The author, Edwin M. Yamauchi, is professor of history at Miami
University,
Oxford, Ohio. This article was originally published as
"Historical Notes on the
(In)comparable Christ," in Christianity Today, October
22, 1971, pp. 7-11.One hears conflicting estimates of Jesus. Christians believe he is incomparable, without a peer, but they are often quite ignorant of the lives of other great spiritual leaders. On the other hand, some people speak of Jesus, Buddha, Socrates and others without acknowledging any differences. Walter Lippmann, for example, remarks, "There is no doubt that in one form or another, Socrates and Buddha, Jesus and St. Paul, Plotinus and Spinoza, taught that the good life is impossible without asceticism…."1 Arnold Toynbee asks: "Now who are the individuals who are the greatest benefactors of the living generation of mankind? I should say: Confucius and Lao-tse; the Buddha; the Prophets of Israel and Judah; Zoroaster, Jesus, and Muhammad; and Socrates."2 One may cite many syncretistic movements in the United States, Japan and elsewhere, such as Baha'i, which attempt to combine the teachings of various religious leaders.
The purpose of this essay is to highlight Jesus' life, death
and teachings by comparing and contrasting them with
Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates and Muhammad. We have chosen
these four because many people today, in their search for
meaning, are looking to these men and the traditions they
have generated. We will divide the investigation into five
categories: (1) the sources available for reconstructing the
lives of these teachers, (2) their birth and family, (3)
their life and teachings, (4) their death and (5) their
relation to deity. After the data become clear, we will be
able to see where the uniqueness of Jesus lies.
SOURCES
From a historian's point of view there are serious
disparities in the sources available for reconstructing the
lives of Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates, Muhammad and Jesus. We
need to distinguish sharply between first-hand or nearly
contemporary sources and later apocryphal and legendary
materials.
Zoroaster (628-551 B.C.). We have what appear to be
the genuine sayings of Zoroaster in the Gathas of the
Avesta. The mass of Zoroastrian texts, however, are
in late Pahlavi recensions (ninth century A.D.).
Contemporary Old Persian cuneiform inscriptions betray at
best only allusions to early Zoroastrianism. Some Greek and
Arabic authors also allude to Zoroaster. The Persian
national epic, the Shah Namah by Firdausi (c. A.D.
1000), includes traditions of the prophet.
Buddha (563-483 B.C.). Buddha's teachings, after many
centuries of being passed on orally, were written down for
the first time in the first century B.C. in Ceylon. The
earliest written texts which have been preserved are in
Pali, an Indo-Aryan dialect which may be the dialect Buddha
himself used. The Pali canon of the Hinayana school (the
southern branch of Buddhism, also called the Theravada
school) is known as the Tipitaka (Sanskrit
Tripitaka), meaning "Three Baskets." Portions of this
collection, such as the Samyutta Nikaya, the
Majjhima Nikaya and the Anguttara Nikaya, may
have come into existence two centuries after Buddha's death,
but othted much later.
The Sanskrit canon of the Mahayana
school, which spread northeastward to Tibet, China, Korea
and Japan, dates, at the earliest, to the first and second
centuries A.D. According to Christmas Humphreys, "the later
Sutras of the Mahayana School, though put into Buddha's
mouth, are clearly the work of minds which lived from five
to fifteen hundred years after his passing."3
In the later sources one notes a
conspicuous exaggeration of the supernatural elements in
Buddha's life. But even the earliest traditions, separated
as they are by a century or two from Buddha's time, are not
free from amplification. As M. Winternitz observes, "Even
what are generally considered to be our oldest documents,
the texts of the Pali Tipitaka, speak of Buddha often enough
as a superhuman being, and tell us more of the legendary man
than of the historical Buddha."4
Socrates (469-399 B.C.). We
are fortunate in having the accounts of two of Socrates' own
disciples, Plato and Xenophon, as well as notices collected
by Diogenes Laertius (third century A.D.). We cannot accept
these accounts uncritically, of course, because it is
difficult to know how much of Plato's dialogues is really
Socratic and how much Platonic. Another problem is that
Xenophon's Memorabilia
and other writings were composed to refute the Sophists'
attacks against Socrates.5
Muhammad (A.D. 570-632). In the Qur'an (Koran) we
have the authentic sayings of Muhammad, which were at first
written down on skins, palm leaves, pottery and even the
shoulder blades of sheep. Shortly after the prophet's death
the caliph Uthman (644-55) collected these sayings in a
canonical edition. In the Hadith we have numerous
oral traditions about the words and actions of Muhammad,
traditions involving even such details as his regularly
brushing his teeth. Some two centuries after the prophet's
death Al-Bukhari sifted through some 600,000 traditions to
obtain 7,000 Hadith which he thought were genuine. The first
life of Muhammad, based on the Qur'an and the Hadith, is the
ninth-century Sirat ar-Rasul by Ibn Hisham.
