Does this hypothesis hold any credibility?

According to this site: http://www.jesusisbuddha.com/ the First Four Gospels of the New Testament supposedly plagiarized the Buddhist Testament. I wouldn't be surprised if this turned out to be true, but I'm having a bit of difficulty understanding if this is a plausible hypothesis. Apparently the consonants and number of words along with certain teachings such as the trinity were pretty much plagiarized, but I'm not sure if I should ever consider this a reliable source.

I have no idea, I don't know much about the Bible at all, but I was immediately reminded of this



I wouldn't be surprised if they borrowed plenty of parts of the story from other testaments.

A lot of old religions drew ideas from one another, but by the looks of it the guy is going much further than that and suggesting the gospels are direct copies of older buddhist texts. Don't know enough to tell the difference between the cousin of Time Cube guy and a proper scholar on this topic, though.

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Originally Posted by Flixy

I have no idea, I don't know much about the Bible at all, but I was immediately reminded of this

I wouldn't be surprised if they borrowed plenty of parts of the story from other testaments.

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A vast majority of what is said there is simply false.

As for the OP, use your head. What do you think?

Reminded me of "The Man from Earth", an indie movie. It asserts something like this at one point.

This is not new speculation - it's been around since at least the 19th century. There's certainly some parallels, but it's an open question whether those parallels are strong enough to be considered plagiarism or just 'convergent texts' if you will. There is a LOT of speculation that Buddhist doctrine may have been involved in Jesus' dogma, but again it's largely a wild guess rather than a theory with a lot of evidence to back it up. It certainly seems possible - there were trade routes between current-day Israel and Asia that probably included an exchange of ideas, and there is plenty of speculation about encounters between Hellenism and Buddhism.

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Originally Posted by wiggin

This is not new speculation - it's been around since at least the 19th century. There's certainly some parallels, but it's an open question whether those parallels are strong enough to be considered plagiarism or just 'convergent texts' if you will. There is a LOT of speculation that Buddhist doctrine may have been involved in Jesus' dogma, but again it's largely a wild guess rather than a theory with a lot of evidence to back it up. It certainly seems possible - there were trade routes between current-day Israel and Asia that probably included an exchange of ideas, and there is plenty of speculation about encounters between Hellenism and Buddhism.

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Ok thank you, this helped to clear it up a little bit.

It's clearly stated in the gospel according to Biff aka Levi that Jesus was indeed inspired by Buddhism during his stay at a Buddhist monastery (this is also where he learned kung fu).

Btw, I can never remember... Is the current consensus that Jesus was a single real person?

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Originally Posted by Aimless

It's clearly stated in the gospel according to Biff aka Levi that Jesus was indeed inspired by Buddhism during his stay at a Buddhist monastery (this is also where he learned kung fu).

Btw, I can never remember... Is the current consensus that Jesus was a single real person?

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It depends on who you ask, but most who don't believe in the Bible do not believe he existed for numerous reasons. For example, there are absolutely no records of him (considering the Romans were extensive documenters) , his execution without trial would have been illegal under Roman and Jewish law, the writers weren't born until at least 30 years after his supposed death, the supposed writers would not have known Greek which the NT books are written in, as the NT continues we see more and more plagiarism, etc.

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Originally Posted by Knux897

It depends on who you ask, but most who don't believe in the Bible do not believe he existed for numerous reasons. For example, there are absolutely no records of him (considering the Romans were extensive documenters) , his execution without trial would have been illegal under Roman and Jewish law, the writers weren't born until at least 30 years after his supposed death, the supposed writers would not have known Greek which the NT books are written in, as the NT continues we see more and more plagiarism, etc.

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Don't suppose you have any credible sources for that, do ya?

I mean that site is just... well, more proof that someone out there will believe absolutely anything. As if politics didn't give us enough of that already.