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Prince Siddhartha renounced wealth and sought salvation.

      And as this great story percolated around the ancient East, translated from one tongue to another, the title Bodhisattva ("Budhasaf" in Persian) was transfigured into other forms such as Ioasaph, Josaphat (cf. Jehoshaphat in 1 Kings chapter 22), Yudasaf, and Iodasaph. It could be understood as a Hebrew name, as Hugh J. Schonfield understood it in his book The Essene Odyssey: "Yodh-Asaph." But the parallels between the stories of Iodasaph and the Bodhisattva make it clear they are one and the same. We are here not dealing with a case of mysterious and spontaneous parallelism as we sometimes discover between, say, the Flood myths of far-separated cultures. This one is very evidently a case of diffusion. The Buddhist tale reached the West and took root. The Bodhisattva became Saint Iodasaph, and so he remains. And right here, just this is the astonishing enigma. Gautama the Buddha, founder of the Buddhist faith, has been canonized by the Roman Catholic Church as one of her saints! Most of those few who have taken any notice of the strange fact have merely smiled at the irony, but I want to suggest that what we have here is a serendipitous case of intertextual alchemy, a chance combination of chemicals to transmute the lead of religious intolerance and isolation into the gold of theological cross-fertilization and hybridization. The fact is, however it came to pass (in the mysterious providence of God?), the Buddha is a Christian saint!

      More Than Mistaken Identity

      This means the road was long ago opened for a path that Christians and Buddhists may walk together, hand in hand, even within a single heart, as Thomas Merton did. It is a path that Buddhists and Hindus have been treading already for a long time without us, for some among their number long ago decided that Jesus of Nazareth was an avatar of the Highest, just like Rama and Krishna, or that he was a Buddha or Bodhisattva. Given the close similarity between the doctrines and stories of Jesus in Christianity with those related of their own heroes and saviors, how could they have come to any other conclusion?

      Though the final step of identification of Iodasaph as a Christian was unwitting, the whole thing rests on an ancient and impressive foundation which, so to speak, fortuitously came to light once the "mistake" was made. For how did a Buddhist tale manage to travel so widely into the West? It was carried by Manicheans who spanned the Middle East and Turkestan in the sixth century. Theirs was a form of Gnosticism created by the Apostle Mani in third-century Persia. Mani proclaimed himself the latest avatar of the same Spirit that had previously appeared on earth as the Prophet Zoroaster, Gautama the Buddha, and Jesus the Christ. His message was fantastically successful and created a world religion that lasted a full millennium, though it is dead now. He did not avoid making enemies, and in the end Mani was crucified, skinned alive, and burnt.

      You see, Mani's doctrine was already syncretic, melding together elements of previous religions on the assumption that the great faith communities must all, as Paul Tillich said, have grown out of genuine revelatory experiences. And that means, as C.S. Lewis ventured in The Screwtape Letters, all the great founders had been sent from the same divine Source. The same doctrine of progressive revelation had already enabled Ebionite, Jewish Christianity of the second century to teach that Jesus Christ was the latest incarnation of the True Prophet who had first been incarnated in/as Adam, the father of the human race. The prediction of the Paraclete, a figure to follow Jesus and expound the esoteric import of his message to a subsequent generation of his followers (John 14:15-17; 16:12-15), partakes of the same stream of thought. The Prophet Muhammad was conversant with the same prophetology, and something like this is implied when he announced himself the Seal of the Prophets. After his own departure, later Muslim sectarians, especially the Shi'ites, posited a succession of divinely inspired imams (teachers) descended from the Prophet and able to reveal the true meaning of his oracles. In Egypt, the Ismail'i Shi'ites came to believe that their Fatimid caliphs were themselves extensions of this chain, either divinely inspired guides or else actual incarnations of Allah. This Ismail'i esotericism gave birth in the eleventh century to the Druze faith. Similar developments in nineteenth-century Iran led to Ali Muhammad proclaiming himself the latest "Point" of divine manifestation, the Hidden Imam or Qai'm or Mahdi, the final Imam descended from Muhammad. And yet, he said, after his passing, there should come others at intervals of several thousands of years, each to speak new truth suited to a new dispensation. After his passing, almost immediately, Hussein Ali announced himself as the fulfillment of this prophecy, albeit well before the appointed time. Taking the name Baha'ullah ("Glory of God"), he founded the Baha'i Faith. All these prophets considered themselves the heirs, even the reincarnations, of the great ancient founders, though only the Baha'is went so far as the Manicheans had, including the Buddha among their forbears.

      The Dogwood and the Lotus

      It is in such a context that we can see more fully what it really means for the Buddha to appear in the Christian calendar of saints. It is a vestige of Manicheism. It is a witness to the doctrine that the crashing waves of revelation all come from the same source. But, some may well ask, is this not rather easier said than demonstrated? Is the hybrid Buddhist-Christian saint after all a mule? Is it a sterile notion? Radical Christian theologians (Thomas J.J. Altizer, Don Cupitt) have for some time maintained that certain Buddhist doctrines, images, and ethics would solve various Christian problems better than traditional Christian resources could, and that certain tools in the Christian kit might facilitate Buddhist repairs. One might almost compare the situation to those daring surgeries where a human life is saved by a doctor's transplanting a new organ from a different animal species. For myself, I can only say that for many years I have been pleasantly amazed time after time to see how familiar New Testament texts made new sense when placed in the doctrinal context of Buddhism, like holding up a multifaceted gem to the light from a new angle. Again, when the contexts were so different for a notion or a mytheme that seemed readily to fit into both, it helped me to understand the differences between the two faiths better. What is common to them both somehow comes to serve as a measuring rod for each, gauging the distinctives of each all the better.

      My task in this book is to try to demonstrate the potential of the promise of cross-fertilization of faiths that is bequeathed us in the Christian canonization of the Buddha. I want to cash the check, or to begin to do so. I believe that the best way to flesh out our premise, to make it more than an intriguing possibility, is to go back to the ancient way of setting forth spiritual truth: in parables, legends, fables and figures. Discursive theorizing, such as you have endured in this essay, can only get us in the mood, whet our appetite. It is talk that does not cook the rice. I think that to do that, we must try to regain the past and its more effective tools of communication. Hence these tales and sermons of the Buddha in the Bible, Saint Iodasaph.

      Robert M. Price

      June 14, 2003

      1. The Great Commandment

      In the common hall of the monastery of Saint Iodasaph uncommon things were often heard. And it is told that one evening the Blessed Iodasaph ended the long period of gathered silence with the following preachment:

      In the scroll called The Great Book of the Second Dharma, it is recorded that he who set in motion the Wheel of Dharma among the Jews, Moses, one day arose and spoke thus to his disciples, "Hear, O monks: Isvara our God, Isvara is one; and you shall love Isvara your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."

      Here is the great statement of Truth which towers like Everest. It has many heights, many slopes, and each is full of beauty to whomever should view it from whatever height. If one can see but the lower slopes of the mountain, one has still seen beauty. But there are higher slopes, and let the arhat not rest till he has scaled the heights and assumed the vantage point from which the crest may be apprehended.

      What if one should see the pronouncement of the Lord Moses from the foothills of Truth? It is to such a perspective that he refers when he warns the unworthy, "Take heed that you go not up into the mountain, or touch even the border of it." But if one is worthy, yet only such that one may stand upon the bottom-most slopes, this is what one will see:

      Moses will be understood to command that one should devote one self to Isvara, the Lord with qualities, with all of one's strength and resources. On this level of perception, which none ought to despise, one sees the Truth

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