Jesus (5 B.C.-A.D. 30). Our main sources of
information about the life of Jesus are the canonical
Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. There is some
dispute over the identity of the authors, but it is
generally held that Matthew, a converted
tax-collector, and John, a fisherman, were two of Jesus'
apostles. Mark was an eyewitness as Jesus and the apostles
met in his home, and later he learned more about Jesus from
Peter, whom, according to Irenaeus, he served as an
interpreter. Luke, a physician who
accompanied Paul, made use of eyewitness accounts for
his Gospel. Mark, the earliest Gospel, may have been written
as early as A.D. 50;6
Luke was probably written before A.D. 64; and Matthew
shortly after A.D. 70.7
Although it has been customary to date John's Gospel
approximately A.D. 90, some scholars have recently favored a
date in the 70's or 80's.8
Jesus spoke in Aramaic, but the Gospels are in Greek.
Apart from the four canonical
Gospels, and some data which can be gleaned from the letters
of the apostles Paul, Peter and John, little else is helpful
or trustworthy. References to Jesus in the rabbinical
literature are veiled and hostile. The famous passage in the
first-century A.D. Jewish historian Josephus (Antiquities
VIII: 63-64) is authentic, but there are
Christian interpolations in the extant Greek text.9
References in second-century Roman writers such as Tacitus,
Suetonius and Pliny the Younger bear testimony to the fact
that Christianity had spread throughout the Roman Empire as
early as the reign of Claudius (A.D. 41-54). The mass of
apocryphal Gospels from the second and third centuries are
interesting but historically worthless. Some scholars
believe that the recently discovered Coptic Gospel of
Thomas, a Gnostic work from approximately A.D. 140, may have
preserved some genuine sayings of Jesus.10
BIRTH AND FAMILY
Zoroaster. Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) was born into
the Spitama clan, evidently in northwestern Iran though he
ministered in northeastern Iran. According to Arabic sources
he lived from 628 to 551 B.C., which would accord with the
tradition that he converted Hystaspes, the father of Darius
who ruled the Persian Empire from 522-486 B.C. (Greek
sources were greatly mistaken in placing Zoroaster 6000
years before Plato!) Zoroaster was married three times and
had several sons and daughters.
Buddha. Buddha, who is also known as Siddhartha (his
given name), Gautama (his family name) and Sakyamuni (sage
of the Sakya) was born in Kapilavastu, now in southern
Nepal. His father Suddhodana was a rajah of the Sakya clan.
His mother Maya died a few days after his birth. At the age
of nineteen Gautama was married to the beautiful princess
Yasodhara, who bore him a son Rahula. After ten years
Gautama ventured out of his cloistered estate and, according
to the traditions, saw for the first time an old man, a sick
man, a dead man and an ascetic. So struck was he by these
sights that he abandoned his family to become a wandering
monk.
Socrates. Socrates was born in Athens to
Sophroniscus, an artisan-sculptor, and to Phenarete, a
mid-wife. We know nothing about his youth. As someone has
remarked, "You would think the Master was born an old man,
with no childhood." His wife was the notorious shrew,
Xanthippe. Socrates remarked that if he could master
Xanthippe he could easily adapt himself to the rest of the
world. But Socrates might well have paid more attention to
the material needs of their three sons.
Muhammad. Muhammad was born in Mecca about A.D. 570
into the Quraish tribe. Because his father died before he
was born and his mother passed away when he was six, the lad
was raised by a grandmother and then by an uncle. As a young
man he worked in the caravans of Khadija, a rich widow whom
he later married, though she was twenty years his senior.
Although Muslims may be married only to four wives, Muhammad
himself did not abide by this limit, having ten wives and
additional concubines. One of his favorites was A'isha, who
came to Muhammad when she was but nine, bringing her toys
with her. Muhammad received a special revelation (Qur'an
33:37) to justify his marriage to the beautiful Zainab, the
wife of his adopted son Zaid. In spite of these many unions,
the prophet never had a full-grown son, a fact which
affected the struggles for the caliphate (or succession).
