Jesus and Krishna
Now that I've taken several Religious Studies classes, I'm continuing to find a number of similarities between the beliefs and scriptures of all the various religions - both those that are practiced today, and those that are ancient. I began to learn of some of these similarities in one of the first religious studies courses I took - the Myths, Legends and Scriptures of the Near East. Over the course of a year we read excerpts from Ancient Mesopotamian mythology, the Bible, and the Qur'an. What was especially interesting in this course were the parallels between the Mesopotamian myths and those of the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Mesopotamia (now in modern Iraq) was home to a prosperous society over 4,000 years ago, and had their own Creation and Flood stories which have some striking similarities to those in Genesis.
In this same course, I began researching religious figures of salvation for a paper, and I found a lot of similarities between Jesus Christ and the figure of Krishna in Hinduism. Krishna can be considered as both an incarnation or avatara of Vishnu - one of the principal Hindu gods - as well as Vishnu himself. I compared their birth narratives, their representations as God manifested in human form on earth, as well as their teachings of salvation (as attested by Christ in the Gospels and Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita). Both Jesus and Krishna teach that one can attain salvation through the grace of God, and reveal a loving and personal God. Finally, both are predicted to return at a future time to defeat evil and unite humanity with God. There are, undoubtedly, many differences between Jesus and Krishna, but the features that are similar are remarkable. I've now written two papers comparing and contrasting Krishna and Christ, and I think it is safe to conclude that both figures had a influential impact on the respective faiths, transforming the religious traditions that came before them.
Anyways, I would love to elaborate more on these similarities, but what I wanted to talk about in this post was the most recent 'cross-religious' discovery I've found. I am taking a course in the religion of Ancient Egypt, and just last week my professor was talking about the various cosmogonies (theories of how the universe came into being) that the ancient Egyptians had. The ancient Egyptians had thousands of gods, so it is not surprising that they also had several different theories of how the world came into being. One of these is the Memphite Theology, named after the ancient capital city of Memphis. In this city the god Ptah was regarded as the creator god. Now what is interesting is that Ptah creates the world by 'speaking out'. We know of this cosmogony because of the hieroglyphics on the Shabaka Stone (from about 700 BCE). Here are some excerpts describing Ptah's creation of the world:
"There took shape in the heart, there took shape on the tongue the form of Atum. For the very great one is Ptah, who gave [life] to all the gods and their kas through this heart and through this tongue, in which Horus had taken shape as Ptah, in which Thoth had taken shape as Ptah"
and later:
"Sight, hearing, breathing - they report to the heart, and it makes every understanding come forth. As to the tongue, it repeats what the heart has devised. Thus all the gods were born and his Ennead was completed. For every word of the god came about through what the heart devised and the tongue commanded"
This bears similarities to the Genesis story, where God declares something and does it: "Then God said, 'Let there be light'; and there was light." (Gen 1:3). It also bears similarities to the opening of the Gospel of John, where the logos, or 'word', is described as divine, eternal, and is also identified with Jesus:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people...And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." (John 1:1-4, 14)
Both the Memphite Theology and the Bible emphasize the 'word' of (a) god becoming something more. In John, the Word/God brings all things into being, and also manifests as Jesus. In the Memphite Theology, the speech/'words' of the creator god Ptah create all the rest of the gods.
Okay, so now the big question is: What do we make of similarities such as these? Are they mere coincidences? They could be. Or, perhaps, has the one myth/story predated and influenced the other? I believe that this was most likely true in the case of the Creation and Flood stories in the Mesopotamian and Hebrew traditions. But what about Krishna and Jesus? Some might argue that Krishna's teaching of salvation in the Bhagavad-Gita may have been influenced by early Christianity, but on the other hand, I have found a book that claims, quite vehemently, that Jesus and Christianity originated from a Krishna cult! Theories like this abound (I've read a journal article that discusses whether Jesus could have been influenced by Buddhism), but, just as people travel and communicate, religious ideas and philosophies have and do continue to travel. This could also serve as an explanation for the interesting connection between 'creation by word' in ancient Egypt and Christianity.
However, I also wonder if similarities such as these - which cover huge geographical, cultural and time periods - instead point to a common, underlying psychological, 'human condition'. Ever since humans began to think, they have thought that there must be a greater power of some kind. Some may then argue that 'god' and 'religion' are a thing of the past, but if you consider that millions of people today are Muslim, Hindu, Christian, or 'spiritual', or even agnostic, then this claim cannot easily be made.
Maybe the common ground between religious beliefs (in those currently practiced and those that have disappeared) instead suggests that there is some kind of higher power, and that throughout history humankind has interpreted and experienced it in a variety of ways.
