History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

by Andrew Dickson White

But even as early as the sixteenth century a pregnant fact regarding this whole legend was noted: for the Portuguese historian Diego Conto showed that it was identical with the legend of Buddha. Fortunately for the historian, his faith was so robust that he saw in this resemblance only a trick of Satan; the life of Buddha being, in his opinion, merely a diabolic counterfeit of the life of Josaphat centuries before the latter was lived or written—just as good Abbe Huc saw in the ceremonies of Buddhism a similar anticipatory counterfeit of Christian ritual.

There the whole matter virtually rested for about three hundred years—various scholars calling attention to the legend as a curiosity, but none really showing its true bearings—until, in 1859, Laboulaye in France, Liebrecht in Germany, and others following them, demonstrated that this Christian work was drawn almost literally from an early biography of Buddha, being conformed to it in the most minute details, not only of events but of phraseology; the only important changes being that, at the end of the various experiences showing the wretchedness of the world, identical with those ascribed in the original to the young Prince Buddha, the hero, instead of becoming a hermit, becomes a Christian, and that for the appellation of Buddha—"Bodisat"—is substituted the more scriptural name Josaphat.

Thus it was that, by virtue of the infallibility vouchsafed to the papacy in matters of faith and morals, Buddha became a Christian saint.

Yet these were by no means the most pregnant revelations. As the Buddhist scriptures were more fully examined, there were disclosed interesting anticipations of statements in later sacred books. The miraculous conception of Buddha and his virgin birth, like that of Horus in Egypt and of Krishna in India; the previous annunciation to his mother Maja; his birth during a journey by her; the star appearing in the east, and the angels chanting in the heavens at his birth; his temptation—all these and a multitude of other statements were full of suggestions to larger thought regarding the development of sacred literature in general. Even the eminent Roman Catholic missionary Bishop Bigandet was obliged to confess, in his scholarly life of Buddha, these striking similarities between the Buddhist scriptures and those which it was his mission to expound, though by this honest statement his own further promotion was rendered impossible. Fausboll also found the story of the judgment of Solomon imbedded in Buddhist folklore; and Sir Edwin Arnold, by his poem, The Light of Asia, spread far and wide a knowledge of the anticipation in Buddhism of some ideas which down to a recent period were considered distinctively Christian. Imperfect as the revelations thus made of an evolution of religious beliefs, institutions, and literature still are, they have not been without an important bearing upon the newer conception of our own sacred books: more and more manifest has become the interdependence of all human development; more and more clear the truth that Christianity, as a great fact in man's history, is not dependent for its life upon any parasitic growths of myth and legend, no matter how beautiful they may be.(498)

(498) For Huc and Gabet, see Souvenirs d'un Voyage dans la Tartarie, le
Thibet, et la Chine, English translation by Hazlitt, London, 1851; also
supplementary work by Huc. For Bishop Bigandet, see his Life of Buddha,
passim. As for authority for the fact that his book was condemned
at Rome and his own promotion prevented, the present writer has the
bishop's own statement. For notices of similarities between Buddhist
and Christian institutions, rituals, etc., see Rhys David's Buddhism,
London, 1894, passim; also Lillie, Buddhism and Christianity, especially
chaps. ii and xi. It is somewhat difficult to understand how a scholar
so eminent as Mr. Rhys Davids should have allowed the Society for the
Promotion of Christian Knowledge, which published his book, to eliminate
all the interesting details regarding the birth of Buddha, and to give
so fully everything that seemed to tell against the Roman Catholic
Church; cf. p. 27 with p. 246 et seq. For more thorough presentation of
the development of features in Buddhism and Brahmanism which anticipate
those of Christianity, see Schroeder, Indiens Literatur und Cultur,
Leipsic, 1887, especially Vorlesung XXVIII and following. For full
details of the canonization of Buddha under the name of St. Josaphat,
see Fausboll, Buddhist Birth Stories, translated by Rhys Davids, London,
1880, pp. xxxvi and following; also Prof. Max Muller in the Contemporary
Review for July, 1890; also the article Barlaam and Josaphat, in the
ninth edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. For the more recent
and full accounts, correcting some minor details in the foregoing
authorities, see Kuhn, Barlaam und Joasaph, Munich, 1893, especially
pages 82, 83. For a very thorough discussion of the whole subject,
see Zotenberg, Notice sur le livre de Barlaam et Joasaph, Paris, 1886;
especially for arguments fixing date of the work, see parts i to
iii; also Gaston Paris in the Revue de Paris for June, 1895. For the
transliteration between the appellation of Buddha and the name of the
saint, see Fausboll and Sayce, as above, p. xxxvii, note; and for the
multitude of translations of the work ascribed to St. John of Damascus,
see Table III, on p. xcv. The reader who is curious to trace up a
multitude of the myths and legends of early Hebrew and Christian
mythology to their more eastern and southern sources can do so in Bible
Myths, New York, 1883. The present writer gladly avails himself of the
opportunity to thank the learned Director of the National Library at
Palermo, Monsignor Marzo, for his kindness in showing him the very
interesting church of San Giosafat in that city; and to the custodians
of the church for their readiness to allow photographs of the saint to
be taken. The writer's visit was made in April, 1895, and copies of the
photographs may be seen in the library of Cornell University. As to
the more rare editions of Barlaam and Josaphat, a copy of the Icelandic
translation is to be seen in the remarkable collection of Prof. Willard
Fiske, at Florence. As to the influence of these translations, it may
be noted that when young John Kuncewicz, afterward a Polish archbishop,
became a monk, he took the name of the sainted Prince Josafat; and,
having fallen a victim to one of the innumerable murderous affrays of
the seventeenth century between different sorts of fanatics—Greek,
Catholic, and Protestant—in Poland, he also was finally canonized under
that name, evidently as a means of annoying the Russian Government. (See
Contieri, Vita di S. Giosafat, Arcivesco e Martira Rutena, Roma, 1867.)