Jesus. The monk Dionysius Exiguus (A.D. 533), who
devised our modern calendar with its reckoning B.C. and
A.D., miscalculated the reign of Octavian-Augustus by at
least four years. Since Herod the Great died just after an
eclipse of the moon which can be placed at 4 B.C. and since
he was still alive at Jesus' birth, Jesus must have been
born before this date.
According to Luke and Matthew, Jesus was conceived by a
virgin named Mary while she was legally engaged but not yet
married to Joseph of Nazareth. They were both Jews in the
royal line of King David, from whence the Messiah prophesied
in the Old Testament was to come. When she was about to have
the child, Mary traveled with Joseph about seventy miles
south to their ancestral home of Bethlehem because the
emperor Augustus had ordered an Empire-wide census (Luke
2:1). Jesus was thus born in Bethlehem, fulfilling a
prophecy written seven hundred years before (Micah 5:2).
Joseph and Mary were quite poor, as evidenced by their
offerings in the Temple (Luke 2:24; cf. Leviticus 12:8).
The canonical Gospels record that Mary and Joseph returned
to Nazareth and had other children. These brothers and
sisters were not sympathetic to Jesus' mission (Mark
3:31-35; Matthew 13:55-56). Later, however, his brother
James played a leading role in the church. James and another
brother Jude wrote letters which are included in the New
Testament.
The canonical Gospels record only
one incident in Jesus' childhood. When he was twelve he
impressed the rabbis in Jerusalem with his questions and
answers (Luke 2:41-52). In contrast, the apocryphal infancy
Gospels (dating from the second century A.D. on) attribute
all kinds of absurd miracles to the young Jesus, for
example, portraying him making live pigeons out of clay and
petulantly striking some of his playmates dead.11
Although marriage was considered a religious duty by most
Jews (the Essenes were the exception), Jesus never married.
LIFE AND TEACHINGS
Zoroaster. Zoroaster served as a priest of the
polytheistic Iranian religion before he was converted at age
thirty to the sole worship of Ahura Mazda. He succeeded in
converting some of his kinsmen and also Hystaspes, a king in
northeastern Iran. When his new teaching met strong
opposition, he responded by pronouncing curses upon his
opponents. Zoroaster also denounced the intoxicating cult of
the haoma plant and exhibited great concern for the
care of cattle. In Zoroaster's view material prosperity and
godliness went hand in hand, a trait perhaps reflected today
in the remarkable prosperity of the Parsees (modern
Zoroastrians) in Bombay, India.
Buddha. After six years of searching for peace
through asceticism, Gautama came to the town of Uruvela in
northeastern India. There he sat under the Bodhi tree (a
gigantic fig tree) and determined to stay until he received
Enlightenment. Forty-nine days later he was illuminated,
becoming the Buddha, which means "Enlightened One." Buddha
preached his first sermons in Benares when he was
thirty-five. He succeeded in converting his ascetic
companions, then his parents and his wife, and eventually
King Bimbisara.
Buddha's teachings may be summarized in the Four Noble
Truths and the Eightfold Path. The Four Noble Truths are (1)
suffering exists, (2) suffering has a cause, (3) suffering
can be eliminated, (4) ways to eliminate suffering. Buddha
taught that all that exists is impermanent and that lasting
happiness cannot be found in samsara, the temporal
world of change. The way to Nirvana is to eliminate desire,
which is the cause of suffering. Desire is not eliminated by
gratification nor by mortification but by the Middle Way of
the Eightfold Path, which involves (1) right views, (2)
aspirations, (3) speech, (4) conduct, (5) livelihood, (6)
effort, (7) mindfulness and (8) contemplation.
Legends ascribe all kinds of miracles to Buddha: By washing
his hands over the seed of a ripe mango, he caused a tree to
spring up fifty-hands high. Once he flew into the sky with
fire and water streaming from various parts of his body. He
performed these miracles, according to a Jataka
account, to dispel the gods' doubts about his mission.
Socrates. A report of the
Delphic Oracle proclaimed that Socrates was the wisest man
in the world. Believing that this could not be true,
Socrates was impelled on a life of constantly questioning
people in order to find someone who was truly wise. As he
interrogated citizens in the streets and gymnasiums of
Athens, he attracted to himself a coterie of well-born young
men. Unfortunately some of these disciples, such as
Alcibiades and Critias, turned out to be such scoundrels
that this factor played a role in his condemnation.12
Rather than teaching a set of doctrines, Socrates tried
to get men to think for themselves. The philosophers who
preceded him had focused on the nature of the universe, but
Socrates turned his attention to man and man's behavior.
