The Trial of Jesus and His Death on the Cross: Buddhist Sources of Gospel Narratives

For the last twenty years I have been studying the problem of the literary indebtedness of the New Testament to the vast collection of the pre-Christian Buddhist Scriptures. As a result, I was able to publish a book and a monograph a few years ago. All this time I had the hunch that there must be Buddhist parallels to the gospel narratives of the trial, death and resurrection of Jesus. A few years ago, I succeeded serendipitously in making a literary connection between the Sanskrit play Mrcchakatika (“The Little Clay Cart”), which is a dramatic enactment of the trial of Charudatta and the resurrection of the courtesan Vasantasena, who returns in the nick of time to rescue Charudatta from execution by crucifixion ordered by the king. At about the same time, Dr. Christian Lindtner from Denmark identified the Buddhist story of “The Passion and Death of Gautama” found in the Sanghabhedavastu of the Mahaparinirvanasutra of the Buddhist Sarvastivadins as another source for the gospel passion narratives. After having shared and discussed with each other our discoveries, we have concluded that the Gautama-story was the source of Mrcchakatika and the evangelists used both Indian works in the composition of the gospel passion narratives. The present study is a careful comparison of the gospel narratives with the Indian texts, leaving no doubt whatsoever in my mind that the gospel writers had made extensive use of these Indian texts either in the original or through their Greek/Aramaic imitations/translations.