Syncretism Essay

Syncretism: The Link Between Judaism and Buddhism

This paper will explore how early Judaism took from Canaan and other extraneous sources to create the Hebrew Bible as well as how Indo-Aryan and Dravidian beliefs lead to the creation of Buddhism. Because of the fact that cultures, religions, and customs blend together in order to create new societies and culture, also known as syncretism, (Hill, 01/25/16) the way Judaism and Buddhism’s notions on morality and ethics can be traced.

In order to understand the correlation between Judaism, Hinduism and syncretism, one must understand the origins of both religions. Judaism has its beginnings in Genesis where it started with the Hebrews whose origins were aligned with Abraham, a figure born in Ur

This writing was mainly fueled by prophets who believed their society was in turmoil. They saw the destruction of Israel and wondered why that occurred. They concluded that people have turned away from the worship of YHWH and went back to their polytheistic tendencies so as divine punishment, YHWH destroyed Israel. According to these prophets, the people of Judah needed to purge their old gods and worship the one and only true god, YHWH in order to avoid the same fate as Israel. Josiah, the ruler of Judah, also attempted to call for a religious reform and by doing so he went and destroyed hilltop temples dedicated to the people’s many gods in an effort to assure people worshipped properly (Hill,

In order to understand how syncretism correlates with Buddhism, one must understand the path of religions that eventually turned into Buddhism. It started with a combination of Indo-Aryan and Dravidian beliefs. This combination of beliefs was called the Upanishads, which translates into sitting down in front of a teacher. They saw suffering and chaos in the world and concluded that it was an illusion. The one true reality or state of existence is known as Brahman, the eternal and unchanging Universal Soul. Since everything has a soul, everything is connected to Brahman. When one dies, their soul went to the Brahman and was reborn to a higher or lower lifeform, depending on the karma acquired in life, in a cycle called Samsara. Moksha is the concept of breaking Samsara and the only way to attain Moksha is renouncing the world and all things material (Hill, 2/1/16). Ultimately these ideas were intertwined with the Caste System and became Hinduism. From Hinduism, Jainism was derived. The first Jainist started out in the upper Caste as a Kshatriya. The main doctrines of Jainism borrowed from the Upanishads. Essentially, Jainists believed everything in the world has a soul and they are constantly trapped in torment due to their physical forms. They developed a doctrine of extreme non-violence, however the life style was extremely taxing and hard to live by. Because of