Aristotle and Cicero credited him with founding ethics. His
main teaching, as best we can determine from his
interpreters, was that all values can be reduced to a single
virtue, knowledge. Virtue, then, can be taught. Evil is
blindness: No one does evil on purpose. He who knows the
good will do it.
Muhammad. After Muhammad received his initial
revelation when he was about forty years old, he began
preaching an uncompromising monotheism, which so infuriated
the pagan Meccans that they made him flee to Medina in the
famous Hijra of A.D. 622. After the Jews of Medina rejected
his overtures, he changed the qibla, or direction of
prayer, to face Mecca rather than Jerusalem. Muhammad's
forces battled various opponents and killed many, including
hundreds of Jews. The Prophet, who did not fight in person,
showed mercy to captives after the capture of Mecca.
The Qur'an does not claim that Muhammad
performed any miracles. But traditions ascribe numerous
wonders to him: "Butter, a part of which Muhammad had eaten,
increased continually." "A tree moved from its place of its
own accord and shaded Muhammad while he slept." "A wolf
spoke and converted a Jew." According to Francesco
Gabrielli, "His character appeared to later tradition and
piety as the sum of all the moral virtues…by dint of adding
to the genuine testimonies of the Prophet's life and
character the fantansies [sic] of apologetics."13
The five pillars of Islam are (1) the Shahada, or
creed, which affirms, "There is no god but Allah, and
Muhammad is his prophet," (2) Salat, prayer, five
times a day facing Mecca, (3) Zakat, or alms, (4)
fasting during Ramadhan, the ninth lunar month, which
involves a strict abstinence from both food and drink during
daylight, and (5) for those who can perform it, the Hajj,
or pilgrimage to Mecca. When in Mecca the pilgrim must make
a circuit around the Kaaba building and kiss the black
meteorite stone enclosed in its walls.
Since the followers of Muhammad do not worship him, they
should not be called "Mohammadens." They should be called
"Muslims," from the word "Islam," which connotes their
submission to Allah.
Jesus. Until his thirtieth year, Jesus remained in
Nazareth, presumably working as a carpenter (Luke 3:23).
Then he began his ministry by submitting to the baptism of
John the Baptist. Jesus, who had no formal training as a
rabbi, did not speak like the rabbis of his day; they cited
their predecessors as their authorities while Jesus spoke on
his own authority (Matthew 5:27-28, 7:28-29).
Since we know Jesus appeared at
three or four Passover festivals, his public ministry must
have lasted three to three-and-a-half years. During this
time he trained a band of twelve apostles and many other
disciples. He went about teaching, healing the sick and
raising the dead (for example, John 11). Jewish rabbinical
sources do not deny these miracles but rather attribute them
to demonic magic. Speaking of the miracles attributed to
Christ in the canonical Gospels, F.F. Bruce comments: "In
general, they are 'in character' — that is to say, they are
the kind of works that might be expected from such a Person
as the Gospels represent Jesus to be."14
Like his forerunner John the Baptist, Jesus preached that
men must repent of their sins (Luke 13:3-5), that is, men
must acknowledge God's judgment against their sinfulness and
seek his forgiveness and cleansing. He taught that men
should seek the will of God and his kingdom, rather than any
earthly kingdom or temporal goal (Matthew 6). He insisted
that men should love not only their neighbors but even their
enemies (Matthew 5:44).
Above all, Jesus taught that God loves men so much he had
sent his only son, Jesus himself, to become incarnate as a
man (John 1:1, 14) in order to die in their place, so that
they might not perish eternally but might receive eternal
life (John 3:16; Matthew 20:28). For a man to receive
eternal life he must be ''born again" (John 3:3) by
committing his life to Jesus (John 1:12; cf. Revelation
3:20).
Jesus' disregard for their minute regulations (for example,
prohibiting healing on the Sabbath) aroused the opposition
of the Pharisees, the most respected religious leaders among
the Jews. Jesus strongly denounced the hypocrisy of these
antagonists. Even at the time of his greatest popularity
Jesus told his disciples that he would be condemned to
death, crucified and resurrected (Mark 8:31; 9:31;
10:33-34).
DEATH
Zoroaster. According to Al-Biruni (A.D. 973-1048)
Zoroaster was killed by invading Turanians. The Shah
Namah (c. A.D. 1000) describes the event:
And all before the Fire the Turkmans
slew
And swept that cult away. The Fire, that
erst
Zardusht [Zoroaster] had litten, of their
blood did die;
Who slew that priest himself I know not.
