pre-jesus christianity

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Charles sez...
Please, let us all go a WAYs off topic for a bit.

In the "rock edicts of Asoka" are the seeds of pre-jesus christianity.
Asoka, an Indian King, sent out missionaries to the remote lands, including
palestine, to help bring (Buddhist) civilization to the primitives. Examples:
1) Healing:  Greek king named Antiochus and of those kings who are
neighbours of that Antiochus, everywhere the two medical services of the
Beloved of the Gods, the king Piyadassi, have been provided. These consist
of the medical care of man and the care of animals. 
2) It is good to be obedient to one's mother and father...
3) administration of charities
4) I work for their happiness in this life, that in the next they may gain
heaven. <Jews had no after-life>
5) self-control and purity of mind
6) meetings with the people of the countryside are held (sermon on mount)
7) Through this one can gain heaven' - and what can be more important than
to gain heaven?
8) abstention from killing living beings
9) the control of one's speech, so as not to extoll one's own sect or
disparage another's on unsuitable occasions
10) Except among the Greeks, there is no land where the religious orders of
brahmanas and sramanas are not to be found, and there is no land anywhere
where men do not support one sect or another. <Buddhism in Egypt, Palestine,
Persia>
11) You should gain the affection of men. All men are my children, and just
as I desire for my children that they should obtain welfare and happiness
both in this world and the next, the same do I desire for all men. 
12) She goats, ewes, and sows which are with young or are giving suck are
not to be killed, neither are their young up to the age of six months.
<Chas points out an ironical pun: Jesus (Yoshua ben Yoseph), the Buddhist
missionary who was sent our from Taxila to help the palestineans overcome
their primitive sacrificial ways became "the blood of the lamb."> 

See and read the rock edicts at:
http://www.thanhsiang.org/education/dip3-4.3.htm

for a reasonable description of Buddhism, see
http://www.usao.edu/~usao-ids3313/ids/html/buddhism.html

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