A polêmica sobre supostos "empréstimos" do Budismo ao Cristianismo e sua relevância para a fase inicial da Ciência da Religião institucionalizada/The polemics on alleged "borrowings" of Christianity from Buddhism and its relevance for the initial stage of institutionalized Science of Religion

• Published in: Horizonte (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) Brazil), 2013-07, Vol.11 (31), p.914
• Main Author: Usarski, Frank
• Format: Article
• Language: Portuguese
• Subjects: Buddhism; Christianity; Comparative religion; Religious history; Religious studies; Theology
• ISSN: 1679-9615; 2175-5841

The second half of the 20th century witnessed the upswing of a polemic debate about the possibility that Buddhist sources may have influenced Christian scriptures. For the next decades, the issue became an intensely debated topic within certain academic circles, until the controversy lost its momentum before World War I. The present article offers an overview of the debate and argues that the controversy was in a twofold sense symptomatic for Religious Studies in the time under investigation. Firstly, the debate was an expression of the comparative impetus, which became prominent even before its institutionalization in European universities. Secondly, after the official incorporation of Religious Studies into the academic curriculum, the discipline's theoretical and instrumental conquests shed a light on the speculative character of the arguments in favor of the so called "dependency-hypothesis" and contributed to the decline of the debate about the possibility that Christian scriptures could have borrowed material from Buddhist sources. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]