Buddha. In his eightieth year as he traveled near Benares, Buddha became mortally ill after a meal of pork, perhaps from dysentary [sic]. According to the Mahaparanibbana Sutta his last words to a disciple were these:
I have reached my sum of days…. It is only, Ananda, when
the Tathagata [a title of Buddha] ceasing to attend to any
outward thing, or to experience any sensation,becomes
plunged in that devout meditation of the heart which is
concerned with no material object - it is only then that the
body of the Tathagata is at ease.
Elsewhere in this sutta the Buddha is said to have added,
"Therefore, O Ananda, be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a
refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external
refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp." After his death
Buddha was cremated and his ashes distributed among eight
cities. His alleged remains are venerated at various
stupas, or shrines, throughout Asia.
Socrates. Socrates was brought to trial in 399 B.C.
on charges of "atheism" and corrupting Athenian youth. This
arraignment had at least two immediate causes: a political
reaction which occurred in Athens after a lengthy war with
Sparta and the lampoons of the comic writer Aristophanes.
Though Socrates eloquently defended himself (the defense is
recorded in Plato's Apology), the jury voted 281 to
220 to put him to death.
Socrates could easily have fled from Athens after the trial,
but he chose to remain. He said he did not fear dying
because it would bring either annihilation or a welcome
opportunity to fellowship with those already dead. At the
appointed time Socrates calmly drank the poisonous hemlock.
According to the Phaedo, his last words were: "I owe
a cock to Asclepius [the god of healing]; do not forget to
pay it."
Muhammad. In 632 Muhammad became ill with violent
headaches and a fever. Before he died the prophet exhorted
the Arabs to remain united, proclaimed the duties of married
couples and abolished usury and the blood feud. When he
announced that if he owed anything to anyone that person
could claim it, a hush fell on the crowd. One man came
forward to claim a few coins. Muhammad finally succumbed and
was buried in the house of his wife A'isha, who had nursed
him during his last days. The prophet's tomb at Medina is,
after Mecca, the site most venerated by Muslims.
Jesus. When Jesus was given a tumultuous welcome into
Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the chief priests and other
leaders of the Jews conspired with Judas Iscariot, one of
Jesus' own apostles, to arrest him. He finally was arrested
on Thursday night (early Friday morning by Jewish reckoning)
in a garden where he was praying with his disciples. After
preliminary examinations during the
night
by Annas the high priest emeritus (John 18), by Caiaphas the
high priest (Mark 14; Matthew 26; and Luke 22) and by part
of the Sanhedrin (the ruling assembly of the Jews), Jesus
was taken early in the morning to the Roman governor Pontius
Pilate and accused of misleading the Jewish nation,
forbidding the payment of taxes to Rome and claiming to be a
king (Luke 23:2).15
Though he judged Jesus to be
innocent, Pilate had him scourged and crucified to placate a
mob which had gathered and been stirred up by the Jewish
leaders (Matthew 27:20; Mark 15:11). Though Jesus suffered
humiliation and excruciating pain on the cross, he asked God
to forgive those who were responsible (Luke 23:34). That
"Good Friday," as the Sabbath approached,16
the Roman soldiers hastened the deaths of the brigands with
whom Jesus was crucified by breaking their legs. They made
certain Jesus was already dead by thrusting a spear in his
side.
The body of Jesus was buried by Joseph of Arimathea in an
unused tomb which was carved into a rock. A large circular
stone was rolled in front of the entrance and Roman soldiers
were posted there (Matthew 27:62-66). When some women
disciples came to the tomb early on Sunday morning to
complete the anointing of Jesus' body, however, they
discovered the soldiers gone, the stone rolled away and the
tomb empty. Upon hearing the report of this, John and Peter
raced to the tomb (John 20) and discovered all that remained
in the tomb was Jesus' grave clothes, neatly in place
(evidence, by the way, which speaks against a tomb robbery).
The empty tomb alone did not convince the disciples that
Jesus was alive, but Jesus appeared to his disciples on at
least ten occasions after that. All of these appearances are
recorded in the New Testament; we will mention just four of
them.