No less important was the closer research into the New Testament during the latter part of the nineteenth century. To go into the subject in detail would be beyond the scope of this work, but a few of the main truths which it brought before the world may be here summarized.(499)

(499) For a brief but thorough statement of the work of Strauss,
Baur, and the earlier cruder efforts in New Testament exegesis, see
Pfleiderer, as already cited, book ii, chap. i; and for the later work
on Supernatural Religion and Lightfoot's answer, ibid., book iv. chap.
ii.

By the new race of Christian scholars it has been clearly shown that the first three Gospels, which, down to the close of the last century, were so constantly declared to be three independent testimonies agreeing as to the events recorded, are neither independent of each other nor in that sort of agreement which was formerly asserted. All biblical scholars of any standing, even the most conservative, have come to admit that all three took their rise in the same original sources, growing by the accretions sure to come as time went on—accretions sometimes useful and often beautiful, but in no inconsiderable degree ideas and even narratives inherited from older religions: it is also fully acknowledged that to this growth process are due certain contradictions which can not otherwise be explained. As to the fourth Gospel, exquisitely beautiful as large portions of it are, there has been growing steadily and irresistibly the conviction, even among the most devout scholars, that it has no right to the name, and does not really give the ideas of St. John, but that it represents a mixture of Greek philosophy with Jewish theology, and that its final form, which one of the most eminent among recent Christian scholars has characterized as "an unhistorical product of abstract reflection," is mainly due to some gifted representative or representatives of the Alexandrian school. Bitter as the resistance to this view has been, it has during the last years of the nineteenth century won its way more and more to acknowledgment. A careful examination made in 1893 by a competent Christian scholar showed facts which are best given in his own words, as follows: "In the period of thirty years ending in 1860, of the fifty great authorities in this line, FOUR TO ONE were in favour of the Johannine authorship. Of those who in that period had advocated this traditional position, one quarter—and certainly the very greatest—finally changed their position to the side of a late date and non-Johannine authorship."

Of those who have come into this field of scholarship since about 1860, some forty men of the first class, two thirds reject the traditional theory wholly or very largely. Of those who have contributed important articles to the discussion from about 1880 to 1890, about TWO TO ONE reject the Johannine authorship of the Gospel in its present shape—that is to say, while forty years ago great scholars were FOUR TO ONE IN FAVOUR OF, they are now TWO TO ONE AGAINST, the claim that the apostle John wrote this Gospel as we have it. Again, one half of those on the conservative side to-day—scholars like Weiss, Beyschlag, Sanday, and Reynolds—admit the existence of a dogmatic intent and an ideal element in this Gospel, so that we do not have Jesus's thought in his exact words, but only in substance."(500)

(500) For the citations given regarding the development of thought in
relation to the fourth gospel, see Crooker, The New Bible and its Uses,
Boston, 1893, pp. 29, 30. For the characterization of St. John's Gospel
above referred to, see Robertson Smith in the Encyc. Brit., 9th edit.,
art. Bible, p. 642. For a very careful and candid summary of the reasons
which are gradually leading the more eminent among the newer scholars to
give up the Johannine authorship ot the fourth Gospel, see Schurer, in
the Contemporary Review for September, 1891. American readers, regarding
this and the whole series of subjects of which this forms a part, may
most profitably study the Rev. Dr. Cone's Gospel Criticism and Historic
Christianity, one of the most lucid and judicial of recent works in this
field.