#STRask - How Could the Similarities Between Krishna and Jesus Be a Coincidence?

Episode Date: October 9, 2025

Questions about how the similarities between Krishna and Jesus could be a coincidence and whether there’s any proof to substantiate the idea that Jesus studied Buddhism during his “missing years.���   How could the similarities between the Krishna story and the Jesus story (e.g., a star at his birth, his father traveling to pay taxes, a transfiguration, etc.) be a coincidence? Is there any proof to substantiate the idea that Jesus studied Buddhism during his “missing years”?

This is the hashtag STRask podcast. Welcome to you. And this is the podcast where Greg Kokel and I, Amy Hall, answer your questions. And this first question, Greg, Greg, this one, it's funny. This used to be a really popular question. I haven't heard it so much. anymore, but I know it's still around. And it comes from Tim. I read the Krishna's story of his birth, and there was a star at Krishna's birth. How can that be just a coincidence that Jesus had a star at his birth, too, written about after the Krishna birth account? Also, at Krishna's birth, many babies were killed just like at Jesus' birth, and Krishna's father went to pay taxes just like Jesus' father. Also, Krishna was transfigured like Jesus. This troubles me. All right. Well, there's a lot going on here. And I don't know hardly anything about Krishna, all right, but I do know the Bhagavakita, which is the main text for Hinduism, for Vedantic Hinduism, I guess, and Krishna is the main character.

It makes no pretense to being an historical account, all right? There's no pretense at all. It is a fable. They know that, but it's communicating spiritual truth. In the case of Jesus, we see something different, and what we see there is at least minimally the pretense of writing an historical account, which, by the way, is the reason that historians of the period use these primary source historical documents that we know as Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to do their best to construct details of the life of Jesus of Nazareth. And by the way, even one of the most vigorous critics of the New Testament, Bart Ehrman, has done the same thing.

He has written a book about Jesus based on the information in the Gospels. Now, I don't know in his case if he thinks that some of these details might not have been influenced by other pagan mythologies, and that's generally the case, Osiris and Isis and Mithras, and these all had, when you look at the ancient documentation of it, the records of these mythologies, these have seemed to have details that parallel or match the life of Jesus. By the way, you'll see sometimes very detailed examples on the Internet. These just saying they can't be trusted because when you look at the particulars of these things, you know, born on Christmas Day, had 12 disciples, was transfigured, born of a virgin, all this stuff. This turns out not to bear any resemblance to the primary source documentation of these particular mythological characters. All right.

Secondly, the Bhagavok Gita was written in India, presumably, you know, at least the other examples that I gave you are broadly ancient Near Eastern. They're not South Asian. So where would the people writing the Gospels if they're making false accounts, where are they even going to have access to this information to kind of put? it into the account, all right? Because that's the charge. This was all cobbled together, the story of Jesus, including these ancient, ancient details. Well, it turns out that these, not only did the details not match very well. There are some very general things, but they're

extremely general, and you can find general things in just about every individual you want to compare. Okay, you can look at our backgrounds, for example, and probably find some. Well, we both Where could stand a reason for a good, look at that, you know. I'm joking there a little bit, but the point is it has to be more than just a general characterization. And then where are these guys getting these things? Now, remember, I made the comment here about Krishna. They are continents removed from that primary source material to have borrowed from it, first of all. Secondly, there's really, really good reasons why all of the Gospels were written in the first century, okay?

They weren't written over two or three hundred years as people are adding things, because we have documentation of the copies of these things that have spread over the Middle East that take us in the second and third and fourth centuries, and all of these different manuscripts say the same kind of thing. It isn't like they tell completely different stories. They all say the same thing. And the early church fathers who was taught by the disciples, the disciples of the disciples, all say the same thing, too. So there's this continuity, all right. But there's also a logical fallacy that's going on here when people see what they think to be similarities, and then they presume that these similarities are there because there is this, you know, kind of what you call it, plagiarism going on, ancient, near-eastern mythology plagiarism that's being borrowed from.

And C.S. Lewis put it this way in a piece in God in the Dock is the name of the book, and the title of the piece is Bolverism. And here's what he said. He said, first you have to show that a person is mistaken before it makes sense to ask, why are they mistaken? All right. and this is the problem of this kind of analysis. Oh, that sounds like this.