Jesus first appeared to Mary Magdalene on Sunday morning
near the tomb. The other disciples did not believe her
report (John 20:18; Mark 16:11). Then that evening in
Jerusalem Jesus suddenly appeared in the midst of the
disciples, who had barricaded themselves behind locked
doors. After allowing the terrified men to touch him and
examine his wounds to prove he was not an apparition, he ate
a meal with them (John 20:19; Luke 24:39, 43). He also
appeared to a multitude of his disciples on a mountain in
Galilee (Matthew 28:16-18) and in
Jerusalem before his ascension (Luke 24:44-49); Acts 1).
Some time later Saul of Tarsus, on
his way from Jerusalem to Damascus to persecute the
Christians there, encountered the risen Jesus (Acts 9). This
transformed Saul, a fanatical persecutor of Christianity,
into Paul, a fervent propagator of Christianity.17
RELATION TO DEITY
Zoroaster. It seems that Zoroaster preached the
monotheistic worship of Ahura Mazda, who was the creator of
two other spirits - one good, the other evil.18
Classical dualistic Zoroastrianism, which pitted Ahura Mazda
against the evil Ahriman, developed
in the Sassanian period (A.D. 226-652). Later Zoroastrianism
also developed a doctrine of a Saoshyan (Savior) who
would raise the dead. According to Jacques
Duchesne-Guillemin:
Zoroaster did not give himself out to be the redeemer. When his prayers call the redeemer who is to renew existence, he means the prince who shall accept his doctrine and realize the Dominion of Righteousness and Good Mind. He even allows the role of redeemer to any man, provided he practises righteousness.19
Buddha. Although it is not correct to speak of
Buddhism as an "atheistic" religion, it is a religion whose
chief focus is on man rather than on any god. The
Buddhist Annual of Ceylon defines Buddhism as "that
religion which without starting with a God leads man to a
stage where God's help is not necessary." Buddha himself,
coming out of a background of
polytheistic Hinduism, seems to have treated even Brahma,
one of the highest of the gods, with a cool
superciliousness. Junjiro Takakusu of Tokyo University
explains that "the Buddha did not deny the existence of gods
(Devas), but he considered them only as the higher grade of
living beings, also to be taught by him."20
It is clear that over the centuries
the original concept of Buddha as an enlightened man was
radically changed so that "he was no longer that simple
teacher of moral values but a
Mahapurisa [a super-human being], greater than the
gods themselves."21
Transformations in Buddhist art reveal
this evolution in doctrine. From the third to the first
centuries B.C. Buddha was depicted in Indian art simply by a
symbol, such as his footprint, umbrella
or throne.22
Thereafter the Buddha himself is depicted. According to
Mortimer Wheeler, "It was no less fitting to represent the
deified Buddha than to embody the traditional divinities of
the Hindu pantheon."23
By the second and third centuries A.D. Mahayana Buddhism had
produced a doctrine of Boddhisatvas, innumerable perfected
Buddhas distributed through space and time who help mankind
by their merits. According to the Lotus of the True Law
the Buddha was an eternal sublime being, who appeared in
human form as the savior of mankind.
Socrates. Though Socrates did not fully subscribe to
the anthropomorphic Homeric deities, he was deeply devout in
his own way. He was scrupulously obedient to his
daimonion, a personal guiding spirit. In Xenophon's
Apology, Socrates says, "As for introducing 'new
divinities', how can I be guilty of that merely in asserting
that a voice of God is made manifest to me indicating my
duty?" In his Memorabilia Xenophon asserts, "For
myself, I have described him as he was: so religious that he
did nothing without counsel from the gods…."
Muhammad. The Qur'an emphatically stresses the
Oneness of the Godhead, not only to deny polytheism but also
to refute the Christian Trinity. Qur'an 112:1-4 reads:
Say: He is Allah, the One!!
Allah, the eternally Besought of all!
He begetteth not nor was begotten.
And there is none comparable unto Him.
Muhummad himself did not claim to be anything other than
a mortal messenger (Qur'an 7:188; 17:95). On one occasion he
is said to have exclaimed: "O, God! I am but a man. If I
hurt anyone in any manner, then forgive me and do not punish
me." His fallibility is shown in the Qur'an, surah 80, where
Allah rebukes him for turning away from a blind man.
Nor did Muhammad claim he had the
power to save others. According to a tradition reported by
Athar Husain, Muhammad said:
O People of Quraish be prepared for the Hereafter. I cannot save you from the punishment of God, O Bani Abd Manaf…. I cannot protect you either, O Safia, aunt of the Prophet, I cannot be of help to you; O Fatima, daughter of Muhammad, even you I cannot save.24
When Muhammad died, Abu Bakr, who was to be one of the
succeeding caliphs, announced: "O men, whosoever worshipped
Muhammad, know that he is dead; whoever worshipped
Muhammad's God, know that He is alive and immortal."
