Note 32 — LECTURE I. NECESSITY FOR A PROPER COMPARISON OF THE TWO RELIGIONS.

The question of the disciples in John ix. 2, concerning the man who was born blind, “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” is alleged by Professor Seydel (Das Evangelium von Jesu in seinen Verhältnissen zu Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre) to indicate an idea introduced into the Gospel from a foreign source, as the doctrine of the pre-existence of souls was then unknown among the Jews. Meyer in his critical and exegetical Handbook to St. John’s Gospel has shown that no one required to go outside the sphere of Jewish thought for an explanation of this part of the disciples’ question. In addition to his quotations from the Rabbinical books illustrating this Jewish belief, Kuenen in his brief criticism of Seydel adduces another from the Wisdom of Solomon viii. 20, as also rendering the Buddhist derivation of this “thought quite superfluous” (Hibbert Lectures, 1882, Appendix). Many instances of agreement in thought and phraseology with the Gospels in passages in Buddhist works are adduced by Dr. Kellogg, Light of Asia, etc., p. 137 seq., and are satisfactorily accounted for by the similarity of circumstances under which Buddha and the Saviour taught and the condition of men which they both perceived and described.