175 Part II: J. Edgar Bruns’ Christian Buddhism! Michael Lockwood September 18, 2018 176 Part II: J. Edgar Bruns’ Christian Buddhism! As I have mentioned, above, on the introductory page of this article, preceding Part I, J. Edgar Bruns’ most important books claiming Buddhist influence in the Gospels are these three volumes: The Art and Thought of John (1969); The Christian Buddhism of St. John (1971); and The Forbidden Gospel (1976). Bruns’ scholarship and insights in these three books are wonderfully original. And he determinedly avoids debate with the contrary views of his fellow scholar-priest, Rev. Dr. Charles Francis Aiken. In Bruns’ three books, he never once mentions Aiken! This avoidance may be due to his diplomatic nature and greater interest in comparative aspects of religions. But it is abundantly clear to me that if, in the first, he had openly argued the differences of his views with those in Professor of Apologetics Charles Aiken’s monumental work, The Dhamma of Gotama the Buddha and the Gospel of Jesus the Christ: A Critical Inquiry into the Alleged Relations of Buddhism with Primitive Christianity (1900), he would never have obtained the Nihil obstat (the certification by an official Catholic censor that a work is not objectionable on doctrinal or moral grounds) and Imprimatur (the official “seal of approval” by the Roman Catholic Church, allowing for its publication), which certifications were printed on page four of his book, The Art and Thought of John. (The two later books are without any such marks of approval.) With this awareness of Roman Catholic Church censorship, Bruns presented only a somewhat watered-down statement of his radical thesis concerning Buddhism and St. John’s thought in the penultimate paragraph (pp. 12-13) of his Preface in The Art and Thought of John: In suggesting as I do that John’s thought shows some structural affinity to Mahayana Buddhism, I am certain to incur criticism, but it will be welcomed if it at least calls attention to the need for further study along these lines. Certainly it cannot be denied today that the influence of Indian philosophy on the intellectual milieu of the Mediterranean world in the first century of our era was greater than anyone could have imagined a century ago, and this gospel is the Christian masterpiece of that world. That the impact of Mahäyäna Buddhism on St. John’s thought was, in Bruns’ mind, much more than a mere ambiguous acknowledgment of “some structural affinity” between the two is definitively revealed in the very title of his next book, The Christian Buddhism of St. John, and in his unequivocal statement in its Preface (p. vii): This book [The Christian Buddhism of St. John] has grown out of a series of lectures given in the Institute of Christian Thought at St. Michael’s of Toronto in the spring term of 1969-70. The lectures were themselves the logical supplement to a hypothesis suggested in my book The Art and Thought of John. The hypothesis was that Johannine thought is structurally closer to that of Mädhyamika Buddhism than it is to either the Judaic or Hellenistic categories of thought then current. [Emphasis added] This last sentence is a breathtaking announcement for any Catholic scholar-priest to make! And, further, it is utterly contrary to what was actually Aiken’s chief goal: addressing the imperative need for a thorough refutation of all attempts to lay the Gospels under obligation to Buddhist teaching! 177 R.S. Sugirtharajah, in “The First, Second and Third Letters of John”, in A Postcolonial Commentary on the New Testament Writings , eds. F.F. Segovia & R.S. Sugirtharajah (London: T. & T. Clark, 2007), pp. 419-420, discusses three such Buddhist “affinities”: J. Edgar Bruns is one of those who identified the possibility of Buddhist influences in the Johannine writings. His hypothesis was that in a city like Alexandria it is likely that the writer of the epistles would have heard Buddhized teaching of the Gnostics. He wrote: ‘On the basis of his own writings [i.e. the writer of the epistles], especially of certain passages in the first epistle, it seems clear to me that the key to Johannine thought lies in an understanding of Buddhist concepts’.[1] Bruns identifies at least three theological categories in the Johannine Epistles which are closer to Mahayana Buddhism than to Judaic or Hellenistic categories of thought.[2] One of these is the idea of God. The concept of God in the letters of John, in Bruns’ view, could have been the result of Buddhist influence. In the epistles, God does not do anything, but is called light (1 Jn 1:5), love (1 Jn 4:8, 16) and spirit (1 Jn 4:24) as a result of the actions of human beings. The light is nothing but love (1 Jn 2:10-11), and truth is nothing but walking in it. What humans do reveals who God is. . . . Hence God does not generate love in human beings, rather, it is the loving that human beings do that generates God, fulfils, extends, perfects Godly love (1 Jn 4:12). There is a refusal to objectify and to imagine God as a fully existent being unconnected to and divorced from human history. It is the love which human beings enact in their ordinary lives which makes God dwell in their midst. It is not a priori awareness of the divine which engenders love. It is this notion of ‘making God’s presence through loving on the one hand and loving through the presence of God on the other’ which prompts Bruns to claim Buddhist influence in the Johannine Epistles. The love for a person expressed in action is seen as the sole proof of the unseen and unknown God. In the first epistle, the writer claims that ‘no one has ever seen God’ but goes on to say that ‘if we love one another God abides in us’ (1 Jn 4:20). It is the act of love which makes the presence of God real. This act of loving precedes any premediated knowledge of a divine presence or indwelling. Such a notion, according to Bruns, parallels Prajnaparamita (‘The Perfection of Wisdom’, ‘Transcendent Wisdom’), one of the nine sacred works of Mahayana Buddhism. ‘The Lord has not fully known the realm of Dharma, for the realm of Dharma is just the Lord’ (Bruns 1971: 31). When the writer of the epistles says that ‘God abides’ in whoever does love, this means that the act of love makes the presence of God. Similarly, the Johannine understanding of ‘born of God’ resonates with the Buddhist understanding. Just as in John one who loves is born of God and realizes God, so in Mahayana Buddhism the one who exercises perfect wisdom realizes Enlightenment or Buddhahood. A second Buddhist correspondence found in the epistles is the Johannine doctrine of indwelling (1 Jn 4:4, 15-16), which is comparable to the Buddhist concept of the Buddha nature – a form of knowing within human beings. A third, the writer’s idea that Christians have passed from death to life (1 Jn 3:14), is nearer to the Mahayana notion of ‘the exercise of wisdom as identical with the state of Nirvana’. _______________ [1. Bruns, The Christian Buddhism of St. John: New Insight into the Fourth Gospel (New York: Paulist Press, 1971), p. 28.] [2. Ibid., vii.] [Bolding, above, added] 178 Sugirtharajah also discusses certain strange passages in the Epistle of James, in his book, The Bible and Asia: From the Pre-Christian Era to the Postcolonial Age (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), p. 14: Alien Concepts and Passages There are theological ideas and passages in the New Testament that have no obvious Hebraic or Hellenistic origin or roots. These concepts are not inherently part of Jewish or Hellenistic tradition. Some of them could have easily been traced from beyond the Mediterranean and possibly from India. One such example that does not fit in easily with Jewish and Hellenistic thought patterns are the phrases in [the Epistle of ] James “the tongue is a fire” and “the cycle of nature” or wheel of birth (3:6). The Buddha’s comparison of the sense organs to a flaming fire is found in his early sermons. In his sermon on the burning, the Buddha declares all sense organs are on fire: “the ear is burning, sounds are burning.... The nose is burning, odours are burning.... The tongue is burning, tastes are burning” (Mahavagga 1:21, 2-3). The Buddhist saying is similar to the one found in James: “And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell” (James 3:6). Sugirtharajah’s quotation of James 3:6 is taken from the King James Version, whose translators interpreted the Greek expression ‘trochon tës geneseös’ as ‘course of nature’. Strong’s Concordance gives the primary meaning in