For Nosborne

Ugh. My bad. This is what happens when one posts without remembering where one saw a given factoid. Normally when I wonder about some factoid or other I eventually find it (often much later) and find out I was not wrong. This, however, is one of those rare occasions upon which I must actually admit to being wrong. I cannot remember which source it was in which I had read something which had me believing that Hinduism was a distinctly Indian form of Buddhism. Having checked other sources, it seems that what happened was that what happened was that after Buddhism was exported to other parts of Asia, Indian Buddhism was absorbed into Hinduism. And, by the way Hinduism is not thousands of years older than Buddhism. More like about 500 years. Hinduism had no historical founder and their oldest texts date from ca. 1000 BC. The Buddha lived during the 500's BC.

Sorry.

 

And JUDAISM is much older (in some form or other) than either!

 

Hey Nosborne. Your theory about Jesus was great stuff. I really enjoyed reading it, though I don't know how much credence to give it. It's a stimulating conjecture, I guess. (The subject of the "historical Jesus" is the land of stimulating conjectures.)

Yeah, that's certainly true. It's fascinating. The social scientists would give anything to understand it. (They don't lack for their own stimulating conjectures, though.)

Personally, I think that it's probably going to be hard to generalize about the conditions of religious origin and growth, since each religion is kind of a distinct individual, with its own doctrines, social origins and historical circumstances. A lot of whether or not a particular new religious start-up spreads is probably fortuitous.

It's certainly a great religion in terms of its historical influence.

That kind of identification does hinder a religion's spread. Shinto is virtually restricted to the Japanese home islands. Even Japanese emigrants haven't usually taken it with them. (There's a Shinto temple in Honolulu though.) Like Judaism before the dispersion perhaps, Shinto is the religion of the Japanese community in its land. Not the personal religion of Japanese descended individuals in a different community.

Yeah, that's how I interpret Christianty's origins. It's a Jewish heresy that built on Judaism's impulse to spread and proselytize in context of messianic expectations that in the last days all of "the nations" would turn towards Jerusalem and come to worship the Jewish God.

Meanwhile the great majority of Jews that never recognized Jesus as Christ were being smashed (twice) by the Roman legions, driven from Jerusalem, forbidden to proselytize, and they responded to the disaster by forming their academies, turning inward on themselves in an attempt to preserve their traditions in those dark days. So they gradually composed the Talmud and spent their days studying their writings, trying to make sense of their communal suffering.

Islam is also something of a variant form of Judaism. It didn't arise among the ethnic Jews themselves like Christianity did, but Mohammed certainly seems to have drawn on Jewish legend more than on any other source. (And in terms of its legalism and its prophetic monotheism, it seems a lot more Jewish than Christianity.) Mohammed seems to have seen himself in the line of Jewish prophets, including Jesus in his view (the Christians had badly misunderstood him by confusing him with God), and his motive was to give the Arabs their own ethnic religion of the book just like the Jews had (except better). But after some extremely rapid early conquests following his death (probably first motivated as much by plunder as conversion), the original Muslims found themselves in control of a large subject population and gradually the faith turned away from being the tribal religion of the Arabs towards being a world religion with an intense impetus to proselytize (and bring the entire world under God's revealed law).

I think that in New Testament times you see the first signs of the two drifting apart. Paul found his converts among the "God-fearers", non-Jews who attended the diaspora synagogues, studied the scriptures, but hesitated to be circumcised. And Paul came under considerable heat from the Christians back in Jerusalem about his admitting them without requiring that they fully convert and that they obey all of the law. But there still seems to have been a confident Christian expectation that the Jews would soon come to their senses, accept Jesus, and the end-times would proceed apace.

By the second century that expectation of convincing the rest of Jews seems to have been abandoned and the Christians saw themselves as the new Jews of the new convenant who were destined to replace the old ones in God's plan. And as they turned to proselytizing pagans who had never had any connection to the synagogues, you see them starting to translate the message into a different and less Jewish idiom.

Eventually the Roman emperor adopted Christianity as the new state religion and put pressure on the church to settle its doctrinal divisions. And that led to a series of church councils presided over by theologians who thought in terms of categories derived from Greek philosophical thinking. So you have all the stuff about ousia and hypostases, which is distant indeed from the involuted Judaism of the roughly contemporary Talmud.

 

I think that it did.

Part of the problem is defining what a Buddhist is. As founded by the Buddha, it seems to have been a community of itinerant forest ascetics gathered into a monastic order in order to practice a particular spiritual discipline derived from the Buddha's teachings (the dhamma). There were probably lots of these groups, but early Buddhism was more radical than most in that it rejected the authority of the Vedas and the Brahmins. It cared nothing for caste and new members turned their backs on the traditional household rituals (to say nothing of their households themselves). The Jain religion is another similar heterodox forest-ascetic group that seems arisen about the same time and survived as a distinct religion (several million strong) in India to the present day.

