Marcus Borg may be the most reasonable member of the Jesus Seminar. His books on the "historical Jesus," while I think deeply mistaken (as I explain in my book, Why the Jesus Seminar can't find Jesus, and Grandma Marshall Could), do demonstrate intelligence, learning, and often worthwhile insight into one of the traditions he compares in this book. Since he does not claim to be a Buddha scholar, it might seem reasonable to cut him some slack. After all, many of the quotes he gives from Jesus and Buddha do sound similiar. And there is no denying either the charm of Borg's gentle approach, or of many of the quotes themselves.

However, Borg's approach is amateurish and naive, making his conclusions deeply misleading.

To begin with, Borg stacks the deck. He does not compare Buddha's teachings on the evils of making love to one's wife (in the sutra called "Defeat") with similar passages from Jesus, or Jesus' confrontations with political critics with similar problems encountered by Buddha, because such parallels do not exist. Borg only selects points that enhance his argument. But Borg admits that, so perhaps we can let it slide.

More seriously, really Borg does not compare Jesus and Buddha at all. He compares a whittled-down selection of Jesus sayings, written within a few short years of the Master's life, with a vast library of Buddha material written by all kinds of people over several hundred years. At one point he says, "One might even say that becoming a bodhisattva is the goal of the fully developed Christian life." Never mind that this Mahayana concept only appeared half a millennia after Buddha! Such comparisons are worse than meaningless. If I sifted 150 years of Marxist tradition, I could easily find sayings that parallel passages in the Gospels -- but setting them side by side would not mean that the real Marx taught his disciples to turn the other cheek.

Why does Borg not compare the historical Jesus to the historical Buddha? The real reason, aside from the fact that he is admittedly an "amateur" on Buddha, may be that our earliest sources are too remote from Siddhartha to be sure what he was like. In the Dharmapadda, Buddha appears as a kind, gentle thinker like the present Dalai Lama. In other sutras, he is a hippy who leaves home in search of a better commune. Elsewhere he brags like the vain Bagwan Rajneesh: "I am the Tathagata, the teacher of gods and men, omniscient and endowed with all powers." The various Buddha materials do not come from the same century, let alone the same man. Borg is trying to clap pretty solid historical materials (Jesus in the Gospels) against empty air (sutras that do not in fact come from Buddha at all).

The critic who replies that the ministry of Buddha was longer, so more materials would be available for his life, is just missing the point. After a few centuries of oral tradition and free creation of new sutras, in a culture that did not (like the Jews or Chinese) emphasize historicity, it is hard to figure out from the resulting libaries of material what Buddha actually said, or even was. The same is simply not the case with 1st Century writings by Jewish followers of Jesus, written within the natural life-spans of his first disciples, that show strong internal and external markings of basic historical accuracy. (As even the JS often admits.)

Thirdly, some of the parallels here seem to owe more to similarity of wording than intent. While the Gospel may call a Christian to "hate" his family in the sense of putting God first, Jesus' early disciples do not seem to have left spouse or offspring, as Buddha taught his disciples to do. By "salvation" Buddha means freedom from rebirth, while Jesus means a new birth from Heaven.

What is left of these parallels? Probably "compassion" was important both to Jesus and to Buddha. But from the 1st Century, Christians have not only admitted, but insisted, that moral truth, what C. S. Lewis called the "tao" (following Confucius), is universal. Of course Buddha taught kindness; what else would anyone with a conscience teach? But such a beautiful source of Buddhist compassion as the Dharmapadda contains no hint that Buddha did any miracles. There is little historical evidence that he was a "person of the spirit" in that sense.

Several reviewers say this book is not for scholars. Actually, some of the quotes in it may intrigue anyone. But no one with integrity, scholar or layman, should read too much into such forced parallels.

Marcus Borg ought to know better. His arguments about
"people of the spirit" should rest on serious scholarship. In a sense, though, Borg does truth a service, by showing how far afield one needs to go to find parallels to the Gospel story, and how weak those parallels prove, when tested critically.

There is really not much to this book, a short collection of parallel teachings of Jesus and the Buddha compiled by Christian scholar Marcus Borg, arranged by the following topics -- Compassion, Wisdom, Materialism, Inner Life, Temptation, Salvation, The Future, Miracles, Discipleship, Attributes, and Life Stories. It could all be fit in a small pamphlet, but it is filled out with attractive photos and graphics, to create a large coffee-table volume. I am giving it 4 stars nonetheless, because it might prove to be a valuable portal to the buddha-dharma for open-minded christians -- the unitarians and the non-dogmatic.

One might wish for a discussion of Gnostic christianity (much closer to buddha's teachings than Trinitarian christianity -- see THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS by Elaine Pagels), or of the Mahayana tradition in buddhism, with its emphasis on lovingkindness, compassion, and the figure of the Bodhisattva, which brings the buddha-dharma closer to christianity (see AWAKENING THE BUDDHA WITHIN by Lama Surya Das). But you'll have to look elsewhere for this sort of treatment. Borg has provided a tantalizing glimpse at the common ground of two great teachers, and the rest is up to you to explore.

In response to the recent christian reviewer who questions the validity of the comparison of the Christ to the Buddha, I must point out that we know very little about *either* Jesus of Nazareth or Siddhartha Gautama, the real flesh-and-blood men. To say that there is "solid historical evidence" of the life of Jesus is amazingly generous. If anything, we know more about the Buddha (of northern India, what is now Nepal, about 2500 years ago), who lived to 80, the last 45 years of which was supposedly spent teaching, as opposed to the teaching career of Jesus, which was supposedly only 3 years. The "gospels" of both traditions were only written down years later, but the record of the Buddha's teaching is much more extensive, which is logical because there was over ten times as much of it.

We can use the spiritual and ethical teachings as guidance. Claims of the followers (the virgin birth and bodily resurrections of Jesus, Buddha's 33 reincarnations as Lord of the Gods, etc) are peripheral to the main point which is clarity, wisdom and enlightenment.

See my BHUDDA-DHARMA and WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB? lists for more.