English of ‘trochos’ as ‘wheel’ and of ‘geneseös’ as ‘birth’/‘life’ and/or ‘lineage’/‘genealogy’. The Gospel of Matthew begins with these four words: “Biblos geneseös Iësou Christou”. Here, ‘geneseös’ really has both the meaning of ‘life’ and ‘genealogy’, the latter being obvious from the long list of Jesus’ ancestors which follows. But the true meaning of the expression ‘trochon tës geneseös’ in James has been opaque to most scholars because they lack knowledge of Hindu and Buddhist scriptures. If they were only to gain the training and knowledge of how prominent the concept of the ‘Wheel of Birth’ is in Buddhist scriptures and iconography, they might realize, at last, that “James” is indeed speaking about the Indian concept of the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. (Please note that when the earliest Gnostic Christians and, later, such recognized Christian scholars as Clement of Alexandria and Origen believed in rebirth, they were only continuing in the orthodoxy of their “forebears” stretching back through the Therapeutæ to the Buddhist missionary scholars sent by the Mauryan king, Aåöka, to Alexandria in the third century BCE.) 179 God is Not an ‘Existent Being’ Sugirtharajah notes, on page 177 above (second paragraph), that Bruns’, in commenting on 1 John 4:12, states: What humans do reveals who God is. . . . Hence God does not generate love in human beings, rather, it is the loving that human beings do that generates God, fulfils, extends, perfects Godly love (1 Jn 4:12). There is a refusal to objectify and to imagine God as a fully existent being. . . .” [Emphasis added] Now, most people, initially, will surely be greatly mystified by such an idea as a ‘not-existent God’. Bruns, on p. 27 of his The Christian Buddhism of St. John, says: In the case of Basilides, it is his peculiar version of Gnosticized Christianity which suggests a Buddhist influence, especially his doctrine of a “not-being God.”15 _______________ 15 J. Kennedy, “Buddhist Gnosticism: The System of Basilides”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1902), pp. 377-415; F. Legge, Philosophumena, vol. II (London, 1921), p. 59; R.M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (New York, 1966), p.146; H.de Lubac, Aspects of Buddhism (New York, 1954), p.105. The Buddhist influence here is the doctrine of Nirvä∫a = Åünyatä. I think that it would be more fruitful to recognize such expressions as ‘not-existent God’ or ‘not-being God’ as relating to the ‘transcendent’ aspect of the ineffable Reality – mystically hinted at by the “I am” (“I am / I was / I will be” = “Unchanging Reality”), the declaration of YÓVÓ, in the Torah, or by the “I am” statements of Jesus, in the Gospel of John – always, however, being also connected with an awareness of the ineffable Reality’s somehow utter immanence throughout the Cosmos. The relevant paradigm, here, for this view is that of Panentheism! Go back (to p.143) and read again the very brief “Parable of the God who is Playing Hide and Seek with Himself”. Just as good or bad dreams are “empty” and dissolve away into nothing substantial when one wakes up, so will the goings-on in this universe of ours dissolve away, when the Ultimate Being (such as “Vishnu” in his sleep-like trance) “wakes up”, and then recycles a new universe. (This is all parabolic, of course.) With this framework in mind, read Sugirtharajah’s note above once again. The expression ‘existent being’, there, refers to beings which inhabit our world of becoming. We are born and are constantly in a flux of living change until our death. The consciousness of innumerable creatures, in innumerable planets, throughout innumerable galaxy, throughout the universe, are really all comprised by the immanent Consciousness of the ineffable, unified Reality. Does the reader sense a paradox in these statements of mine? Well, philosophers even face such paradoxes when they attempt to understand the Mind-Body relationship. The mystics, thus, in spite of their claims of ineffability, do go ahead and speak of the unique Unity of the so-called ‘non-existent [in our worldly sense] Reality’. Rev. Dr. J. Edgar Bruns Lays the Fourth Gospel under Profound Obligation to Buddhism It is remarkable that Bruns’ most powerful detailed set of arguments evidencing profound influences of Buddhism on Christianity’s Fourth Gospel is to be found in a short paper (4 1/2 pages, plus 3 1/2 pages of endnotes), published in a journal, in 1973-74, some two years after his third book on Christianity’s debt to Buddhism, The Forbidden Gospel. I have reformatted the article, transforming endnotes into “side”-notes: 180 J. Edgar Bruns* Ananda: The fourth evangelist’s model for ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’? It will not be disputed that ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ is a unique creation of the fourth evangelist. Neither can it be denied that he has no counterpart in any of the other gospels.1 Whether he represents a real person, idealized by the evangelist, or stands for the personification of a group (the hypostatization of an attitude, one might say),2 is not really important to this investigation. On the other hand, the function he performs becomes far more meaningful if there lies some real identity behind him. But it is the function which is our primary concern: what was it? Essentially it was to guarantee the authenticity of the Johannine interpretation of the ministry and teaching of Jesus. The beloved disciple is the testis fidelis who saw (John 19:35; cf v. 26) and who has ‘written down’ these things (John 21:24). Moreover he is the testis fidelissimus because he was singled out for the Master’s special love (John 13:23, etc.). Finally he is the testis subtilissimus because he is in every respect a counterpart of the Paraclete in the work of the evangelist (who is, purportedly, at least, the beloved disciple), to recognize that, in fact, the beloved disciple is, in a very real sense, the incarnation of the Paraclete who will teach you all things and remind you of all I have said to you’ (John 14:26),3 for this has now become an accepted datum of Johannine exegesis.4 Dauer has even pointed out that the role of the beloved disciple as exêgêtês is already made clear at 13:23-25 where he enquires of Jesus for the disciples and can do this because he is on the bosom of Jesus just as Jesus, as the primordial exêgêtês, is in the bosom of the father (John 1:18).5 The beloved disciple is the authority behind the fourth gospel, and because it is a ‘profound reinterpretation’6 of the ministry and words of Jesus, he is the authority behind the gospel as such. I think it is extremely significant that this concept of the beloved disciple was emphasized in antiquity where we find so many references to the activity of John (always identified with the disciple whom Jesus loved) as general editor and final arbiter of gospel literature, whether it be in the canon of Muratori,7 in Origen’s commentary on Luke, 8 in Theodore of Mopsuestia’s commentary on John, 9 or in the Acta Timothei of Pseudo-Polycrates.10 Eutychius of Alexandria even tells us that it was John who translated Matthew’s gospel from Hebrew into Greek.11 These writers, while not perceiving the relationship between 236 *J. Edgar Bruns, “Ananda: The fourth evangelist’s model for the ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’?”, Studies in Religion, 3:3 (1973-74), pp. 236-243. 181 “Side”-notes 1 In the words of a Johannine scholar not often cited (regrettably I think): ‘So far as the New Testament is concerned, it is in our Gospel only that he is brought on the scene’: H. L. Jackson, The Problem of the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge 1918), 151. All attempts to identify ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’ end in a cul de sac, and R. Schnackenburg has aptly described the contemporary attitude toward the beloved disciple as one of consigning him ‘to the wings’: ‘On the Origin of the Fourth Gospel’, in Jesus and Man’s Hope (Pittsburgh 1970), I, 223. 2 R. E. Brown nicely sums up the various views on p. xciv of the first volume of his commentary. 3Cf. H. Windisch, The Five Johannine Paraclete Sayings, Facet Books, Biblical Series 20 (Philadelphia 1968), esp. 7-8, 18-21. Bibliographical references to the earlier material are abundant. 4 I think we can take R. E. Brown as a model of the thoroughly informed middleof-the-road contemporary in this matter. See his ‘The Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel’, New Testament Studies 13 (1966-67), 113-132 and appendix V, ‘The Paraclete’ in the second volume of his Commentary, esp. 1142. 