The Buddhist monks would wander during the dry months, teaching anyone interested, and they would gather together during the monsoon ("the rains") to recite the oral discourse traditions that eventually were put to writing as the Pali canon and similar things. Rich laymen were attracted from the beginning and eventually their gifts allowed the rains retreats to become elaborate year-around monasteries. But through it all, Buddhism was a religion for spiritual athletes, you might say. It was centered around the separate and celibate monastic sangha.

About 200 years later one of the laymen attracted to Buddhism was the emperor Ashoka. He was inspired by the impressive Buddhist ethics and determned to promote Buddhism throughout his empire. But of necessity this was a very different Buddhism, a Buddhism of laymen, of householders taking ethical precepts and engaging more in good works and merit-making than in following the path of the vinaya and suttas in seeking to become an Arahant (one who becomes enlightened as the Buddha taught).

So Buddhism transformed from being a monastic order into being a mass religion. It had stupas and relics and pilgrimages. But I'm sure that on the village level it never really replaced the older traditions. People still had the Hindu Gods and their family rites and their castes and the Brahmins. Buddhism was just kind of grafted on top of everthing else. Of course, the spiritual athletes still had the option of joining the sangha and following the discipline. Eventually many later Indian monarchs following Ashoka went back to patronizing Hinduism.

(Buddhism remained popular in what is now Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan, which were often ruled by non-Indian dynasties with central Asian connections who didn't fit into the Indian caste-system and who were kind of disdained by the Brahmins. From this new northwestern center Buddhism penetrated north to the Silk Road, monasteries appeared in the polyglot mercantile oases of Sinkiang and traders took it into China. Some of the earliest translaters of Buddhist texts into Chinese were Parthian traders of Iranian descent.)

And as time went on the thing continued to evolve. The Buddha came to be seen less as a man, a human teacher, and more as a divine being. Buddhas were glorious beings in heavenly realms and Goutama had simply incarnated here on earth in human form, avatar-style, in order to teach. (It's conceivable that Christianity influenced that evolution in both Buddhism and Vishnaivism). Buddhas-to-be (Boddhisattvas) were themselves divine beings who postponed their own translation into utter transcendence in order to compassionately aid all the beings who were still suffering down below.

For many Buddhists the Boddhisattva path replaced the monastic discipline. Instead of entering a monastery and following the path to being an Arahant, people remained in the lay world, adopted Boddisattva precepts of compassion and prayed to the Boddhisattvas (kind of Buddhist saints) for divine grace. The goal for many Buddhists was to to merit rebirth in a heaven where ultimate enlightenment was easier than here, and arguments arose over whether works were necessary or whether prayer and faith in the Boddhisattvas was the way. (The parallels betwen some Mahayana ideas and Christianity is fascinaing. Buddhism even had its Luther way off in Japan.)

And meanwhile the sangha, the monks, were getting deeper and deeper into elaborate introspective analyses of the foundations of human cognition along with abstruse madhyamika epistemologies, while concentrating in fewer and fewer monasteries that were larger and larger. Smaller monasteries fell into ruin and fewer towns even had any Buddhist establishments any longer. Meanwhile huge monastic universities like Nalanda (it hosted tens of thousands of scholar monks) arose in late Indian Buddhism, creating an impressive medieval-style scholasticism.

So you had the common people seeing less and less of the monks. Their personal religious faith consisted of praying to divine beings for fortuitous lives and rebirths just like everyone else around them in India did. Those heavenly beings were increasingly syncretized with the Hindu deities. And the daily village routine of caste and family and temple had remained profoundly Hindu throughout the Buddhist period. The Brahmin priests had always been there. As their own Upanishadic philosophies evolved into Vedantism (incorporating Buddhist ideas in some cases), there was less and less reason for the intellectuals to leave everything behind for the Buddhist sangha.

And finally the Muslims swept in from out of Afghanistan and put the Buddhist universities and their libraries to the torch and the monks to the sword. The survivers found sanctuary up in the Himalayas where they inspired the Tibetan Buddhist scholasticism that's survived down to the present day. (Today much of what the Tibetans preserved from late Indian Buddhism in their monastic libraries, most of it never translated into Western languages, has once again been put to the torch by the Chinese communists. It has never even been completely catalogued.)

And the villagers, deprived of their monks, finally finished a process that was by then long underway and faded back into Hinduism.

