Saint Josaphat

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Saint Josaphat is said to have lived and died in the 3rd century or 4th century in India. His story appears to be in many respects a Christianized version of Gautama Buddha's story.

Saint Josaphat preaching Christianity. 12th century Greek manuscript.

According to legend, a King Abenner or Avenier in India persecuted the Christian church in his realm, founded by the Apostle Thomas. When astrologers predicted that his own son would someday become a Christian, Abenner had the young prince Josaphat isolated from external contact. Despite the imprisonment, Josaphat met the hermit Saint Barlaam and converted to Christianity. Josaphat kept his faith even in the face of his father's anger and persuasion. Eventually, Abenner himself converted, turned over his throne to Josaphat, and retired to the desert to become a hermit. Josaphat himself later abdicated and went into reclusion with his old teacher Barlaam.

The story of Josaphat and Barlaam was popular in the Middle Ages, appearing in such works as the Golden Legend. Although Josaphat and Barlaam were canonized in the Roman Catholic Church (feast day 27 November) and recognized among the Eastern Orthodox, there is no evidence that either ever existed.

Wilfred Cantwell Smith traced the story from a second to fourth-century Sanskrit Mahayana Buddhist text, to a Manichee version, which then found its way into Muslim culture as the Arabic Kitab Bilawhar wa-Yudasaf, which was current in Baghdad in the 8th century. The first Christianized adaptation was the Georgian epic Balavariani dating back to the 10th century. A Georgian monk Euthymius of Athos converted the story into Greek sometime before he was killed while visiting Constantinople in 1028. There the final Greek adaptation was translated into Latin in 1048 and soon became well known in Western Europe as Barlaam and Ioasaph. Modern scholars trace Josaphat's name from the Sanskrit term bodhisattva via the Middle Persian bodasif.

Recent linguistic and geographic research of the spread of Buddha's tale across Asia and Europe also points toward the saint's name and tale originating with Buddha. Investigation by researchers at the Korean Seoul National University indicates that the name Buddha or Bodhisatta in Sanskrit changed to Bodisav in Persian texts in the sixth or seventh century, then to Budhasaf or Yudasaf in an eighth-century Arabic document, and Iodasaph in Georgia in the 10th century. That name was then adapted to Ioasaph in Greece in the 11th century, and Iosaphat or Josaphat in Latin since then. Besides their names, the stories of the two individuals are strikingly similar. [link]

Author Holger Kersten proposes an alternate explanation: that "Josaphat" is derived from the Arabic "Judasaf" or "Budasaf", as written in an Urdu version of the tale. He ties this name to Yuz Asaf, a holy figure identified with Jesus by the Ahmadis. This idea, which proposes Jesus escaped crucifixion and died in India, was first introduced to the west by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad. However, "Yuz Asaf" is simply the Urdu and Farsi pronunciation of the Arabic Yūdhasaf, and does not go back any farther than the Arabic story, which is itself demonstrably derived from Buddhist stories.

The story of Josaphat was re-told as an exploration on free will against fate in the Spanish 17th-century play La vida es sueño ("Life is a dream") by Pedro Calderón de la Barca.

Texts

John Damascene, Barlaam and Ioasaph (1914) ISBN 0674990382
E. A. Wallis Budge, Baralam And Yewasef: The Ethiopic Version of a Christianized Recension of the Legend of the Buddha And the Bodhisattva (1923) ISBN 0766192512

Saint Josaphat

Texts

See also