5 A. Dauer, Die Passionsgeschichte in Johannesevangelium (München 1972), 318-320. 6The words are R.E. Brown’s (Commentary II, 1142). 7 The passage is well known and often cited. The relevant sentence is: Eadem nocte revelatum Andreæ ex Apostolis, ut recognoscentibus cunctis Johannes suo nomine cuncta discriberet. 8 Given in Die Griechische Christliche Schriftsteller (Origenes IX, 230); in Lucam Fragm. 9.12. The editor aptly notes: ‘Das Stück stammt vielleicht aus dem Johanneskommentar’ [‘This piece may be from the Commentary of John’]. In this passage John, during the reign of Nero, gathers together the existing gospels and recognizes some of them but rejects others for their inclusion of false material. 9 This is to be found in the preface to Theodore’s Commentary, the Greek fragments of which were edited by R. Devreese: Essai sur Theodore de Mopsueste (Città del Vaticano 1948), 305-306. This too relates that after the publication (ekdosis) of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the faithful of Asia bring them to John for his scrutiny and approval. 10 Migne, Patrologia Graeca, 5, 1364. This is perhaps the most detailed of the accounts and describes John as assembling documents written in various languages, distinguishing the works of the several evangelists and finally compiling his own, more complete account. 11 Annales. Patrologia Graeca, 111, 981. 182 “Side”-notes 12 Ashvaghosha, Life of Buddha, English trans. by S. Beal, in Sacred Books of the East (New York 1899), 455. I shall mention here, and leave the matter at that, that it is well known how difficult it is to date Indian literature. The texts I make use of in this article are all early. Some of them already existed in Chinese translations in the third century. Independently of specific questions it can safely be said that the tradition of Ananda in transmitting the sayings of the Lord precedes the beginning of the Christian era by at least two centuries and is, in all likelihood, a part of the very earliest Buddhist tradition. [Aåvaghosha is in error, here, when he speaks of the Vinaya and Sütra “Pi†aka” being written down from Upäli’s recitation of the Vinaya and from Änanda’s recitation of the sermons and other sayings of the Buddha – in fact, the evidence points to these memorized sacred works being written down only in the first century BCE! – ML] 13 Amitäyur-Dhyäna-Sütra, 1, 7. 14 Mahä Parinibbäna Suttanta, D. ii.145. 15 The story forms part of Ashvaghosha’s Buddhacarita [‘Life of Buddha’ – but more accurately translated: Acts of the Buddha – ML] and it is often referred to (cf. E. Conze, Buddhist Scriptures (1960), 58; C. Humphreys, Buddhism (1962), 39 f., etc.). See the text as given in Beal’s translation (n. 12 above), 416. 16 In The Art and Thought of John (New York 1969) and The Christian Buddhism of St. John (New York 1971). The two principal proposals are (1) that John’s Christology and theology are Buddhist (Mahayana) because the Buddhist maintains that the all-knowledge of the Buddhas has come forth from the perfection of Wisdom, and, conversely, that the perfection of Wisdom has come forth from the cognition of the all-knowing(Buddha); so, for John, the believer is born of God(Love) because God(Love) is made real, present, actual by the believer’s love; (2) that the supper discourses are really post-resurrection revelations (not a new idea of mine) but the first of their kind in Christian literature, having, as their model, the Mahayana invention of special sermons taught by Gotama to an inner circle of elite and hidden for generations until rescued by Nägärjuna. As the readers of this paper will realize, there are many more difficulties in defending (2) than exist with the present proposal. As to (1) I can only say that nothing has dissuaded me from thinking that it is at least one way of reading John’s sophisticated theologizing, especially as it is developed in the first letter (of course I am aware that many now view the two documents as coming from different hands, but not from different schools). For a very perceptive review of The Art and Thought of John see Theological Studies 31 (1970), 757-761; and for a sympathetic but, I think, strangely naive evaluation of The Christian Buddhism of St. John, see Journal of Ecumenical Studies 9 (1972), 384-386, in which the reviewer clearly understands my theological interpretation of ‘John’ but finds it incredible that anyone who knew Jesus of Nazareth could have reached the conclusions I assign to the man we call John. Of course I do not assume that ‘John’ [personally] knew Jesus at all. In my first book I suggest that John may be John Mark, but even on this hypothesis it would have been the adolescent’s knowledge of a mature man. 183 John and the Paraclete, nevertheless realized that the beloved disciple was incontrovertibly the guarantor par excellence of the mind and heart of Jesus. The question is this: was this view of the beloved disciple a ‘Johannine’ invention; that is was it original with the author or editors of the fourth gospel? The concept of disciple is common enough: Moses had his Joshua, Elijah his Elisha, Jeremiah his Baruch, Socrates his Plato, Peter his Mark, Paul his Luke (or Timothy), and a later, much more legendary John, his Prochorus. But none of these were guarantors of a religious message. They were faithful secretaries or at best, as in the cases of Joshua and Elisha, authentic successors (Plato is truly an exact parallel but the notion of his being the guarantor of canonical truth is missing). There is only one real parallel to the beloved disciple in religious literature and it is that of Ananda, Gotama’s beloved disciple, the disciple responsible for the transmission of the true teaching of the Buddha: And now the Arhats numbering five hundred, having forever lost their master’s presence, reflecting there was now no ground of certainty, returned to G®idhraku†a mount; assembling in king Sakra’s cavern, they collected there the Sutra Pitaka; all the assembly agreeing that the venerable Ananda should say [recite], for the sake of the congregation, the sermons of Tathagata from first to last: ‘great and small, whatever you have heard from the mouth of the deceased Muni’. Then Ananda in the great assembly, ascending the lion throne, declared in order what the lord had preached, uttering the words ‘Thus have I heard’ . . . and so he announced the Law as to the time, as to the place, as to the person as he spoke; so it was written down from first to last the complete Sutra Pitaka.12 Thus did Ananda fulfil the command which his master had delivered to him: ‘O Ananda, do thou remember these words of mine, of the Buddha, and repeat them openly to many assemblies.’13 This, of course, is the Ananda of whom Gotama said, before all his disciples: ‘For a long time Ananda have you been very near to me by acts of love, kind and good, that never varies, and is beyond all measure. You have done well Ananda!’14 This also is the Ananda who, when Devadatta (frequently referred to as the Judas of Buddhist tradition) attempted his last fruitless attempt on the life of Gotama, remained by his master’s side while all other had fled.15 [Compare the lone “beloved disciple” of John 19:25-26. – ML] Is all of this just historical coincidence? To a large extent the answer to the question will depend upon whether one accepts the probability of Judaeo-Christian contact with Buddhism before the second century (by which time, we know for certain, it existed). I have suggested elsewhere that other elements in the fourth gospel, both structural and conceptual, favour a positive verdict on this supposition. Had I begun these proposals with this parallel between Ananda and the beloved disciple – so striking in itself and so much more free of the uncertainties of dating which surround the works of Nägärjuna, on which the earlier works largely depend – I believe they would have gained more attention than they did.16 However the more recent work of other scholars investigating along the same lines in different books of the New Testament surely implies that the whole question deserves a more serious and 237 184 open consideration than it has been given in the last fifty years. In a rigorously argued article in the 1972 Widengren festschrift, M. Philonenko has shown that the obscure language of James 3:1-6, especially the strange phrase ton trochon tês geneseôs, is best, perhaps only, understood in the light of