 

As Bill D mentioned already, there are a variety of reasons such "people movements" take place, as has been the case with Roman paganism to Christianity, Christianity to Islam in the Middle East, Hinduism to Buddhism, back to Hinduism and in some places Islam in South Asia, Buddhism and Hinduism to Islam in Indonesia, Buddhism to Christianity in South Korea... many examples, really, and most a result of a tangle of sociological, economic, political, cultural, historical, and of course spiritual reasons; such mass movements have been described as involving the "hand of God in the 'glove' of numerous human factors" as noted above. I doubt if such movements can be attributed to any one single cause.

Well, certainly in terms of influence, Judaism has had a tremendous impact. I would agree to an extent with yours and Bill D.'s assessment that Christianity is on one level Judaism meant to be adaptable to any culture (which it has had a rather variable level of success in doing), and with Bill's assessment of Islam as being as well as form of Judaism; an interesting source on this is Abraham Geiger's 19th century classic Judaism and Islam as well as Charles Cutler Torrey's The Jewish Foundations of Islam.

As for the tribal identification issue with regard to the possible spread of Judaism (or lack thereof), I would say that while Judaism didn't always have a highly successful program of propagation, it did have a program. Jesus Himself referred (fairly negatively) to Pharisees being involved in propagation of their faith (though He doesn't go into whether it was a Chabadnick-type "mitzvah tank" outreach to other Jews, or an attempt to convert non-Jews). While communities as diverse as the Ethiopian Beta Israel and the Maharashtrian Bene Israel (in India) as well as Ashkenazim and Sefardim from various places have, I understand, been successfully tested for certain genetic markers, indicating a biological relationship among Jews in various parts of the world, there have also been accounts of movements to Judaism in several places. The most notable of these have been the aforementioend Beta Israel in Ethiopia, and the Caucasus kingdom of Khazaria in the Middle Ages. I seem to recall part of the discussion going on in medieval Spain involved whether converts to Judaism could ever come to be considered Kohanim or Levites; I think Maimonides was pro and Yehuda HaLevi was con on that (quoting from memory on that). Certainly an indication that conversion was taking place, at any rate.

Well, not at all completely. The divergence was a good 1900 years ago, though, so such things are bound to creep in!

Peace,

Matt

 

Bill D.,

First of all, kudos for the informed and concise history of Buddhism (to an extent vis-a-vis Hinduism) above.

I would add nothing more than a tweak and a comment or two, really:

1. In terms of Indian philosophical history, in what later came to be known as "Hinduism" there were the six "astika" or orthodox schools of thought which acknowledged the Vedas and Upanishads, as well as generally some sort of deity. On the toher hand, there were at least three "nastika" (heterodox, but basically atheist) schools which posited no deity and denied the Shrutis (orthodox sources of written authority, as noted above); these were the Jains (who still exist), the Carvakas (absolute atheists who denied any source of authority apart from their senses, and were the subject of ridicule; apart from a small group that is a survival of these in Bengal, they are believed to have disappeared many centuries ago), and the Buddhists, as early Buddhism, at least, denied not only Deity but also the existence personality per se. This obviously changed, as you pointed out, with the emergence of the Mahayana schools of Buddhism and boddhistva doctrines.

2. These latter do have some interesting similarities with Christian teaching in terms of a boddhisatva imparting his merit to the devotee, this seems most marked in the Pure Land sect of Buddhism. It has been posited (not conclusively, though) that not only the avatar concept, but the bhakti devotional concept in Vaishava Hinduism may have come in via Christian influence (conceiveably Nestorians, who were in South India early enough for this to have been possible).

3. I think this is a topic which has had no definitive resolution, but I understand that some would suggest that the decline of Buddhism in India was perhaps less gradual, and involved specific action by the Adi Shankara, who developed the teachings of Vedanta and was reputed to have debated Buddhist scholars in various parts of India.

Peace,

Matt F

 

Matt,

One of the really major issues in the Jewish world today is, "Who is a Jew?" Do genetic tags establishing a matrilineal descent suffice? Clearly not, yet according to a Scalia-type interpretation of halakah, they should...

But it also is plainly NOT a matter of faith. A man may kneel in his cell alone and call upon Allah and become thereby a Muslim. For the Jew, no such luck. By BIRTH to a Jewish mother (or father, depending on which set of Rabbis you are following and YES that itself is a source of horrible acrimony) OR by being accepted by a bet din (and yes, who sits on the bet din is ALSO a source of horrible acrimony) following circumcision or hatafat h'dam for a man and ritual immersion for men and women, again depending on the group of Rabbis you follow.

Then there's the Nazi approach which more closely adheres to the genetic tagging...also the rough approach under the Israeli Law of Return as limited (severely) by the Israeli civil courts.

Everybody is a Hindu, by definition.


