Question:

I want to know why some scholars say that the Cristians in the second century, erase the evidences of the Hinduism in the church.  A scholar named Greggorio says they destroyed all Hindu gods in the church, and say that Krishna is like Jesus.  for example, he had a:

virgin birth  life without a sin,  died crucified,  expelle demons,  went to the hell and went to heaven, promised that all who loves him "Krishna" dont go or to the hell or have to be born again (Baghavad Gita).

A scholar who presents this view is Kersey Graves.  Can you solve this issue?

Answer:

It is actually fairly common, lately, for people to make the claim that Christianity and the story of Jesus was borrowed from Hinduism. There is a big problem with this theory. It has absolutely zero evidence to back it up. I am not overstating my case here. There is literally not a single shred of evidence that either the New Testament or the Old Testament writers borrowed from the religion in the Indian subcontinent. There is literally no evidence that the Jews borrowed their religious ideas from India. By the first century there was some limited contact between Rome and India, but, like I said, there is no evidence that any aspect of Judaism or Christianity was "borrowed" from Hinduism, and, more specifically from the Krishna story.  This Jesus myth claim lives in an evidence-free zone, which is not a good place for such theories!

The only "evidence" for this borrowing is the supposed parallels between the story of Krishn and Jesus. These things are vastly exaggerated, including outright fabrication. I am afraid this is what the author you have read is guilty of. First of all, I would challenge this scholar to produce the original Hindu passages from which he gets his parallels. These things are easy to claim, but when authors are challenged to pruduce their supposed parallels, the similarities are often extremely dubious. I will guarantee that if you read the actual primary sources that our friend Greggorio is using you will find yourself very skeptical about the claimed parallels. Let me assure you, the claim that Krishna was crucified is absolutely a fabrication.

Secondly, the fact is that one can take any two major religious figures and "cherry pick" to discover parallels, then simply ignore the vast differences. This research by exegesis is not good argument.

Third, there is the major problem that Krishna is not a real person. He is clearly mythical. No one is expected to believe that he is an actual person. Where did he live? Where was he born? When was he born? What did he look like? Who were his parents and where did they come from. If you realize that Krishna is not even a real person, then any claimed parallels (most of which are bogus anyway) are really red herrings. We know where and when Jesus was born, where he grew up, his father’s mother’s and at least two of his sibling’s names, where and how he died, how long he lifed. A number of people who saw him and talked to him reported the conversations. To say that the Jesus story was borrowed from a fictitious character is really ludicrous.

Then there is the fact that the stories we have of Krishna were written down after the time of Jesus. The claim of the Hindu epics is that he lived before Jesus. Of course, he was not a real person, so such a claim has little meaning. However, the fact is that whatever has been written down about him was recorded after the time of Jesus. The oldest manuscript of the Baghavad Gita, for example is from AD 900. Scholars believe the Gita was first written down several hundred years AD.  It is possible that the original of this story was from a couple of hundred years BC, but the fact is that we have no evidence for the epic before AD 900. We have hundreds of manuscripts of the New Testament from before this time. Therefore, if there was any borrowing, then the borrowing was from Christianity to Hinduism. We know that Christianity had penetrated into India by the fourth century, and possibly earlier. In my opinion, the supposed parallels between Jesus and Krisha are not sufficient to reasonably imply borrowing in either direction, but the evidence tells us that, if anyone borrowed, it would be the Hindu story of Krishna, as we know that Christianity had penetrated India long before the earliest manuscript we have of the epics about the mythical character Krishna.

All of these facts make the claim that the Jesus of the New Testament is a sort of recycled story of Krishna one of the most unfounded claims I have heard. You can rest assured that this is not a viable claim.

By the way, if you do some research you will find that Kersey Graves was not a scholar, but was instead an inventer of stories and wild religious theories. He lived from 1813-1883. As far as I know, no scholars takes any of his rather wild religious speculations seriously. The author you read is really reaching to use Graves as an authority on religion.

John Oakes