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Robert M. Price. Biblical Buddhism: Tales and Sermons of Saint Iodasaph
Introduction: Saint Iodasaph
1. The Great Commandment
2. The Koan of the Sheep and the Goats
3. The Transformation Body
4. The Man Beset by Robbers
5. The Banquet without Guests
6. The Scripture is Fulfilled
7. The Tree of Enlightenment
8. The Dancing Corpse
9. The Ferryman
10. Temptations Must Come
11. Gods in the Gutter
12. Seeking for Signs
13. Back in the Womb
14. The Cross and the Raft
15. Revelation of Nothing
16. Invisible Light
17. The Serpent’s Wisdom
18. Blessed Are the Blind
Glossary
Biblical Allusions
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The Lesson and the Letter
Historical-critical scrutiny of the legends of the saints, like critical study of the Bible, is a recent phenomenon. For many centuries the religious authorities seemed unable to distinguish between respectful loyalty to sacred texts and their teachings on the one hand and the historical factuality of their narratives on the other. Even today it is possible without too much difficulty to find people who misunderstand the nature of gospel parables, demanding that even they be taken literally. But most even of fundamentalists have gotten beyond that childlike literalism. Will the day come when they no longer recoil at historical criticism as if it were a hostile assault on the text? For it is not. Even hostile polemicist Robert Green Ingersoll (The Mistakes of Moses) made it clear that he bore no hostility toward the Bible, a wonderful ancient book like the Iliad and the Odyssey. His sarcastic dissections of scripture were merely the needful counterweight to those who would inflate proper veneration for the Bible into idolatry by christening the book infallible and inerrant. Today most critics (i.e., students, analysts) of the Bible find that a critical approach, stemming from the recognition that the texts are usually not factual in nature, opens up new riches in the texts, enabling us to see what the blinders of biblical literalism had concealed from us. The same is true of the legends of the saints, which appear to most readers as grotesque or comical in their pious extravagance. In their pages, religion and superstition interpenetrate in astonishing ways. How can we not smile, even guffaw, when we read the pious chronicle of Saint Wilgefortis, a beautiful girl who so prized her chastity that she asked God to repel her many suitors, a prayer he answered by causing her to sprout a full beard overnight!
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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.
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