the Buddhist teaching of the edicts of Asoka which, he proposes, reached the author of James through some Essenian milieu.17 In the previous year R. E. Osborne presented a case for the Edessan provenance of the gospel of Matthew, in the course of which he underlined the unusual parallels that exist between the ‘special M’ material and Buddhist teaching which, as he points out, would have reached Edessa at an early period given its strategic location on the silk route between East and West.18 J.E. Ménard, dealing with the origins of early Gnostic sects (specifically in relation to Christianity), sees them as coming into existence in Alexandria where Hellenistic and Judaic influences permeated one another in a remarkable fashion, but, he adds, we must not exclude the likely influence of Buddhist teaching which, so far as we know, had been circulating there since the reign of Ptolemy II.19 I would like to repeat my question and make two further observations. Is it merely coincidental that in both the Buddhist and Christian traditions the unimpeachable source for the teaching of the Lord is the disciple must loved by the Master and most faithful to him? As a Christian tradition it first appears in the fourth gospel (where it may or may not correspond to fact), but it soon becomes general. Its importance in the fourth gospel arises from the need to present a portrait of Jesus and an account of his teaching which contrasts sharply with that given by the Synoptics; nevertheless it makes of the beloved disciple the guarantor of the truth of that presentation. My further observations are these: first, that Buddhist tradition also maintains that some at the Council of Räjag®iha said that their recollection of Gotama’s teaching did not concur with that transmitted by Ananda.20 This calls to mind the words of Jesus concerning the Paraclete: ‘I have much yet to say to you, but you are not able to bear it now; but when he, the spirit of truth21 comes, he will lead you into all the truth.’ Among other things this is surely a defence against those who would contest the Johannine message, who would wonder whence came this ‘much’ not known to have been recorded in the earlier tradition. Second, the Buddhist tradition maintains further that Ananda, unable to accept the official view that his Lord was extinct after his nirvana and death (i.e., that he had gone nowhere at all that he was lost to the world and totally unrelated to it), formed, it is said the quite ‘heretical’ opinion that the Buddha had ascended to the Heavens.22 In later Buddhist legend this is viewed as the point of origin of that school which we know as the Mahayana. Now there is a curious passage about the beloved disciple which exegetes find troublesome: I refer to John 20:3-10. Peter and the beloved disciple run to the tomb on hearing from the Magdalene that the Lord’s body has been taken away. The beloved disciple runs faster and comes first to the tomb, but he does not enter. Peter enters, sees the burial 238 185 “Side”-notes 17M.Philonenko,‘Un Écho de la Prédication d’Asoka dans l’épître de Jacques’, Ex Orbe Religionum Studia Geo Widengren Oblata I (Leiden 1972), 254-265. It may not be irrelevant to note that J. Roloff has called attention to the interesting parallel between the Teacher of Righteousness of the Qumran community, who is never named but who is, above all, the interpreter of scripture and religious authority, and the beloved disciple:‘Der johanneische “Lieblings-jünger” und der Gerechtigkeit’ [‘The Johannine “Young-Favorite” and Fairness’], New Testament Studies 15 (1968/69), 129-151. 18R.E. Osborne, ‘The Provenance of Matthew’s Gospel’, S[ciences] R[eligieuses] 3, 3 (1973/74), 220-235. 19 J. E. Ménard, ‘Les Origines de la Gnose’, Revue des Sciences Religieuses 43 (1969), 24-38. 20Cf. E. Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development (London 1963), 90. 21Windisch (21) notes that according to Sasse ‘in the oldest sketch of the farewell discourse the evangelist was referring to himself when he mentioned the Paraclete and to his own gospel when he mentioned the Paraclete’s message and that only later did someone make the connection between the Paraclete and the Spirit (thus in John 14) and then interpolate it into the older text (16:13).’ Windisch rejects this view but agrees that the evangelist (who has himself made the connection between Spirit and Paraclete) regards his gospel as a proclamation of the Paraclete-Spirit and himself as a bearer of the message of the Paraclete. I find it striking that in the Saddharma Pu∫∂arïka IX, 6-7, Ananda says of himself: ‘Now I remember it (the law) as if it had happened today or yesterday. I am freed from all doubts; I am ready for enlightenment. Such is my skilfulness as I am the servitor [italics mine {Bruns’}] and keep the true law for the sake of enlightenment.’ Max Müller notes that the word translated ‘servitor’ is parikäraka, synonymous with upasthäyaka, and has the meaning of ‘one who is in attendance, in readiness.’ Is this far removed from the notion of Paraclete as one who assists particularly by way of reminding (John 14:26)? Again it is to Ananda that the Buddha says: ‘It may be, Ananda, that in some of you the thought may arise, “the word of the Master is ended”, we have no teacher [any]more! But it is not thus Ananda, that you should regard it. The truths and the rules of the order which I have set forth and laid down for you all, let them, after I am gone, be the teacher to you (Mahä-Parinibbäna-Sutta, VI.1) and indeed the Paraclete ‘will not speak on his own authority, but whatever he hears he will speak’ (John 16:13). 22Cf. Conze, 152-153. Significant too, I think, in terms of the Johannine passage about to be considered, is the legend that Ananda was at first refused admittance to the Council because he had exposed the mortal remains of the Buddha to a large crowd of followers thinking that they would thereby be moved from a more sensual to a more spiritual disposition of mind and heart. I have not been able to locate the text of this story but it is related by T. d’Eypernon in his Les Paradoxes du Bouddhisme (Paris 1947), 95. In any case it is no less interesting that it is the Buddha’s senior member of the Sangha, Käsyapa, who presided over the Council of Räjag®iha who disciplined Ananda in this way (cf. R. Grousset, In the Footsteps of the Buddha (Freeport, NY 1970), 171-172). For anyone reading the fourth gospel this interaction between Ananda and Käsyapa cannot but be redolent of the interactions between Peter and John in John 20:2-10 and 21:20-22. 186 “Side”-notes 23On John, Tract CXX. 24 Many things might be said here and the hypothesis requires further development. M.E. Boismard considers 20:24-31 a redactional addition to the fourth gospel: ‘Saint Luc et la rédaction du Quatrième Evangile’, Revue Biblique 69 (1962) 200-203. R. E. Brown (scarcely alone in this) maintains that the Galilean appearances of Jesus to the disciples once preceded the Jerusalem appearances and that the redactor of the fourth gospel, not knowing the proper sequence, added the appearance in chapter 21 rather than smoothly intercalate it (commentary II, 1080). B. Lindars (The Gospel of John [London 1972] 619) rightly notes that ‘although it [the appearance in chapter 21] is said to be the third appearance of Jesus to the disciples, it gives the impression of being the first.’ It is not surprising that in Fortna’s reconstruction of the Gospel of Signs the only resurrection appearance is a truncated version of chapter 20 of John with, of course, no mention of the beloved disciple: see R. Fortna, The Gospel of Signs (Cambridge 1970), 245. As Fortna has made quite clear, both in this monograph and in subsequent articles, the concerns of the ‘Signs Gospel’ were certainly not those of the fourth evangelist. In the light of these and other considerations the conjecture hazarded here seems far from preposterous, but it does, of course, entail a lengthy discussion of the whole redactional problem inherent in the fourth gospel and that is beyond (though hardly unrelated to) the scope of this article. 25See my article, ‘The Fourth Gospel: Present Trends of Analysis’, in The Bible Today 59 (1972), 699-703. 26 J.L. Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (New York 1968), especially 58, n. 94. 27S. Schulz, Das Evangelium nach Johannes, Das Neue Testament Deutsch 4, 12 [ed.] (Göttingen 1972), esp. 7-12. 28 ‘The Man from Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism’, Journal of Biblical Literature 91 (1972), 69. 