When Buddha Met Jesus?

If you're even half the history nerd that I am, you'll want to read "When Jesus met Buddha" by Philip Jenkins in the Boston Globe. Jenkins is a professor of the humanities at Penn State University, and he writes about the relationship between Nestorian Christianity and Buddhism in the first millennium.

The Nestorians "traced their ancestry back not through Rome, but directly to the original Jesus movement of ancient Palestine," Jenkins says. For centuries, the Nestorian church thrived in Indian, central Asia and China, living side by side with Buddhists. Missionaries and monks of both mystical traditions met and influenced each other.

In the 8th century, Nestorian Christian priests living in China helped translate some of the Mahayana sutras from Sanskrit into Chinese, Jenkin writes. At the same time, Nestorian writing from this period is permeated with Buddhist influence. It's a fascinating bit of history I knew nothing about.