Religion In The Comics - 025

[Cartoonist]

Depending on which calendar you use, it was Buddha's birthday last week. This story appeared in It Really Happened comics #1, in 1944.What I like about this story is that there is no mystical/magical mumbo jumbo. No Virgin mother, no All the fish you can eat, no rising from the dead, and all those other miracles. Just the story of a man. Had the people who wrote the New Testament kept Jesus a man instead of a God, and making up all that bullshit, maybe we could take him more seriously. But when his message is distorted from "Love one another" into "Confess your sins and you will be saved", then the message is lost. Too bad the apostles couldn't "keep it real" as in It Really Happened

[Lordquinton]

1. Nice to see something outside the big three.

Buddhism has some real pieces of work so it's good to shine a light on it every once in a while.

[mr blur]

2. Shame they had to push the Great Christian Religion at the end,

especially as the two have almost nothing in common.

[Cartoonist]

3. They name drop Christ on the first page as well

I wish they hadn't done that either. Why not tell the story without referring to someone who had nothing to do with it?

[edhopper]

4. The bodi tree panel

with the Hand Of God giving Bubbha the ten commandments, Ugh!

Reminds me of a theory about the mythical Jesus, that during the unaccounted years before he re-appeared in Jerusalem, he traveled to India and learned about Buddhism.


A joke: What do you call fanfic about Jesus? Ans:The Bible.

[AlbertCat]

5. Barlaam and Josaphat

Barlaam and Josaphat is a legendary tale of two early Christian martyrs and saints, based ultimately on the life of the Buddha.[1] It tells how an Indian king persecuted the Christian Church in his realm. When astrologers predicted that his own son would some day become a Christian, the king imprisoned the young prince Josaphat, who nevertheless met the hermit Saint Barlaam and converted to Christianity. After much tribulation the young prince's father accepted the true faith, turned over his throne to Josaphat, and retired to the desert to become a hermit. Josaphat himself later abdicated and went into seclusion with his old teacher Barlaam.[2]

The tale can be traced from a second to fourth century Sanskrit Mahayana Buddhist text, to a Manichee version, to the Arabic Kitab Bilawhar wa-Yudasaf (Book of Bilawhar and Yudasaf), current in Baghdad in the eighth century, from where it entered into Middle Eastern Christian circles before appearing in European versions. In the Middle Ages the two were treated as Christian saints, being entered in the Greek Orthodox calendar on 26 August,[3] and in the Roman Martyrology in the Western Church as "Barlaam and Josaphat" on the date of 27 November.[4]



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barlaam_and_Josaphat

[edhopper]

6. I had not heard that one

[AlbertCat]

7. Ran across it quite by accident.

Interesting though, is it not?


Religions are fascinating.... especially when one is looking from the outside of the whole notion of "a religion".

[edhopper]

8. True that

So did Josaphat jump a lot?

[AlbertCat]

9. So did Josaphat jump a lot?

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