29 Ibid., 71-72. Meeks is right, of course, in seeing the Johannine community as discovering its uniqueness in its special interpretation of the words and person of Jesus and in the members’ acceptance of this, but he implies that they could eventually justify this position only by some ontologically based condition of soul. I do not think this follows. Both the gospel and the first epistle place all stress on the willingness of men either to hear or not to hear, to love or not to love. No one is destined to remain in darkness: that is a free choice. It is true that ‘no one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him’ (John 6:44), but this is a function of listening, since everyone who listens to the Father and learns, comes to me (6:45), and we know from 3:7-8 that this requires nothing more than opening oneself to the Spirit. It is for this reason that in the Johannine schema of ‘predestination’ it is the individual who judges himself (John 12:47-8 and cf. 8:43). The complacent (the Pharisees in this gospel) have no need to listen for they are convinced that they know what God is (John 8:54-55), but that is their sin and radically opposed to the concept of rebirth. Nevertheless it is deliberate, a preference (3:19). 187 cloths lying emptied, and is then followed into the tomb by the other disciple. The text then reads: ‘Then the other disciple, he who had first come to the tomb, also went in, and he saw and believed; for they did not yet understand the scripture that He must rise from the dead.’ What a strange juxtaposition of statements:‘he saw and believed; for they did not yet understand.’ The corrector of D changes 8b to ouk episteusen, but Augustine appears to have correctly understood this passage: ‘what was it that he believed? what but this, that he saw the sepulchre empty and believed what the woman had said, that he had been taken away from the tomb.’23 The disciple does not enter at first. He does not want to believe that even the mortal remains of the Lord have vanished, but he does, finally, and accepts the fact. Yet when we meet the beloved disciple again on the shores of Galilee it is he who first recognizes the risen Lord (John 21:7) . It is one of the anomalies of John 21 that, according to 20:19-29, the disciples had twice seen Jesus before his appearance at the lake of Tiberias, and yet they do not now recognize him. It is the beloved disciple (not one of the eleven if we read the gospel rightly for, after all, the eleven had fled (John 16:32) while the beloved disciple remained alone at the cross with the women (John 19:26; cf. Matt. 28:7) who does so. I hazard the conjecture that the added chapter 21 (an appendix as all Johannine scholars agree), inserted by the editor or editors for whom the beloved disciple was of singular importance, was intended to replace 20:19-3124 and precisely so that he should be the first to testify to and recognize the reality of a risen and glorified Jesus. Two further ‘coincidences’ with the figure of Ananda? In the last few years Johannine studies have been much taken up with the question of source analysis and with consequent reconstructions of pre-existing, synoptic-like materials which may even have existed in the form of a gospel (quite unlike John’s, it need hardly be added) used by the evangelist. There has also been increasing attention given to the quality and theology of the discourse material with its semi-gnostic overtones and to the subtle differences between the ecclesiological stances taken in certain sections of the supper discourses and the possible significance these may have for relating the gospel to the first letter of John.25 But behind all of these absorbing and exciting questions and pursuits there remains the enigma of the locus originis. What kind of a community gave birth to this gospel? Was it Martyn’s Christian community locked in bitter conflict with the great synagogue of Alexandria?26 Or was it Schulz’s already somewhat gnosticized Syrian community for whom Jesus was a redeemer drawn to Käsemann-like specifications?27 Wayne Meeks describes it as a community ‘that evidently sees itself as unique, alien from its world, under attack, misunderstood, but living in unity with Christ and through him with God.’28 Meeks goes on to suggest that the kind of community most receptive to the fourth gospel would have been of an ‘anti-worldly’ type best represented by what we know of early Valentinianism.29 I must confess that after more than a year’s effort to appreciate this conclusion, I cannot agree. It is quite apparent, from what I have said, that the author (editors) of the fourth gospel did, 239 188 as Meeks thinks, see himself (themselves) as ‘unique, under attack, and misunderstood,’ but I disagree with his judgment that the fourth gospel ‘could hardly be regarded as a missionary tract.’ Certainly the community which supported this gospel was not ‘missionary’ in what we might call the Pauline tradition, but its evident interest in justifying its interpretation of the role and mission of Jesus reveals an obvious missionary concern. For Meeks this is a group which produced ‘a book for insiders.’ What need would they have to do so if they were as isolated and unimportant as he implies they were? I am inclined to reaffirm what H.L. Jackson said fifty years ago, that the fourth evangelist was ‘an object of suspicion and distrust’30 (this is also Barrett’s view)31 but also that he was persuaded that ‘his glances reached ahead’ and foresaw the value that his work would have for those who came after him.32 Such foresight could only arise in a milieu in which something other than the usual presentation of the Christian message could prevail and have effect. This merely emphasizes the fact that we do not know from what sort of milieu this marvellous gospel emerged. In this essay I am merely suggesting, once more, that some of the mystery surrounding the gospel and its community may perhaps be sought in its (hypothetical) contact with the teaching and tradition of that other great missionary religion farther to the East but no stranger to the heterogeneous society of the Hellenistic West.33 * * * * * * * * * 240 189 “Side”-notes 30 Jackson, 130. 31C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John (London 1960), 113. 32 Jackson, 131. 33 I am happy to see that G.R. Welbon asks the question: ‘May not Christianity’s very existence be a powerful witness to the encounter of Buddhism and the West?’ (The Buddhist Nirvana and its Western Interpreters (Chicago & London 1968), 5), even though he seems to take a dim view of the possibility of any real encounter between the two religions before the end of the second century, relying, to a great extent, for this sceptical view on citations from De Lubac. Personally I find De Lubac’s position in this matter to be vacillating if not ambiguous. In his article ‘Textes Alexandrins et Bouddhiques’, Recherches de Science Religieuse 27 (1937), while acknowledging the difficulty in determining whether Buddhism influenced western thinking at this early period, De Lubac writes: ‘La question générale d’un facteur indien dans la formation du néo-platonisme demeure ouverte; l’existence d’une colonie bouddhique dans la grand Alexandrie n’est pas décidément controuvée, et tout au moins il semble que les Alexandrins aient été un peu moins mal renseignés sur les choses bouddhiques que les habitants de beaucoup d’autres regions de l’Empire; des emprunts au bouddhisme ont été maintes fois signalés, non toujours sans vraisemblance, dans plusieurs apocryphes chrétiens, dans la littérature judéo-chrétienne, ou chez des gnostiques, surtout chez Basilide.’ [‘The general question of an Indian factor in the formation of neo-Platonism remains open; the existence of a Buddhist colony in Greater Alexandria is not decidedly controverted, and at least it seems that the Alexandrians were a little less misinformed about Buddhist things than the inhabitants of many other regions of the Empire; Borrowings from Buddhism have been repeatedly mentioned, not always without probability, in several Christian apocrypha, in Judaeo-Christian literature, or among Gnostics, especially in Basilides.’ – trans. ML & GT] As for the view that it was the West which influenced the East [De Lubac] specifically states: ‘[U]ne action en sens inverse, au cours d’une période un peu antérieure, n’est non plus à écarter, et il se pourrait que sur un point ou l’autre il y ait eu un prêté rendu’ (337-338). [‘An action in the opposite direction, during a somewhat earlier period, is no longer to be rejected, and it may be that at one point or another there has been a loan.’] 190 To recapitulate, I noted, on page 176, above, that J. Edgar Bruns clearly states his belief that “Johannine thought is structurally closer to that of Mädhyamika Buddhism than it is to either the Judaic or Hellenistic categories of thought then current”. The Madhyamaka (Centrist) School was a branch of Mahäyäna Buddhism. And further, on page 177, I reproduced extended passages of R.S. Sugirtharajah’s discussion of three specific ways in which Bruns demonstrates how the theological categories in the Johannine Epistles are closer to Mahäyäna Buddhism than to Judaic or Hellenistic categories of thought: 1) “God” does not generate love in human being, but it is the loving that human beings do which represents the otherwise‘non-existent “God” ’; 2) the Johannine doctrine of ‘indwelling’ (1 John 4:4, 15-16) corresponds to the Buddhist concept of the “Buddhist Nature”; and 3) the Johannine idea (1 John 3:14) that Christians have passed from death to life is very close to the Mahäyäna notion of ‘the exercise of wisdom as identical with the state of Nirvä∫a’. Overshadowing all of these issues is the question of the significance of the parallelisms between Buddhist and Johannine thought. Dr. Bruns, in the concluding lines of his “Änanda” essay (reproduced on page 188, above), considers it to be a “fact” that we do not know from what sort of milieu this marvellous gospel emerged. In this essay I am merely suggesting, once more, that some of the mystery surrounding the gospel and its community may perhaps be sought in its (hypothetical) contact with the teaching and tradition of that other great missionary religion farther to the East but no stranger to the heterogeneous society of the Hellenistic West. Contrary to Bruns’ claim that we don’t know from what sort of milieu John’s gospel emerged, the whole aim of this present article of mine, has been to determine the very nature of that milieu, and how this “Christian” community was connected to “that other great missionary religion [Buddhism] farther to the East but no stranger to the heterogeneous society of the Hellenistic West”. Though my solution tends to create mind-blowing cognitive dissonance, it explains the even more general milieu that gave birth to Christianity, itself – which, in fact, was through crypto-Buddhism – which can be traced back to the much earlier third century BCE, when Buddhist scholars had been invited to the Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt, and there found it expedient to hide their‘Buddhism’ by becoming camouflaged as semi-proselytized followers of Judaism! To those scholars possessing a knowledge of Sanskrit, and whose minds have not been limited by traditional boundaries of Christianity, the very name ‘Gnosticism’should most strongly suggest to them its relation to Buddhism. Etymologically, the word comes to us from Greek. The cognate word for ‘gnosis’ in Sanskrit is ‘jñäna’, whose derivative form ‘prajñä’, had, by the first century CE, come to be enshrined in the Sanskrit titles of Mahäyäna Buddhism’s most sacred series of scriptural works, the Perfection of Wisdom (Prajñä-päramitä) literature. Thus it was that Buddhist monks, who arrived in the Greek kingdoms, with their‘upäyakauåalyan’ approach to spreading Buddhism, must have deliberately avoided identifying themselves with any foreign, pagan name or term such as‘Buddha’ or‘bodhi’. The Buddhist roots of both Gnosticism and Christianity have been revealed in the really profound observations made by Edward Conze, in 1959, in the Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, where he noted “close verbal coincidences” between passages in the 191 New Testament’s Book of Revelation and in the great Mahäyäna work, The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines: Occasionally we find close verbal coincidences between the Christian and the Mahäyäna scriptures. Just one instance must suffice. At the time when the Revelation of St John was written down in Greek in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Mahäyänists produced in the South of India one of their most revered books, The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines. Revelation [5:1] refers to a book ‘closely sealed’ with seven seals, and likewise The Perfection of Wisdom is called a book ‘sealed with seven seals’. It is shown to a Bodhisattva by the name of ‘Everweeping’ (Sadäprarudita), and St John ‘weeps bitterly’ ([Rev. 5:4]) because he sees no one worthy to open the book and to break its seals. This can be done by the Lamb alone, slaughtered in sacrifice ([Rev. 5:9]). In the same way, chapters 30 and 31 of the Mahäyäna book describe in detail how Everweeping slaughtered himself in sacrifice, and how he thereby became worthy of the ‘Perfection of Wisdom’ (see pp. 302-303). This parallel is remarkable not only for the similarities of the religious logic, but also for the fact that both the number seven and the whole notion of a ‘book with seven seals’ point to the Judaeo-Mediterranean rather than to the Indian tradition. Here is a fruitful field for further study. At present we cannot account for the parallels between the Mediterranean and Indian developments which occur at the beginning of the Christian era. For the interpretation of the Mahäyäna they are significant and should not be ignored. – R.C. Zaehner (ed.), Encyclopedia of the World’s Religions, London 1959, pp. 293-294. This specific excerpt from Conze’s encyclopedia article has appeared in both of my earlier books – in Buddhism’s Relation to Christianity (2010), p. 260, where it is part of an anthologized article by Christian Lindtner, and in Mythicism (2013), p. 90, where I noted, there, that Conze was deeply puzzled by the obvious Judæo-Mediterranean details in The Perfection of Wisdom in 8,000 Lines (A߆asähasrika Prajñäpäramitä), which latter work he claimed was produced by the Mahäyänists in South India. In answer to Conze’s puzzlement, I suggested in my 2013 book, a simple ‘geographical’ solution which would account for the‘remarkable’ presence of these Judæo-Mediterranean details in The Perfection of Wisdom literature. I proposed that though this literature had, indeed, been authored by Mahäyänist scholars, these scholars were, in fact, not residing in South India at that time, but in the environment of the Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt! The whole burden of Part I, as well as of the Interlude of this article, has been to establish the high probability of a longstanding presence of Buddhist scholars in Alexandria, from very early in the third century BCE reign of King Chandragupta Maurya through his grandson, King Aåöka’s reign, as part of Indian contingents of scholars personally invited to the Great Library of Alexandria by both Ptolemy-I and Ptolemy-II. Thereafter, it is most likely that the Buddhist monks and nuns, who already must have situated their monasteries just outside the city, may have also established their own schools in Alexandria. On my view, it is only much later, around the beginning of the second century CE, that one of these schools becomes known to history as the Catechetical School of Alexandria, also called the Didascalium – which, though called “Christian”, had actually metamorphosed out of an earlier institution of the “Therapeutæ”. By tactically maintaining a low-profile existence, both in their monasteries and schools, the Therapeutæ (Buddhists camouflaged as semi-proselytes of the Jews), pursued their propagation of Buddhism in “Jewish clothing”. 192 Also, a significant indication that both the Perfection of Wisdom literature and the New Testament’s Book of Revelation were written from the environment of the Royal Library of Alexandria is the identical, very strange behavior of their main protagonists: (‘Everweeping’/‘Sadäprarudita’, in Sanskrit). When one realizes that both the Book of Revelation and Perfection of Wisdom originated from the Great Library of Alexandria, it becomes evident that this unusual behavior of each of the main characters alludes strikingly to the great Greek ‘Weeping Philosopher’, Heraclitus! Thus, both the Buddhist and crypto-Buddhist (“Christian”) authors pointedly refer to this very well known Greek philosopher who was a contemporary of the Buddha and who had similar pessimistic views of the transient nature of our lives, continually being transformed as if by everlasting fire. Heraclitus, painted by Johannes Moreelse We even note a belittling attitude toward Greek gods, in later Buddhist iconography, with its direct lampooning of the great Greek god, Zeus, wielder of the thunderbolt: A. B. C. A. ‘In the art of Gandhära, Zeus became the inseparable companion of the Buddha as Vajrapä∫i, He wears the characteristic dress of a Graeco-Parthian attendant, namely a short chiton, “caught up in round the waist and provided with a scalloped turnover edge at the top”.’ The internal quote is from John Marshall, The Buddhist Art of Gandhära (Cambridge: The University Press, 1960), p. 47, quoted in Freedom, Progress and Society: Essays in Honour of Professor K. Satchidananda Murty, eds. R. Balasubramanian and Sibajiban Bhattacharya (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986), p. 97. These observations fail to note the searing irony of the mighty Zeus, clutching the thunderbolt in his left hand, reduced to wielding a fly-whisk with his right hand, a task usually reserved for women! In photograph B., the King of the gods, again wielding a fly-whisk, is shown with full-frontal nudity. In C., Zeus’s naked mooning, is to his own discredit, and is not an indignity aimed at the observer! Heraclitus, here, wringing his hands and weeping for the world. Painting located in Centraal Museum, Utrecht, Netherlands. 193 The Gnostic Sophia and Buddhist Prajñäpäramitä were Born in a Library! In the year 1948, Edward Conze published a review of Helmer Ringgren’s book, Word and Wisdom: Studies in the hypostatization of divine qualities and functions in the Ancient Near East, which review appeared in Oriental Art I, 4, pp. 196-197. In 1967, this review was printed again in Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies: Selected Essays by Edward Conze, pp. 207-209. In spite of its brevity, Conze’s review of Ringgren’s book is surely one of the most significant reviews ever written in the field of comparative religions. Conze’s first sentence unstintingly praises it: “Although H. Ringgren’s book was written chiefly for theologians, it is invaluable to all students of Asiatic cultures.” As Conze acknowledges (p. 207), Ringgren’s long chapter on “Wisdom in the Old Testament and in Later Judaism” brings out the extraordinary fact that during the same period of time, – i.e. from ca. 200 B.C. onwards – two distinct civilizations, one in the Mediterranean, the other in India, constructed a closely analogous set of ideas concerning “wisdom”, each one apparently independently, from its own cultural antecedents. Not that Ringgren, a specialist in Near Eastern literature, is aware of the connection. [Emphasis added] For Conze, Ringgren’s work is especially important because it has provided such detailed information for scholars (like Conze) who have even a broader outlook, which includes India. Here is how Conze dryly expresses Ringgren’s limitation: “His account of Jewish wisdom literature is unbiassed by any opinion about its relation to Indian thought.” Conze’s quip simply means that Ringgren had no knowledge at all of Indian thought. Such knowledge makes a world of difference! Conze proceeds then to brilliantly “set out some of the parallels or coincidences which [he] observed between Ringgren’s account of Chochma and Sophia [. ..] on the one hand, and the Buddhist texts dealing with perfect wisdom, or Prajñäpäramitä [. . .], on the other.” But as for providing any satisfying account of how the two originated (Sophia in the Septuagint and in Gnostic literature, on the one hand, and, on the other, Prajñäpäramitä in Buddhist scriptures), Conze admits that that is problematic!: ¶ In all this we may have to deal with parallel developments, under the influence of local conditions, from a general widely diffused culture pattern. Or it may, of course, be that there is some hidden rhythm in history which activates certain archetypes – as Jung would call them – at certain periods in widely distant places. All that I set out to do in this review was to remind readers that there is a problem here, which historians cannot ignore, and for which they find first-hand material in Ringgren’s careful and painstaking survey of the facts concerning the ancient Near East. According to my paradigm, there was no parallel development from widely diffused cultures or from some hidden Jungian archetypical rhythm. No! The real origin of these parallel developments was from the person-to-person interactions between Jewish scholars and Buddhist scholars (who became ‘semi-proselytes’ of the Jews), which took place in the Royal Library of Alexandria, during the third century BCE! 194 In Gnosticism, Sophia is a feminine figure, personifying ‘Wisdom’. This second century CE sculpture of Sophia is at the Celsus Library, in the city of Ephesus. The goddess Prajñäpäramitä is the Buddhist personification of the ‘Perfection of Wisdom’, here a 13th century CE stone statue discovered in East Java. According to local belief, this statue was also originally made in the likeness of Queen Gäyatrï (wife of King Kertaräja) to memorialize her, after she had died. Sophia Prajñäpäramitä 195 Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies: Selected Essays by Edward Conze (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1967), pp. 207-209: ____________________ PRAJÑÄ AND SOPHIA WORD AND WISDOM. Studies in the hypostatization of divine qualities and functions in the Ancient Near East. By Helmer Ringgren. Håken Ohlssons Boktryckeri. Lund, 1947, 234 pages. Although H. Ringgren’s book was written chiefly for theologians, it is invaluable to all students of Asiatic culture. Ringgren assumes that “monotheism is the primitive religion”, and polytheism a later stage of religious development. “How then”, he asks himself, “has the puzzling multitude of gods and goddesses, that we meet with in most peoples, arisen?” In “Word and Wisdom” he considers “one of the factors that have been active in this process, viz. the hypostatization of divine qualities and functions” (p. 8). In the course of his book he surveys the hypostases in the religions of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, among the Western Semites and ancient Jews, and in Pre-Islamic Arabia. Whatever may be the merits of Ringgren’s theological thesis, his long chapter on “Wisdom in the Old Testament and in Later Judaism” brings out the extraordinary fact that during the same period of time, – i.e. from ca. 200 B.C. onwards – two distinct civilizations, one in the Mediterranean, the other in India, constructed a closely analogous set of ideas concerning “wisdom”, each one apparently independently, from its own cultural antecedents. Not that Ringgren, a specialist in Near Eastern literature, is aware of this connection. His account of Jewish wisdom literature is unbiassed by any opinion about its relation to Indian thought. It may not be without interest to set out some of the parallels or coincidences which I observed between Ringgren’s account of Chochma and Sophia (abbreviated as S) on the one hand, and the Buddhist texts dealing with perfect wisdom, or Prajñäpäramitä (abbreviated as PP), on the other. Both S and PP are feminine. S is a mother (Ringgren pp. 111, 124, 125), and the PP is repeatedly called the “mother” of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas. S is equated with the law (törä) 207 196 208 Thirty Years of Buddhist Studies pp. 110, 114); PP is identified with Dharma. Both have existed from all times (p. 100), and are described as extremely elusive (pp. 96, 107). They are the equivalent of God (pp. 110, 115), and of the Buddha respectively. S is a gift of God (p. 127); the PP is taught through “the Buddha’s might”. They are both praised by litanies, which enumerate their attributes – 21 for S (p. 116), 32 for PP. S is related to the sky (p. 137), just as PP is again and again related to ether (äkäåa). Both dispense the waters of knowledge (p. 111, cf. 141; and Ash†a, xix, 363), and the “food of life’ (p. 141), “the food of the ambrosial (deathless) Dharma”, as the Pañcaåatikä (ii, 744d) calls it. Both are connected with a tree, S with the tree of life in Paradise (p. 140), and PP with the Bodhi-tree. Both are extremely pure (pp. 112, 116 and viåuddhi), are compared to light (p. 116), and are called “nurse and nourisher” (p. 125, and ähärikä). We are urged to “lean upon” Sophia (p. 111; cf. 122), and to rely, or lean on äåritya) the PP. We must accept the chastisement of S (p. 120), While the Diamond Sütra tells us to allow ourselves to be “humbled, well humbled”. S disappears in the chaos of the last days (p. 120), and the sütras on PP show a marked