Was Jesus Influenced by Eastern Religions?

The young man sitting across from me in my office was wearing a necklace with a psychedelic mushroom pendant, a tie dye shirt, and Vans shoes but on his left foot he had a white shoe and on his right was a black shoe- to signify the yin and yang. He had asked me to sit down to discuss the teachings of Christ as he was on a spiritual journey of sorts and had found that Jesus might be a suitable guru to receive wisdom from. I love conversations like this and I feel like I am uniquely suited to have them, but often they can be exhausting for me because of questions like this one that seem to find their root in the baseless claims that Jesus was ultimately a Buddhist, Hindu, or Daoist who repackaged these teachings in a 1st century Jewish style. That conversation ended after walking that young man through what the Bible actually instructs regarding Jesus, yet I seem to hear questions like his routinely echoing through social media. Someone will message me to tell me of a coworker or fellow student who is boldly making these claims and asserting that they are factual and reliable.

If these claims were true, and by that I mean verifiable or trustworthy, then they would of course be Earth shattering for the 2 billion Christians who believe their faith stems from a Jewish carpenter who was actually the messiah, God in the flesh. To believe that Jesus sat at the feet of Buddhist monks in India, or that he was swayed by Buddhism having made its way to Israel, is to assert that Jesus is not who we think he is and his message is not the unique, life saving good news we have believed it to be but instead is a repurposed dharma or dao. Yet, are these claims reliable? Is it true that Jesus is not as unique as we have been told he is?

Jesus & the “Eastern” Religions

First, a disclaimer of sorts- by all accounts, Jesus was in fact “Eastern”. The divide between “East” and “West” is often used too simplistically and Abrahamic faiths have often got included in the divide as “western” yet they find their origins in a world completely foreign to that of the 21st century westerner. 1st century Israel was certainly a place where the worldview more likely resembled that which we would call “Eastern” today. Yet when we use “eastern” as an adjective, we are most often referring to religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese religions, and their various offshoots and schools of thought. These religions and worldviews run counter to much of the value systems found within the Abrahamic faiths, which is why the claim that Jesus was influenced by them requires analysis. 

The Way & The Dao

The idea that Jesus was influenced by, or a proponent of, Chinese Daoism can be cast aside quite quickly. Not only is there no evidence of Daoism having been conflated with the message of Jesus, the two sets of ideas run counter to one another in almost every way. What has likely caused any suggestion of the two having been tied to one another is the semantics found within each and similar use of words and ideas. “Dao” (also “Tao”) means “way” and the goal of the teachings found in the Dao is to live in harmony and balance with the natural world. The spiritual life force “qi” animates and inhabits all things to give it “breath” or life. While this might seem similar at first glance to the Christian teaching on the Holy Spirit, we see within Daoism no aspects of personality within the qi, as opposed to the deeply personal and ultimately divine Holy Spirit found in the New Testament. The fact that the concept of “the way” is such a large part of Christian teaching, at one point even being the means in which early Christians identified themselves, has likely brought about unnecessary and baseless conclusions that these two world views are more similar than they actually are.

Jesus & The Gurus of South Asia

Most commonly, claims like these are made in regards to the religions of South Asia having played a role in shaping the early Christian message, even going so far as to say that Christ himself spent his adolescence under the tutelage of those teachers in South Asia who could instruct him in the ways of Hinduism and Buddhism. In an article from the Society for Buddhist-Christian Studies, James M. Hanson made the argument that not only was Jesus certainly influenced by Buddhism, but that, “...there is convincing evidence that he was also a Buddhist.”¹ Discussing the similarities between Jesus’ teaching and those attributed to the Buddha, Hanson said they, “...are so striking that, even if no historical evidence existed, we can suspect that Jesus studied Buddhist teachings and that the prophecy and legend of Jesus was derived from Buddhist stories.” ² Many of the proponents of these arguments call into question Jesus’ “lost years” between his birth and public ministry around 30 years old. In “The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ”, a Russian journalist Nicolas Notovitch claimed to have visited a monastery in Kashmir, India where he found texts that suggest Jesus traveled there around the age of 14 and returned to Israel in his late 20’s. ³ These claims, the existence of these texts, and Notovitch’s entire visit have been shown to be a hoax. ⁴ Despite the lack of historicity behind these claims, their legend has lived on as popular myth. In fact, some of the best arguments for Jesus’ travel outside of Israel are simply just arguments from silence that depend on the Bible's absence of details on these years. The arguments being derived from this silence are simply conjecture though. In his article, Hanson seems to argue that Jesus’ “lost years” must have involved some instruction in outside faith because of the wisdom Jesus demonstrated later in his life. Hanson refuses to believe that a carpenter with little spiritual education could be the wise messiah we meet in Jesus. “Being one of the greatest moral prophets to ever bless humankind, he would not have spent his formative years contented to be a carpenter in his boyhood community, which would have nullified everything about his prophecy as the Messiah, his anointed birth, and his prodigious childhood.” ⁵ Never mind how offensive this might be to carpenters everywhere, Hanson’s premise is flawed from the beginning as he solely is dealing in logical fallacy. It also refuses to deal with the claim that the Bible is making from the beginning of the narrative of Jesus’ life which is that he is the son of God, and therefore would not need outside instruction. It is fair for Hanson and other Non-Christians to reject the divinity and messiahship of Christ, but to reject the Bible’s suggested answer to the source of Christ’s wisdom while also celebrating said wisdom is not only poor scholarship it is cognitively dissonant. Not only is any suggestion that Jesus traveled outside of Israel during his adolescent years not historically verifiable, upon even a basic analysis it becomes obvious it is out of pure speculation and logical fallacy that academics have arrived at these conclusions to begin with.