Oh, that sounds like that. Or that sounds like the other thing. Now, part of the problem is it doesn't really sound like that when you look at the primary source documentation of those other things. There's almost no clear Christ parallel. And indications that where there seems to be a really clear parable were drawing of documents that are after the time of Christ, not before the time of Christ, okay, and so it looks like they copied from Jesus rather than

the other way around. Now, the problem, though, that I'm pointing out with Lewis is what we have is we have what appear to be historical documents about the life of Jesus. Those have to be assessed on their own individual merits, irrespective of what they might seem to repeating from earlier stuff. look at this stuff and see, is this on balance historically reliable? Now, if it turns out, there is no legitimacy to these gospel accounts at all. Historians look at it, say, this is a bunch of hogwash, just like the Mithras and the ISIS and whatever. And then you could ask the question,

now we know these are not sound as history about Jesus of Nazareth. Where did this stuff come from? Oh, maybe it came from these other mythological sources. I mean, that would be the right order. The problem is, is when you assess the bona fides, historical bonifides of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, you come up with works that are largely credible based on the canons of historical research. You have multiple sources. They're early. They include embarrassing details, all the kinds of, they include lots of details that you wouldn't expect to be included if these things were forgeries done later. They get the names right, for example. The kind of names that you see in the book, the Gospels, is the same kind of array of names that we know are actively used in that proportion during that time. You go to the Gospel of Thomas, you don't get that.

You get Thomas and Jesus. Those are the only two names that I think match up. All the rest of are Coptic name, Egyptian names, because this was written in the second century in Egypt. So the names, that's a huge thing. They get the geography right. There's all these little things that they get right about the history that tie it to the actual history rather than just being a completely made up. That's right. So the greatest work of history on history is Will and Ariel Durant's the story, the story of civilization, which for which they want to pull a surprise, all right?

And they have an entire volume titled Caesar and the Christ. Caesar and the Christ. So here you have, obviously, a bona fide historian that's writing from the extant copies of materials we have that go back to the time of Jesus, or very soon after, that they rely on to give us a true story about Jesus. So you can't disqualify the Gospels out of hand and then say, gee, where do these things come from? It's not going to happen. So, well, what about these other things? Well, insofar as they do seem to match up in general ways, then it's coincidental. And if that seems far-fetched, go to the story of reality because I have a characterization

of this in there. In 19, make this 1898, 1898, an author named Robertson wrote a book called Futility. And it was a book about a transatlantic voyage of an unsinkable carrier named the Titan that in its maiden voyage, driven by triple screws, hits an iceberg. and since the lifeboats that were available for the people were half as many as the number that were there, then half of the people died. And then on August 15th, 1912, the Titanic sank. And all of those and a lot more of the details that were in the fictional work, futility, match up.

Now, would it be appropriate to somebody read the New York Times at that time? Oh, no, this is a bunch of nonsense. I read the book 15 years ago. No, you have to look at the details of the article on its merits, and if it really happened, well, then there is some amazing coincidence, but the Titanic sank, and all of those details that I mentioned that are in futility also were true about the Titanic. This is why it's so important you have to take the alleged historical material at its face value to see if it's sound.

If it's not, then you can ask where it might have came from. You have to show that a person is false before it's a reason. reasonable task, why he's false, Lewis again. But nevertheless, there are coincidence like this and futility, which was reissued after the sinking of the Titanic as the, I think it was called the wreck of the Titan. They retitled it. But nevertheless, I have a copy of the book. So coincidences do happen.

And I have no reason to believe that anything that was written about. about, in this case, Krishna allegedly written. I don't even know what the manuscript evidence is for the points that were made, but just let's take it at face value. I have no reason to believe that any biblical author had even access to those to copy from that. And by the way, doesn't it strike anybody, somebody as counterintuitive? If the goal of the disciples, and this is clear in the text, John says it himself, so that I write these things so that you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and in believing of life in his name. That's chapter 20.

If you want to convince Jews that Jesus is their promised Messiah, you're not going to go to pagan sources and pull a bunch of stuff in there and put it in the accounts to persuade Torah-observant Jews. I mean, that makes no sense. Well, that was the point I wanted to make is that you're talking about too completely different worldviews here. The pagan worldview is so different from the worldview beginning with the Jews and going through the Christians. And what you find in the Bible is that this is a unified story. And you can see how everything about Jesus fits in with this other worldview. If you were

to compare that worldview with the Christian worldview, you'll see there's no comparison. So what you have are these incidental details. For example, the 12 disciples, well, there were also 12 tribes of Israel. So that is kind of related to that. So at the end, you see in Revelation, you see the 12 tribes and the 12 disciples, and it's part of this same story. And you mentioned, Greg, that some of these writings were written after these gospels. And I think, and I don't know if it's this one, but yes, it's our oldest copies that we have, that have some of these similarities are from after the time of the gospels. They're supposedly recording something before, but they come after. That's correct. So we have

