Posted by:
anybody
(
)
Date: February 20, 2025 10:18AM
I'm not buying this.
I read a book about one of the first Westerners to visit Tibet and study Buddhist teachings, the Jesuit Ippolito Desideri in the early 1700s. This was only a hundred years before Joseph's time.
While it's possible that Joseph may have heard of the religion, I doubt he would know much about actual Buddhist theology as few people in the West did at the time.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ippolito_Desiderihttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhism_in_the_West#Early_modern_and_colonial_encountersEarly modern and colonial encounters
When European Christians made more direct contact with Buddhism in the early 16th century, Jesuit missionaries to Asia such as St. Francis Xavier and Ippolito Desideri sent back detailed accounts of Buddhist doctrine and practices.[19] Ippolito Desideri spent a long time in Tibet, learning the Tibetan language and Tibetan Buddhist doctrine before writing an account of his travels and of Tibetan Buddhism.[20] He also wrote several books in Tibetan which promoted Christianity and critiqued Buddhism. Other influential Jesuit writers on Buddhism Alessandro Valignano (1539–1606) and Matteo Ricci (1552–1610).[21] The Portuguese colonial efforts in Sri Lanka during the 16th and 17th centuries saw some of the first large scale direct contact between Buddhists and Westerners. According to Stephen Berkwitz, by the late 17th century, "the existence of a religion across Asia that worshiped images of the Buddha, known and referred to by many different names, was a well-known fact among European scholars."[21]
This recognition that Buddhism was indeed a distinct Asian religion with its own texts and not just a form of local paganism, led Catholic missionaries to see Buddhism as a serious rival to Christianity in Asia and to promote its further study so as to combat it.[21] They also sought to explain how such a religion could exist which appeared to deviate from those originating from divine revelation and yet also contained numerous similarities (monastic orders, virgin birth of its founder, belief in heaven and hell, etc.). Because of this, many Portuguese writers explained the Buddhist religion as a form of Christianity corrupted by the devil and some even said Buddhists were "in league with the devil".[21] Catholic missionaries in Asia especially criticized the Buddhist view of rebirth, "idol worship" and denial of the immortality of the soul or a first cause.[21]
With the arrival of Sanskrit and Oriental studies in European universities in the late 18th century, and the subsequent availability of Buddhist texts, Western Buddhist studies began to take shape.[19] An important early figure is Paulinus a Sancto Bartholomaeo who first remarked on the connection between Sanskrit and Pali, and described an early Italian translation of the Kammavaca in his Systema brahmanicum.[20]
19th century
During the 19th century, Buddhism (along with other non-European religions and philosophies) came to the attention of Western intellectuals through the work of Christian missionaries, scholars, and imperial civil servants who wrote about the countries in which they worked. Most accounts of Buddhism placed it in a negative light however, as a nihilistic, pessimistic, idolatrous and heathen faith.[22][23] Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire for example, described Buddhism as the nihilistic nadir of Indian pessimism.[23]