Similarities in the Sayings

What then do we do with the many supposed mirror image sayings of Jesus and the Buddha? In "Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings", the liberal New Testament scholar Marcus Borg attempted to demonstrate the supposed similarities between the sayings of Siddhartha Gautama (The Buddha) and Jesus. While some of these sayings certainly are similar, Borg and other scholars have sought to cast doubt on the notion that Jesus’ utterances could have come about without being directly influenced by Gautama’s teachings first. Some of the highlighted parallel sayings include:

• Buddha: "The avaricious do not go to heaven, the foolish to not extol charity. The wise one, however, rejoicing in charity, becomes thereby happy in the beyond." (Dhammapada 13.11)
• Jesus: "If you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven." (Matthew 19.21)

• Buddha: "Let us live most happily, possessing nothing; let us feed on joy, like radiant gods." (Dhammapada 15.4)
• Jesus: "Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God." (Luke 6.20)

• Buddha: "During the six years that the Bodhisattva practiced austerities, the demon followed behind him step by step, seeking an opportunity to harm him. But he found no opportunity whatsoever and went away discouraged and discontent." (Lalitavistara Sutra 18)
• Jesus: "When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time." (Luke 4.13) ⁶

In evaluating these seemingly parallel sayings, there are quite a few conclusions one could come to other than a supposed Buddhist influence. The first, and possibly most important one that many proponents seemingly overlook, is that many of the most referenced parallel sayings come from texts within the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism that likely came after the life of Christ. Mahayana Buddhism developed much later than the life of the Buddha, and in most ways had departed hugely from the original teachings of Siddhartha Gautama. Not only could these “sayings” loosely attributed to Buddha instead be influenced by Christ, it is incoherent to claim similarities between Gautama and Jesus from within a tradition that has hugely moved away from the most attested to teachings of Gautama. From the Pali Canon, the earliest Buddhist texts and the ones most often used within the Theravada Buddhist tradition which has remained most aligned with the teachings of Gautama, we see that many of the parallel sayings are not as similar as some would like to suggest they are. When closely compared, while they sound similar, often they are either saying very generalized things that are found in most spiritual maxims, or are ultimately saying different things altogether. The reference from Dhammapada 15.4, “...like radiant gods,” is quite different from Christ’s charge that the poor would one day possess, “...the Kingdom of God.” Here we find possibly the largest issue with any claim of Buddhist, Hindu, or Chinese influence on Jesus: Christ ultimately suggested a worldview that runs completely counter to much of what is found within these Eastern religions.

Why is it that Jesus, despite his alleged schooling in Buddhist and Vedic literature, made no suggestion that remotely resembles samsara (reincarnation) or anatman (no-self)? Why is it that at the root of Christ's instructions on morality and justice is there no nod towards karma? It is because ultimately his wisdom was not found rooted in the various schools of thought that suggest those ideas and instead was an entirely new way to interpret reality that was, as the church has historically taught, rooted in a Jewish worldview. It is irresponsible for those making these suggestions to ignore this huge overarching issue, an abuse of the study of religion that has led to the spiritual confusion that led my young friend to have to ask me the question to begin with.

Spiritual Confusion

Rarely do I get upset or animated while in the midst of research, but I found myself not only shaking my head while researching this question but genuinely experiencing anger at the reckless “scholarship” that has led to this deep confusion. The sad reality is that most who hear and choose to agree with these arguments rooted in falsehoods and legends will never look into just how shallow those roots truly lie. In the face of an ancient faith that stands on its own merit, too many are buying into the schemes of the enemy to cast a confusing light on the truth. If someone chooses to disregard the teachings of Christ, let them do it on the merit of those teachings and claims and not by casting doubt in disingenuous ways.

The world we live in is one that is filled with a deep spiritual confusion, not simply disagreement. It is arguments like this that are hurtling us towards not being able to make sense of the spiritual climate we live in where in the name of pluralism and tolerance we simply decide that all religions must come from the same place and therefore have the same merit. The overwhelming problem is that when we make room for all truth to be combined into one truth, we end up with no truth at all. In this case, we end up with a Christ that is neither himself nor Gautama. For these two men agreed on very little, and unfortunately we are finding ourselves in a world that doesn’t know that.

^{1- "Was Jesus a Buddhist?" James M. Hanson, Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2005, Vol. 25, pp. 75-89.}

^{2- Ibid.}

^{3- "The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ" Nicolas Notovitch, Indo-American Book Company, 1907.}

^{4- "New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 1: Gospels and Related Writings" Wilhelm Schneemelcher & R. Mcl. Wilson, p. 84.}

^{5- "Was Jesus a Buddhist?" James M. Hanson, Buddhist-Christian Studies, 2005, Vol. 25, pp. 75-89.}

^{6- "Jesus and Buddha: The Parallel Sayings," Marcus Borg. As referenced here: https://today.oregonstate.edu/archives/1998/mar/new-book-looks-parallel-sayings-jesus-buddha}