no way of knowing if it did predate Jesus or not. Right. So that's something to keep in mind, too. But these incidental things, so Krishna was transfigured. So we would expect, if you're going to make some sort of claim to deity, that there's a revelation of that deity. That's not, that doesn't mean that Jesus copied, or that the writers of the gospels copied this other story. This seems like it's kind of something you would expect in a story like this. And someone, they paid taxes. Well, that's pretty common, too. I mean, everyone, was paying taxes. Everyone in the Jewish world was paying taxes. So I think there's a temptation to put too much emphasis on these things. And I think the story of the Titan novel, I think it kills this

whole thing. Futility, right. In that case, the details are so close, but we can clearly see that the Titanic story is actually true, even though this other story existed. So you just just can't go by that to decide that it's not true. I remember when John Kennedy was killed and I was 13 years old at the time. And there were a plethora of articles that were showing the similarities between John Kennedy and Abraham Lincoln in that assassination. They both had a Johnson that followed them, for example, from vice president to president. And there were a whole bunch of things like that. So these are curiosities because nobody doubted the assassination of John Kennedy. But I think maybe 500 years from now, if people were looking at the details of both,

someone might be tempted to think, well, maybe this didn't really happen. It's just borrowing, you know. Yeah. And you mentioned about the names of the people in the stories, how they match the proportions of the names at the that time that we know from studying different records and things, which is not something someone could accidentally do. Now, the book, if you want to know more about that and more of these arguments for the historicity, Peter J. Williams has a book called Can We Trust the Gospels? It's not a long book. It's only 160 pages. And it's not a difficult read. And he goes through

some of these historical arguments to convince you that there is actually a historical background behind the Gospels. Okay, let's go to Denver from Cape Town, South Africa. Hello, team. Curious about Jesus' missing years and the Buddhist links. Is there any proof to substantiate this? Kind regards, Denver. Well, there's a, I would say there's a mischaracterization here.

What are Jesus missing years? Well, that's the time from when he was born to when he took on his public ministry. But when we look at the historical documentation we have on Jesus' life, which we have good reason to believe tells us the truth about Jesus. Even if you just, you're jaundiced about the supernatural stuff, it's the other. other stuff is there, and there he is at 12 years old, and he's in the temple. Remember, he gets lost or forgotten by his folks, then they go back and they find him in the temple. So at least at 12 years old, he's still there. And then Luke, and I think maybe one of the other synoptics, says something to the effect of, and he continued in submission to them and grew in stature and

in favor with both God and men. Now, that's kind of a summary of what took place between 12 and 30, you know. He just lived a normal life. He didn't even work any miracles, contrary to the Gospel of Thomas, because when he turned water into wine, the text says that was the first miracle that he worked, a testing miracle pointing to the accuracy of his claims. So it isn't as if the text that the historically sound text that we know we have are, are, leave a big question mark there. And there's another thing to fill it in when Jesus actually starts his work and he goes to Copernum and he is speaking there in the presence of people that were familiar with him growing up. They said, who is this man?

where did he get all this great learning? Isn't this Mary's son? Isn't this the brother of Joseph's and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, we know his family. This is a hometown boy. All of a sudden, he's big stuff. He's hot potatoes. Where did he get all this stuff? You know, and there was say, oh, did you know that he left for 20 years and he went to India to get all of this wisdom?

No, I mean, this comment, it's. is an indicator from the primary source historical documents we have of Jesus, that he was there the whole time. And that's why people responded this way, okay? If he had been gone, their response would have been different, all right? Here's another thing, though, that belies this claim, and that is that what Jesus delivered to the Jews was Torah Judaism, not monistic Hinduism, or Buddhist. Buddhism, for that matter. By the way, in Buddhism, there is no divinity that's an essential part.

It's a non-theistic religion. It does have metaphysical elements. It has transcendent elements, obviously, but it's not theistic. So how would, I mean, what is the core view of the Jews? Isaiah 6, what for? The Lord is God. The Lord is one, et cetera, the great Shima. So why would Jesus be trying to pawn off some monistic or non-theistic Buddhism on them. What's Buddhist in his teaching? Show me what's Buddhist in his teaching or what's monistic, that is this other view of the where's the reincarnation? It just doesn't, it's not there, not even the slightest.