Jesus. Unlike the other spiritual
leaders we are examining, Jesus came out of a monotheistic
culture. The concept of "gods" in polytheistic religions is
quite anthropomorphic; there is no sharp difference in kind
between men and such gods.25
In Jewish monotheism the distinction between God as
transcendent and infinite and man as finite is almost
absolute.
It is therefore altogether remarkable that Jesus claimed to
be one with the Father (John 10:30), a blasphemy for which
the Jews wished to stone him (John 10:31, 33: John 5:17-18).
This claim to be one with God was expressed in Jesus' claims
to be free from sin (John 8:46), to be the only way to the
Father (John 14:6), to have authority to forgive sins
(Matthew 9:5-6) and to have the right to demand complete
loyalty (Luke 14:26). He accepted worship (John 20:28;
Matthew 28:9; Luke 24:52; contrast the
refusal to accept any adoration by Peter, Acts 3:12;
10:25-26; and by Barnabas and Paul, Acts 14:14-15) and
believed he deserved equal honor with God the Father (John
5:23). Jesus dared to address God as Abba, an intimate
Aramaic term for "father," which none of the rabbis used. As
Joachim Jeremias has noted, "…this
Abba implies the claim of a unique revelation and a
unique authority."26
It is sometimes suggested that the
deity of Jesus is a late doctrine, imported into
Christianity by pagan converts.27
This thesis cannot be maintained in light of the
declarations of the apostle Paul, a converted Pharisaic Jew.28
CONCLUSIONS
As we review the data, we see that these important men do
share some characteristics.
(1) They all preached against the corruption of contemporary
religion. (2) They all perceived keenly the needs of their
fellowmen. (3) They all were so gripped by personal
convictions that they tried to transmit to others what they
believed to be true, even though attempting this often
aroused opposition and caused them to suffer. (4) Each man's
deeds and words have attracted admirers and followers who
have extended his impact over many continents and through
many centuries.
To maintain that each of these leaders is equivalent,
however, is to argue not from tolerance but from ignorance.
Each one had his own distinctive message and mission. And in
comparing Jesus with Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates and
Muhammad, we discover a number of unique features in Jesus'
life and ministry.
First, only Jesus came out of a culture which was already
monotheistic.
Second, his death by crucifixion is
unique. G. Bernard Shaw once remarked rather cynically:
"These refined people worship Jesus and take comparatively
no account of Socrates and Mahomet, for no discoverable
reason except that Jesus was horribly tortured, and Socrates
humanely drugged, whilst Mahomet died unsensationally in his
bed."29
On the other hand, Jean-Jacques Rousseau in "Profession de
foi du vicaire Savoyard, " Emile, wrote:
What prejudices, what blindness it takes to compare the son of Sophroniscus with the son of Mary! What distance between the two! Socrates, dying without pain, without disgrace, maintained his character easily to the end…. The death of Socrates, philosophizing quietly with his friends, is the sweetest that one could desire; that of Jesus expiring under tortures, injured, ridiculed, cursed by his entire people, is the most horrible that one might dread…. Indeed, if the life and death of Socrates are those of a sage, the life and death of Jesus are those of a god.
But Jesus' death on the cross is unique not only in its
manner but also in its alleged redemptive meaning. Neither
Zoroaster, Buddha, Socrates nor Muhammad claimed his death
would save men from their sins.
Third, if we exclude later legendary and apologetic
accounts, we find that early accounts attribute miracles
only to Jesus.
Fourth, only Jesus spoke on his own unquestioned authority.
Zoroaster and Muhammad acted as spokesmen for God, while
Socrates and Buddha urged every man to consult his own
conscience.
Fifth, only Jesus predicted he would
be resurrected after his death, and only his followers rest
their faith on such an event.
Sixth, only Jesus claimed equality with a sole, supreme
deity. According to E.O. James, an authority on comparative
religions, "Nowhere else had it ever been claimed that a
historical founder of any religion was the one and only
supreme deity."30
Now one may argue that Jesus was a deceiver, though few have
made that charge. Or one may choose to believe with G.
