>earliest evidence for his existence dates 150 years after his "death"yeah he probably didn't exist
But then who started Buddhism?
>>18379168Could've started as a reaction to brahminism
>>18379159I think of Buddha is more of a anthropomorphic ideal that followers are supposed to strive for to achieve zen
>>18379176Jesus is sort of the same way but christians don't see it that way but rather instead see it as a real supernatural entity
I'm not sure how you could definitely argue that the Buddha didn't exist in the same way that you can argue Jesus didn't exist. For Jesus, there's a clear model for how it could've happened, where his existence and details of his life and teachings were inferred from Jewish scripture as well as supposed post-resurrection visions by the apostles, and he was later euhemerized into an allegorical myth as was done to other deities around the same time like Osiris.But while Jesus in the earliest writings we have does look like a deity understood mainly or possibly entirely through visions and scripture (in Paul's letters, Hebrews, etc.), in the Pali canon, as far as I know, Buddha is presented mostly as an enlightened human. Where would the push come from to invent him whole-cloth rather than to just increasingly embellish and supernaturalize an actual historical founder of the religion?You might be able to say that we can barely know a thing about the guy, just like someone who believes in a historical Jesus might say we can barely know a thing about the guy, but that's subtly different from saying he didn't exist, that the supposed founder of the religion can be distinguished from the actual founder(s) so that the former didn't exist even though the latter did.Maybe the idea is that the actual founder of Buddhsim was entirely forgotten after a few decades, so a new one had to be invented out of nothing to fill the gap? But I'm still not sure what evidence you could put forward in favor of that view, except that we don't have any proof that it didn't happen.
>>18379159Thats just Ashoka's pillars, a fully fleshed out existence of Buddha, his teachings, his followers and the King who spread it across the entire known world. There's also the archaeological carbon dating evidence of a wooden shrine buried under the Buddha's temple that dates back to 6th century BC. So story -> archaeology dating evidence matches as well.
>>18379159Buddhist texts line up with what we know of the history of the region at that time
>>18379775This is also true by contexual evidence where Buddhists texts acknowledge 3 Vedas at the time in India, where as a few century later, the 4th Vedas was officially acknowledged. So there is dating from textual cross reference.
>>18379202thisthe earliest jesus was one shown only in visions and shiet like for paulbuddha was always shown as living and walking around talking to people for four decades and eventually dying, all from the oldest texts, only being elevated and retconned to a temporal emanation of cosmic deities very much later in the religion’s lifespan, it’s like the exact opposite of christianity in that regard
>>18379949>buddha was always shown as living and walking around talking to people for four decadesnta, but it depends on the nature of the accounts.If they seem mythical in nature, such as the Buddha is typically performing magical feats like a sorcerer or deity, then I would lean toward him being an invented character.I personally doubt Jesus existed. There was also an effort to make Jesus seem somewhat real by creating episodes of his life and journey but these were ultimately plagiarized from other sources like Homer and the Old Testament.
>>18379997>Buddha is typically performing magical feats like a sorcerer or deity, Not even Jesus is "typically" doing those miracles. Most of the time, they're just normal humans and only in certain instances do they show any sort of miracles. Like water walking, water transformation jutsu, kage bushin (clone) no jutsu, shushin (teleportation) no jutsu, astral projection, time dilation, etc
>>18380045From a quick look through Mark, I'm pretty sure there's at least one, often several, magical feats in every chapter, counting miraculous healings, exorcisms, prophecies, and demonstrations of supernatural control over nature. I'd also count the way Jesus calls his disciples in the stories as fairly miraculous, because he usually doesn't have to persuade them at all. He just says "Follow me." and they immediately drop everything to follow him. The only iffy chapter to me looks like chapter 12, but even there I think the parable of the tenants at the beginning could be counted as a prophecy about Jesus' death and the destruction of the temple.You could say there's such a high density of miracles because that's the author condensing the interesting parts of Jesus' entire multi-year ministry, but if you look at Jesus as a character in a story, I do think it'd be accurate to say that he's typically doing miracles.
>>18379173Well, it is said that Buddha was actually an ANTI-hinduist the moment he left his palace and saw how awful life for normal people was, specially because the hinduist caste system.It's funny because this days now you see hinduists simping for Buddha and calling Buddhism just "another hinduist school", when back then buddhists and hinduists were killing each other.Ngl, I wish Emperor Ashoka would have wiped out Hinduism forever.
>>18380322He wasn't a anti-Hinduism, or even anti-Brahmanism. He was sheltered his entire life from any religious life and simply was living a decadent lifestyle. Buddhist religion is just a critical outlook on life, rather than anti-brahmanism. There's no mention of any brahmanism conventions at all in any of the main doctrine, you only find buddha engaging when regular brahmans/former brahmans seek advice/guidance/comparisons. Its an entirely separate school of thought, one that follows as a reaction to brahmanism but a follower of sramanism movement, which is an older tradition of simply seeking out truth through renunciation and even brahmins join that movement as well.
>>18380322Brahmanism was between the Vedic and Puranic period which aligns with the correct dating of 600 bce
