Overview

The story of Saint Josaphat, a prince who gave up his wealth and kingdom to follow Jesus, was one of the most popular Christian tales of the Middle Ages, translated into a dozen languages, and cited by Shakespeare in The Merchant of Venice. Yet Josaphat is only remembered today because of the similarities of his life to that of the Buddha. In Search of the Christian Buddha is set against the backdrop of the trade along the Silk Road, the Christian settlement of Palestine, the spread of Islam, and the Crusades. It traces the path of the Buddha's tale from India and shows how it evolved, adopting details from each culture during its sojourn. These early instances of globalization allowed not only goods but also knowledge to flow between different cultures and around much of the world. Eminent scholars Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Peggy McCracken reveal how religions born thousands of miles apart shared ideas throughout the centuries. They uncover surprising convergences and divergences between these faiths on subjects including the meaning of death, the problem of desire, and their view of women. Demonstrating the incredible power of this tale, they ask not how stories circulate among religions but how religions circulate among stories.

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9780393089158

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Reviews

""A rich exploration."" -- Publishers Weekly ""A wealth of valuable information."" -- Leo Lefebure - National Catholic Reporter ""The noble prince who would be a sage...or a saint. The fierce king who opposes him. The wise teacher who counsels him. The deceitful temptress who entices him. The trials he must endure. The prize he will win. A story with all these archetypal elements might well travel the world, and the story of Prince Siddhartha Gautama leaving home to seek enlightenment as the Buddha did indeed travel the world, changing its doctrinal clothing as it crossed religious borders along the path from India to Europe, where it became the pious Christian tale of Barlaam and Josaphat. How it made that journey is a tale of multiple cultural and linguistic translations. How, in the nineteenth century, scholars retraced its steps is an even more fascinating tale of multiple decipherments. A literary detective story of the first order, in which Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Peggy McCracken recapture the color and excitement of every breakthrough along the way."" -- Jack Miles, author of God: A Biography

A wealth of valuable information. --Leo Lefebure

A rich exploration.

Author Information

Donald S. Lopez, Jr. (Ph.D. University of Virginia) is the Arthur E. Link Distinguished University Professor of Buddhist and Tibetan Studies in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. His works include Elaborations on Emptiness: Uses of the Heart Sutra, Curators of the Buddha: The Study of Buddhism under Colonialism, Prisoners of Shangri-La: Tibetan Buddhism and the West, The Story of Buddhism, The Madman's Middle Way, The Scientific Buddha, From Stone to Flesh: A Short History of the Buddha, The Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism (with Robert Buswell), and In Search of the Christian Buddha (with Peggy McCracken, published by Norton). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the Getty Research Institute. In 2000 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Peggy McCracken, the translator of Gui de Cambrai's Barlaam and Josaphat, is a professor of French at the University of Michigan.

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