greece, the final frontier? 157
sower and that of the prodigal son, the walking on water, the consola-
tion of the widow, the fasting in the wilderness, and the temptation by
the devil.^130 The multiplication of the bread and the shes by Jesus to
feed a mass of 5,000 people has its counterpart in the feeding of 500
monks with one cake and a little milk with ghee by the Buddhist Elder
Mogallna at the behest of the Buddha, as related in the introduction
to the Ill sajtaka.^131
Since such parallels were rst noticed in the nineteenth century,
the simple fact that Buddhism is the older of the two religions, often
led scholars—including Schopenhauer—to the conviction that com-
mon elements in both must have been borrowed by Christianity from
Buddhism.^132 Though it is dif cult to exactly date it, the extant Buddhist
literature is much younger than the origin of Buddhism and its nal
redaction has often taken place centuries after the beginning of our
era. In quite a number of cases, the direction of borrowing seems to be
rather the reverse: from Christianity into Buddhism.^133 In general, one
may speak of a two-way in uence,^134 but next to nothing is known about
the media and ways of transfer, or when it took place. In a single case,
the sixth century legend of Ioasaph and Barlaam, the transmission can be
traced to a certain extent.^135 Ioasaph and Barlaam is a Greek version of
a popular novel based on an Indian original that came to us through
a series of translations in Pahlavi, Arabic, Syriac, and Georgian. The
extant Greek text is ascribed to Iohannes of Damascus (ca. 650–750
AD), a Christian theologian of Arabic descent, but the actual trans-
lator was probably his contemporary St. Euthymius the Georgian.
This shows that one should not always think of direct in uence from
India. The gure of Ioasaph, who is no other than the bodhisattva of
the Buddha-legends, was eventually canonised by the Church as the
saint Iosaphath. In general, Buddhist-Christian confabulations must
have taken place at various places and spread over a period of almost
a 1,000 years starting with Aoka.^136 It seems to me that persecution
under the Sassanians may have been one of many crucial factors the
(^130) Cf. Derrett 2000.
(^131) Matthaeus, 14.15–16; Marcus, 6.35–36; Lukas, 9.13–14; Jtaka 78 (Cowell 1895,
pp. 195–201); cf. Garbe 1914, pp. 59–61.
(^132) E.g., Lillie 1893; 1909.
(^133) Cf. the examples listed in Derrett 2000, pp. 57–76.
(^134) Cf. Derrett 1967, pp. 59–64; 2000, pp. 45–82.
(^135) Cf. Lang 1955; 1957; Lamotte 1957.
(^136) Derrett 2000, pp. 83–86.