preoccupation with what they call “the future period, the last time, the last epoch, the last five hundred years, the time of the collapse of the good Dharma”. S is of vital importance for kings and rulers (pp. 97, 141, etc.); this aspect of PP has been worked out in a special Sütra of great renown, the Ninnö-kyö. The sexual aspects of wisdom are only alluded to in the texts dealing with the PP. They come to the fore in the later development of the Buddhist Tantra. Just as Sophia is the paredros of Jahwe, his companion, or consort, his “darling” (Prov. 8:30), just so in the Tantra Perfect Wisdom becomes the consort of Vajradhara, the supreme Buddha. Cults of ritual sexuality were widely practised among the populations with which the ancient Jews were in contact. Some sections of Jewry did not remain uninfluenced by such cults. We know from the Elephantine papyri that in the fifth century B.C. a number of Jews in the Nile delta believed that Jahwe had a wife, Anath-Jahu. As Ringgren (p. 147) and also Rankin (Israel’s Wisdom Literature, pp. 229-230) point out, the notion which made Wisdom the associate of Jahwe partly incorporated, and partly combated such ideas of the popular imagination. In this connection 197 Prajñä and Sophia 209 Ringgren ignores S.H. Hooke’s valuable studies about the erotic element in ancient Judaism. As a final parallel I may mention that Sophia is described as suitable for sexual intercourse (p. 119, cf. 106); in the left-handed Tantra the girls who are used for ritual intercourse are called Prajñä, wisdom. In a similar spirit the Gnostic Simon called his “wife” Helene “Sophia”, or “Ennoia” (= jñäna). The number of parallels could easily be multiplied if one were to take into account the kindred literature of Hellenism, of Gnosticism, of Neo-Platonism. We find everywhere in the Mediterranean world at that period a fusion between the idea of wisdom and the idea of the magna mater, resulting in a new deity who is modelled on Ishthar, Isis and Athene, and who is placed by the side of the supreme male being. A study of the more philosophical authors – like Philon or Proclus – reveals a profusion of verbal coincidences with the Prajñäpäramitä texts. Here Sophia as [oikia] (house) of the wise, there the Prajñäpäramitä as their vihära (dwelling). The epithet [phösphóros] (light-bringer) corresponds to äloka-kari, [akhräntos] (immaculate) to anupaliptä; etc., etc. It cannot be the purpose of a review to try and exhaust a problem of this magnitude. Ringgren himself gives a very thorough survey of “foreign influences” on the “Jewish conception of Wisdom” (pp. 128-149), without coming to any very definite conclusion. I regretted, incidentally, that he does not discuss Troje’s suggestion , as far back as 1925, that Sophia is derived from Buddhi. In all this we may have to deal with parallel developments, under the influence of local conditions, from a general widely diffused culture pattern. Or it may, of course, be that there is some hidden rhythm in history which activates certain archetypes – as Jung would call them – at certain periods in widely distant places. All that I set out to do in this review was to remind readers that there is a problem here, which historians cannot ignore, and for which they find first-hand material in Ringgren’s careful and painstaking survey of the facts concerning the ancient Near East. * * * * * * * * * 198 Comment by ML: On the first page, second paragraph, of Conze’s review, he has a convoluted sentence which is confusingly ambiguous! He says that Ringgren’s long chapter on “Wisdom in the Old Testament and in Later Judaism” brings out the extraordinary fact that during the same period of time, – i.e. from ca 200 B.C. onwards – two distinct civilizations, one in the Mediterranean, the other in India constructed a closely analogous set of ideas concerning “wisdom”, each one apparently independently, from its own cultural antecedents. Does Conze mean by this that: A) Ringgren was bringing out this “extraordinary fact”? (which I think is how most readers would understand the sentence); or B) that Conze’s statement is a confusing case of hyper-understated elision with the following actual implied meaning?: . . . [Ringgren’s] long chapter on “Wisdom in the Old Testament and in Later Judaism” raises [in Conze’s mind only] the extraordinary fact that during the same period of time, – i.e. from ca 200 B.C. onwards – two distinct civilizations, one in the Mediterranean, the other in India constructed a closely analogous set of ideas concerning “wisdom”, each one apparently independently, from its own cultural antecedents. Ringgren’s book has an index. A look for Buddhist terms and names immediately settles the matter: there are no such terms or names in the book’s index! Therefore, the correct answer to my question is B). A second difficulty is met throughout Conze’s review, with its long list of comparisons between passages representing“Wisdom in the Old Testament and Later Judaism” (Sophia), on the one hand, and passages representing Buddhist Prajñäpäramitä (PP), on the other, because Conze gives only the page numbers in Ringgren’s book as references to the former – nothing more! Therefore, to fully understand Conze’s many comparisons in his review, one must have a physical or digital copy of Ringgren’s 1947 book at hand. I have, earlier, proposed to resolve Conze’s profound puzzlement over what he believes to be a fact, that: two distinct civilizations, one in the Mediterranean, the other in India, constructed a closely analogous set of ideas concerning “wisdom”, each one apparently independently, from its own cultural antecedents. I am simply challenging Conze’s belief in the ‘independence’ of the Judaic and Buddhist analogous sets of ideas concerning “wisdom”. The historical fact is, I believe, that these “analogous sets” were not constructed independently – but, rather, interactively in the Royal Library of Alexandria, Egypt, beginning most likely sometime during the second century BCE, which is the dating suggested by Conze for the earliest of the Prajñäpäramitä works – though possibly earlier, in the third century BCE – but not before that! Now, combine the theory which I have proposed in the paragraphs above with the revolutionary theories of Dr. Russell E. Gmirkin, in his book, Berossus and Genesis, 199 Manetho and Exodus: Hellenistic Histories and the Date of the Pentateuch (2006), where he has concluded that the Hebrew Pentateuch was compiled and written down, ca. 270 BCE, drawing on a variety of sources written in Greek and housed in the Great Library of Alexandria. This in turn led to the conclusion that the authors of the Pentateuch were the same group of seventy aristocratic, Greek-educated Jewish scholars that ancient tradition credited with having translated the Pentateuch into Greek at Alexandria at almost exactly the same time (ca. 273-269 BCE). The stunning (explosive?) conclusions which we may draw from all of this reasoning is that in the third century BCE, at the Great Library of Alexandria, the Jewish “seventy” scholars who had translated the Pentateuch into the Greek Septuagint, had a few years earlier compiled and created the Pentateuch, itself. And all the while there were also Buddhist scholars there at the Library composing their own Mahäyäna scriptures. And that there was plenty of syncretism going on between the two groups is evident in their works, themselves. Here is what’s stunning: That the two closely analogous sets of Judaic and Buddhist ideas concerning ‘wisdom’, first outlined by Conze in his 1948 review of Ringgren’s book, provide an additional “double helical” confirmation of Gmirkin’s daring post-dating of the creation of the Pentateuch to the third century, BCE, and his placement of that creation in the Great Library of Alexandria. And when taken together with Lockwood’s (related) proposal of a simple explanation of how those two closely analogous sets of ideas concerning ‘wisdom’ came about. That they both were, in fact, interactively created, at the same time, in the Great Library of Alexandria! – a proposal that absolutely no one else has thought of. (I anticipate the ensuing chorus: ‘No one else has, for a very good reason!’) The fact is that ever since Samuel Sandmel’s article “Parallelomania”, in the Journal of Biblical Literature 81 (1962), pp. 1-13, scholars have misused the term freely to intimidate anyone who puts forward a view distasteful to them which depends on parallelisms. * * * * * * * * *
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