Footnote 1 – The Parallel Lives of Buddha and Jesus…in Thought

As we collected the parallels, we were not concerned about how many go back to the “historical Buddha” and the “historical Jesus.” Making that distinction would have been difficult and impractical. There has been no quest for the historical Buddha comparable to the quest for the historical Jesus; and Jesus scholars themselves disagree about how much of the gospel tradition goes back to Jesus. Thus we have drawn the parallels from the developing traditions of both Buddhism and Christianity as found in their scriptures.