Anyway, the Christians set gentiles free of the need for circumcision but that by itself probably didn't cause Christianity tospread as it did; before Christianity, Judaism spread throughout the Roman world. I've seen estimates that one in ten denizens were Jews by birth or conversion by the time Jesus showed up.

One other point about borrowings back and forth...Maimonidies listed a belief in the resurrection of the dead as a fundamental tenet of Judaism. But it wasn't and isn't, Rambam notwithstanding. Torah NOWHERE mentions any life after death. So did we get it from the Christians or did both groups get it from the same source?

This is on my mind right now because I bestirred myself to go to Friday night Kabbalat Shabbat services, something I rarely do, and at my Temple (Reform) they're using a CCAR draft prayerbook.

A little history...there is a blessing in the traditional service that is usually translated, "Blessed are You...who raises the dead." That's not what it really says but that's the accepted meaning.

Now, Reform rejects the ressurection of the dead. Has since it began in the 19th century. The Reform blessing says something like, "...gives life to the living." This is not arcane; it is well known throughout the Liberal Jewish world.

But the draft Siddur went BACK to the ressurection prayer!

The point of all this is that religions acquire and lose beliefs even today. Like a geologist, I believe that the same development processes at work TODAY have been at work all along.

 

L'Shana Tovah!

Hi Dr. Osbourne,

Scalia-type interpretation of halakah?? Now that's funny!

Regarding the whole awful situation in Israel regarding Orthodox vis-a-vis Reform Jews, Thomas Friedman's take on that in the Jerusalem part of his From Beirut to Jerusalem (a keen primer on the Middle East even now) was really interesting. You gotta wonder where it's going to head.

Thing is, how else to identify who Jews are? If one makes it strictly a matter of faith, that leaves out the rather large percentage of Jews who are atheists, agnostics, and deists, in addition to those following Yeshua, Buddha, et al.

Well.... depends on who you talk to. In India, they would limit that to Indians, and properly speaking, to those born in upper-caste or sudhra-caste families.

Certainly true; Islam brought the circumcision requirement back and spread (only partially by the sword/economic oppression) nonetheless.

I believe that corrective on my earlier stated position may very well be correct. Have you seen anything in print (ink or electrons) on this?

As for the Resurrection of the dead, it seems to have been a point of contention between the Sadducees (who denied it) and the Pharisees (who believed it fervently). Jesus clearly sided with the Pharisees on that one, even being complimented on this point by a Pharisee witness to a brief debate between Jesus and a Sadducee (in Luke 20:27-40. In addition to the Rambam, the Talmud itself has a fair bit on the afterlife, nu? I found a couple of things on afterlife in OT and Talmud here and here.

Very interesting on the change in the siddur. Might that be an indicator of a subtle shift in the direction of more traditional theology?

Religions go through processes in which beliefs and especially the manner in which those beliefs are expressed develop, no doubt about that. At the same time, in my own, erm, "Scalian" way, it seems to me that regardless of development, often there are cycles which bring religious faiths back to their roots. That was what happened to Drew University's Thomas Oden; he was challenged about the roots of his faith by Jewish philosopher Will Herberg.

Anyway, Dr. Osbourne, I'll end this little missive by wishing you and yours (and anyone else here for whom it is relevant) a "L'Shana Tova". Hope your Rosh Hashana will be blessed and happy. My Mom sent me a card that made me smile here.

Peace,

Matt

 

I can't, apparently, spell "resurrection".

Yes, Maimonides does say that the afterlife is a fundamental Jewish belief and the Pharisees and Sadducees did argue about it. "Torah" in this context means the chumash. And it ain't in there.

Orthodoxy does perform various rituals that express a belief in the resurrection, some of them quite naif, really. If you want a sample, find the movie "The Burial Society" which gives a very accurate demonstration of Jewish burial customs in the context of a wonderful cliffhanger.

We're sliding into the High Holidays next week; anyone who is interested might get a machzor and read the services for Yom Kippur.

The language COULD be interpreted as referring to an afterlife and certainly many modern Jews do interpret it this way, but over all, I don't think so. The imagery is that, "On Rosh H'shannah it is written; on Yom Kippur it is sealed" who will live and who will die, who will be rich and who poor, who will be healthy and who sick, etc. There is also an absolutely terrifying list of the various ways of dying. Believe me, if you hear it properly chanted, you will be giving it your undivided attention!

But it's all focused on our fates to come during the NEXT YEAR, not in eternity. In this way, the Yom Kippur ritual more closely follows Torah Judaism than the later, mystical accretions.

Personally, I take the view of most Jews now and in the past; I don't know where I came from and I don't know where I am going. It is given to me to live the best life I can here and that path is shown to me through Judaism. As for the rest, it will have to take care of itself.