’s death doesn’t seem terribly
earthshaking, either for Indian Buddhist history or for ancillary studies
such as a consideration of Upāli and his lineage of Vinayadharas. Yet it
is. Because of this new date for the Buddha’s demise, virtually everything
we know about the earliest Indian Buddhism, and especially its sectarian
movement, is once again called into question. Dates for the first, second,
and third canonical councils—once thought to be certain—must now be
reexamined. Kings who presided at these events must be reconsidered. Most
importantly, the role of the great Indian King Aśoka, from whose reign
much of the previous dating begins, needs to be placed under the scrutiny
of the historical microscope again.

>get thousands of monks to chant sermons in unison for generations.
If you think this says anything about someone's historicity or that it somehow counts as evidence you don't belong here.

During my research on this topic, I have been in contact with many of
the scholars who attended the Göttingen symposium, as well as other leading
scholars of early Indian Buddhism. What has slowly emerged from my
investigation is an altogether new and revolutionary picture of early Indian
Buddhist history. As my work has proceeded, events from previous research
that had hitherto seemed contrary or problematic now appear to be part of
a logical historical progression that explains the early Indian Buddhist sectarian
movement, and even Upāli’s role in it, in a far more plausible way.
This paper explores the above issue in detail, citing all the pertinent,
applicable sources, and additionally, investigates the degree to which the
traditional Anglo-German and Franco-Belgian schools of Buddhist Studies
disagree with each other based on the sources utilized as primary by each
group.

>That's the gnostic argument isn't it?
The Gospel of Thomas is in no way, shape, or form, "Gnostic".

Its "self evident" because it distance yourself from being human.
And thats key to ascending.

Perhaps his approach is that of a secular buddhist

>Its "self evident" because it distance yourself from being human.
Buddha would have never attained without a good beer every now and then and the love of his wife.
>Ascend
Tell me, to where does a Bodhisattva go, and from whence does he descend?

because it's more about the actual practice rather than the belief

>le pr*testant fallacy

Real Christianity is about practice just as much as it's about belief, user.

Why should distancing myself from humanity be self evident, as well as a good thing?

>as well as a good thing
It's not, that's why Shakyamuni posited the Middle Way in opposition to the severe austerities.

>>Vedas are given credit as being composed 2000-1000 years ago despite being hella long and Sanskrit not being developed by c.150 and composed and canonized in writing centuries later
Legitimately retarded.

For most historical figures, it's what they said that was important, not what they did. Anyone could have written the Socratic Dialogues, it's not important that there was an actual person named Socrates who wrote them; what's important is what was in it. What Jesus said is secondary to who he was. If he wasn't real, then the words attributed to him were nothing more than another street preachers sermon. It's his divinity that is the central thesis to the Christian doctrine. Buddhism, for the most part, is not a cult based on worshiping Buddha. Christianity is 100% a cult based on worshiping Jesus. This is why he's scrutinized more heavily than most historical figures.

he thinks vedic sanskrit is the same as the codified sanskrit of later times.

Most likely because Buddhism can survive without Buddha, Christianity wouldn't survive without Jesus.

This is why its more edgy to oppose the existence of Jesus than it is to oppose the existence of Buddha, the former would destroy the religion and the latter would just be "meh".

He also thinks inscriptional Prakrit (which can be irrefutably dated to the 3rd century BCE) appeared out of thin air supposedly 400 years before Sanskrit.

>Christianity is 100% a cult based on worshiping Jesus.

This isn't true, see While most Christians don't subscribe to that viewpoint, at least solely, it doesn't mean that the viewpoint doesn't exists.

^This is also a relatively good point.
If the practices routinely produce Liberation, Attainment, etc., then a valid originator of the teachings is rendered somewhat less significant.

It's a major shame that Buddhist text criticism isn't a more popular topic.

So if I don't believe god exist or god saved the world, that's fine?

An argument could be made that that's not "true" Christianity. Scotsman, I know. I may have exaggerated a bit. It is the internet, after all.

"Belief" insomuch as "I accept the historicity of X, Y, or Z" is a relatively recent addition to religious discourse. For the vast majority of the past, and in pre-complex cultures, the spirits, gods, or saviors, exist whether or not you have a relationship with them.

If Hermetic Christianity was good enough for Frederick V the Elector Palatine (noted Calvinist), it's good enough for me.

I think Buddhist textual criticism (academically speaking) is stuck in a weird barrier.

First its not considered "true" philosophy by most western philosophers. This limits the scope entirely. Second even if you dive into the Buddhist philosophy, its very dense because there's literally thousands of years of active philosophical debates/exchanges that have polished the Buddhist core philosophy quite a bit that it makes it hard to take a crack at it without the obvious criticism already being covered/addressed by buddhist themselves.

Still though, comparative philosophy is laying out nice groundwork for the future academics to disect/criticise buddhism.