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Section Four contains the fascinating and important story of the adoption of Buddha, by the name of “Josaphat,” into the Christian pantheon of saints. For several centuries in the Middle Ages up to the 19th , Christendom heard the marvelous tales of Josaphat and Barlaam, until the Age of Enlightenment brought with it Buddhist studies that revealed the ruse.

As Lockwood (61) remarks, “The Christian legend was, in actuality, a transmutation of the life of the Buddha,” a transmutation evidently occurring sometime between the third and seventh centuries AD/CE .

This fact of a transmutation of a non-Christian godman into a Christian saint is not limited to Buddha, as it occurred with several other figures from pre-Christian religion and mythology, including St. Ann, St. Lucy, St. Denis and St. Brigid, representing the deities Anna/Ana, Lucia/Lucina, Dionysus and Brighid/Brigid/Brigit/Bride, respectively.

If enterprising monks (or their priestly, pontifical or political leaders) were busy transmuting a Buddhist legend into a Christian tale as early as the third century, there is little reason to doubt that their predecessors were busily transmuting other Buddhist stories and doctrines into Christian tales and dogma—including the gospel story itself, which only emerges clearly and in detail into the historical record during the latter half of the second century—a mere decades before the Josaphat fabrication evidently was begun.

The extent of the Christianized Buddhist tale of Josaphat is remarkable, as we find it told in some 60 different languages (Lockwood, 63), having spread largely through Manichaeism.

The tale is highly important, instrumental in demonstrating how a godman is subordinated under another divine figure, through culture clash. In this case, Josaphat or Buddha becomes enlightened through Jesus Christ’s love and grace, raising the Christian savior above the Buddhist godman.

The Ethiopic version…opens with a reference to Thomas’s mission in India, and so do Greek and Syriac texts. There follows the story of Josaphat, the son of an Indian ruler whose priests were alarmed by the spread of Christianity. When he was born, all the sages and astrologers predicted a splendid future for him except one, who foretold that he would become a Christian.

To prevent such an outcome, the king brought up his son in secluded palaces and protected him from all contacts with the world. But a Christian sage, Barlaam, disguised himself as a merchant and inveighed his way into the youth’s presence. He taught the prince Christian doctrine and finally converted and baptized him. The king tried to win back his son by every means he could think of, including an offer of half his kingdom. All the king’s efforts failed. Josaphat abandoned his princely life and became an ascetic in the desert, joined there by his preceptor, Barlaam. The severely ascetic flavor of Barlaam and Josaphat and the story’s glorification of monastic life presumable made it useful to Manicheans. The tale became a great favorite among Christian monks in the Middle Ages. (Lockwood. 63)

Thus, Christian monks tried to explain the ascetic and monastic traditions in India as derived from Christianity, since it was pretended that Christianity was a brand-new, divine revelation into a world devoid of such godly monkishness, a contention clearly proved false by the existence of Buddhistic monasticism centuries before the common era.

In reality, the evidence points to the opposite influence, of Buddhism preceding Christianity and making its way to the pertinent area, where monks transmuted it into the Christian story and doctrines. In consideration of this fact, it is understandable why this falsified legend became so popular over several cultures.

The same can be said of the legend of Thomas in India: It appears to have been created in order to explain why “Christianity”—purported to be a “new revelation”—could be found in particulars in India, long before Christ’s purported advent. 6