WAS CHRIST A PLAGIARIST?

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume XXXXVII, Issue 11734, 12 September 1902, Page 2

WAS CHRIST A PLAGIARIST?

To the Editor. ' Sir,—ln a letter published in this mom- : ing's issue, over the signature "Omega," a l statement is made that "it has1 teen proved ' time and again that all which is best in i this book (the Bible) has been taken from the older books and. thoughts of the wor&s of men who came before it.' Similar statements to this have been several times made in the course of the controversy. The editor of the Herald, for example, boldly decliared' that the sermon on the Mount was preached by Gautama, ao Benares, SQO y&ars before Christ'si time. In a word, Jesus Christ-, by these writers, is, in effect, dclared to be a dishonest rague, who palmed off upon' an unsuspecting world the productions of other people as His own. Now, sir, these charges of plagiarism against Christ have been often and authoritatively disproved, not by biassed writers', but by absolutely unbiassed and qualified men, who have examined <-ne documents in the original tongues. Many yearsl ago Jacolliot asserted that Christ's life was a plagiarism upon the story of the Hindu Krishna, and he collected and translated Sanskrit MSS to prove it. But Professor Max Muller (than whom is no higher authorit -, and who certainly cannot be changed with bias), after careful examination, said: "Much of the so-called Sanskrit is not. Sanskrit at all, and Jacol'liot's ancient Vedio quotations are not Vedie, and not ancient; they s simply belong to the last half of the nineteenth century." Indeed, upon Max Muller's authority, there is not a single MS. that is a thousand years old, and scarcely on that can claim 500 years. For centuries after Gautama's time nothinr- was written; all was transmitted by word of mouth. With him agrees almost every authority. ''A Biography of Buddha," says Oldenberg. "haa not come down to us from ancient times, from the ages of the Pali texts, and we can safely say no such biography was m existence then." Dr Eitel declares positively that, "there is not a single Buddhist MS. in existence which can vie in antiquity and undoubted authenticity with the oldest codices of the Gospel, and the most ancient Buddhist classics contain scarcely any details of Buddha's life, and none whatever that are of a peculiarly Christian character" ; whilst the great German authority, Kuenen (not biassed in favour of orthodoxy) concludes his researches into the question by saying: "I may safely affirm that we must abstain from assigning to Buddhism the smallest direct influence on the origin of Christianity." And yet, sir, in spite of this overwhelming evidence (and much more might be added), "Omega," "the Editor of the Herald." and some others ask us to believe that Christ stole teachings from MSftJ. that were not in existence, or that, at any rate, he appropriated the utterances that were in his day not known outside India and China. No~ sir, the appropriation was not by Christian from Buddhism and Hinduism, but by these religions from Christianity. I could give, did your space perm/it, many palpable illustrations of this fact, which Max Muller,, Sir Monier Williams and others have pointed out. We know that it is the very genius of these two religions to absorb them from any and

every source anything that would serve their purpose. According to Dr Eitel, the j-^etan Buddhist, priests as early as the middle of the fifth century adopted from the Nestorian missionaries* many Christian ideas, traditions, and ceremonies, and incorporated them, into Buddhistic literature. As I have elsewhere said, no one with any knowledge of the facts would wish to deny that in these old sacred systems there is much wholesome truth and sound moral teaching. But for any man. to suggest, as "Old Settler" does, that he prefers the teaching of the Karani and the Tri-pitaka," is only to prove him profoundly ignorant of both. The limits of your space prohibit me from dealing with the other objections to the Scriptures which have been urged by your anonymous correspondents. B t there is no need. They are ghosts that havo been so often laid through past generations that they cannot frighten e\en the mo<t simple soul who has any personal experience of Divine Truth. That Truth still, abides, and will abide, for ages-.—l am, . etc., ARTHUR DEWDNEY.