Bernard Shaw that Christ was sincere but deluded:
Whether you believe with the evangelists that Christ could have rescued himself by a miracle, or, as a modern Secularist, point out that he could have defended himself effectually, the fact remains that according to all the narratives he did not do so…. The consensus on this point is important, because it proves the absolute sincerity of Jesus's declaration that he was a god. No impostor would have accepted such dreadful consequences without an effort to save himself. No impostor would have been nerved to endure them by the conviction that he would rise from the grave and live again after three days.31
C.S. Lewis says Jesus' claim to be equal with deity leaves us only one other choice:
A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.32
Endnotes
1 Walter Lippman, A Preface to Morals (1929), p. 155.
2 Arnold J. Toynbee, Civilization on Trial (1948), p. 156.
3 Christmas Humphreys,Buddhism (1955), p. 14. .
4 M. Winternitz, "Gotama the Buddha, What Do We Know of Him and His Teaching?" Archiv Orientalni, I (1929), 235. .
5 Cf. Anton-Hermann Chroust, Socrates Man and Myth (1957).
6 Jose O'Callaghan, Biblica, 53 (1972), 1972), 91-100 has identified a Greek fragment from Cave VII at Qumran as a manuscript of Mark dates c. A.D. 50 although most scholars have questioned his readings and rejected his identification. .
7 F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? (1960), p. 12. .
8 W.F. Albright, New Horizons in Biblical Research (1966), p. 46; Leon Morris, Commentary on the Gospel of John (1971), pp. 34-35. .
9 Cf. P. Winter, "Josephus on Jesus," Journal of Historical Studies, I (1968), 289-302. In 1971 Professor Shlomo Pines of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem translated a tenth-century A.D. Arabic manuscript which contains a version of Josephus's passage which he believes represents the original uninterpolated text. The Arabic text reads in part: "At this time there was a wise man who was called Jesus. His conduct was good, and [he] was known to be virtuous. And many people from among the Jews and the other nations became his disciples…. They [his disciples] reported that he had appeared to them three days after his crucifixion and that he was alive; accordingly he was perhaps the Messiah concerning whom the prophets have recounted wonders." S. Pines, An Arabic Version of the Testimonium Flavianum and Its Implications (1971), pp. 9-10. .
10 Cf. A. Helmbold, The Nag Hammadi Gnostic Texts and the Bible (1967). .
11 11 Cf. M.R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (1924).
12 12 A point which should be neither overstressed nor ignored is the fact that Socratic love, as discussed in Plato's Symposium, was a type of idealistic pederasty or homosexual love in which an older man sought to instruct and inspire a younger man. Cf. H.I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity (1964), pp. 50-59.
13 13 Francesco Gabrielli, Muhammad and the Conquests of Islam (1968), p. 11.
14 Bruce, p. 62.
15 Cf. Edwin Yamauchi, "Historical Notes on the Trial and Crucifixion of Jesus Christ," Christianity Today, XV (April 9, 1971), 6-11.
16 The Jews reckoned the beginning of the Sabbath from sundown on Friday.
17 For a further discussion of the evidences, see J.N.D. Anderson, The Evidence for the Resurrection (1965); Frank Morison, Who Moved the Stone? (1930).
18 Cf. R. C. Zaehner, The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism (1961).
19 Jacques Duchesne- Guillemin, The Hymns of Zoroaster (1963), p. 19.
20 Cited in F.H. Hilliard, The Buddha, the Prophet and the Christ (1956), p. 60.
21 B.G. Gokhale, "T he Theravada-Buddhist View of History," Journal of the American Oriental Society, LXXXV (1965), 359-60.
22 Tamara T. Rice, Ancient Arts of Central Asia (1965), p. 150.
23 Mortimer Wheeler, Flames over Persepolis (1968), p. 163.
24 Athar Husain, Prophet Muhammad and His Mission (1967), p. 128.
25 Cf. Edwin Yamauchi, "Anthropomorphism in Ancient Religions," Bibliotheca Sacra, CXXV (1968), 29-44.
26 Joachim Jeremias, The Central Message of the New Testament (1965), pp. 29ff.
27 For example, H.J. Schonfield, The Passover Plot (1966), pp. 21, 200. Cf. the writer's review in The Gordon Review, X (1967), 150-60; also reprinted in the Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation, XXI (1969), 27-32.
28 H.J. Schoeps, Paul: The Theology of the Apostle in the Light of Jewish Religious History (1961), pp. 152, 158.
29 G. Bernard Shaw, Everybody's Political What's What (1944), p. 129.
30 E.O. James, Christianity and Other Religions (1968), p. 170.
31 G. Bernard Shaw, Androcles and the Lion (1951), p. 50. First published 1913.
32
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (1955), pp. 52-53.