And this goes right back to the previous question, and that is everything in the Gospels follows from the rest of the Bible and the account in there, and the worldview that God was cultivating in the Jews. All of this can be traced to Jesus. All of it connects back. It's a unified story. It's a unified worldview. And it's not the Buddhist worldview.

Now, I can imagine someone who is steeped in a different worldview coming to Jesus and looking at something he said and interpreting that. from a different worldview, but that doesn't mean they're right about the way they're interpreting that. You have to interpret it from within the whole story. And I guarantee you if you- Jesus story. Yes. Jesus' story, because that's the question. What did he mean? So you have to, I guarantee you, if you start reading the Bible all the way through, what you're going to find is the more you do that, when you look at what Jesus says, as you get more familiar with what he said, and you're reading the Old Testament, you'll say,

oh, Jesus was referencing this. Right. And you'll understand better what Jesus was saying. It doesn't come from nowhere. That's right. That's right. And if you want to fast forward, treatment of that, instead of reading through the whole Bible, get the Bible fast forward at sDR.org.

Eight sessions, what, 50 minutes each, and a syllabus that's 150 pages long. It's my outline, my teaching out like it, download it. But that will show this connectivity really, really clearly that, that Amy is talking about, so. And that's really good for the big picture. But I mean, even in little things, he says, like about how when you go to a feast, don't sit at the highest seat because then they'll tell you to move down. You want them to tell you to move up.

That's actually in the Old Testament. Like, there are things like that all the way through. I just read it, in fact, in Proverbs the other day. And this is because Jesus didn't come to create an entirely different worldview and all these new things. He came to die on the cross so that, he could take our punishment. And all these other things had been set in place over all this time, I don't know, 2,000 years. And now we get to Jesus and he's continuing to say things that are in line with the past. But now the new thing that he's doing is starting this new covenant. So it just, it does not fit with these other world views. And the people who are thinking it does, I think they're coming from these other worldviews.

and they're misinterpreting what Jesus is actually saying. But you can find this for yourself if you watch Craig's videos and you also read the Bible because you will see it for yourself. You just have to get a better idea of what the big picture is. And I think there are so many people who, even Christians, who think they know what Christianity is about and they really don't have much of a grasp of what the worldview actually is. So the better, the more familiar you become. with it, the less these other things will trouble you because you'll be able to see the difference. There's a book, oh gosh, what is it called? It's about, oh, what is the name of it?

It's about the Bible as myth, and he compares the Bible to other myths. Here, let me see if I can find it. Let's see here. The Bible Among the Myths. Oh, yeah. Unique revelation or just ancient literature. And he does a fantastic job of showing you how revolutionary this revelation from God was and how different the view of the Jews, starting from this revelation from God, how different that was from all the religions around it. And again, this is something we take it for granted because we're so used to hearing these things.

But when you can see them so clearly compared to each other, it'll make a lot more sense why we shouldn't think that, Christianity and Judaism was gathering things from other religions. Right, right, like he collected. In fact, so first, who's the author of this book? The author is John Oswald, O-S-W-A-L-T. Oh, A-L-T. Okay, got it. What's so ironic is that when you know the history of the Jews and the nature of the law

and what God was trying to accomplish, he is putting all of these barriers in the way to keep them from being eclectic, syncretistic, I should say, with ancient religions. You know, now, of course, they faltered, but they didn't, it isn't like they took the ancient religion and combined it with Judaism. They just followed pagan practices in violation of Judaism, and this is what all of the prophets were calling them back to, covenant faithfulness. Right. Well, thank you, Tim and Denver. That one went really fast. Those are great questions, and hopefully that helps people think through this a little more clearly. And it also inspires you to read the Bible more, because I always want you to do that. Or get the Bible fast forward. STR.org. Craig, I can't believe you keep arguing.

Well, you know what? I keep saying it because I think this, and I'm sure you'll affirm this. This is for people have gone through this course. And, you know, it's eight times 50, you know, eight sessions, 50 minutes. But the workbook is there. You don't have to take notes. Just watch it. And the people who have responded, this has completely opened my eyes to the coherency and the cohesiveness of the plan of God from the beginning all the way to the person of Jesus of Nazareth. And that's actually what I do recommend is that people get a framework first before they just step into reading the Bible.

Because otherwise, it'll take you a long time to. read through the Old Testament. And if you don't have kind of signposts to hang things on, it's hard to follow it. So it actually really is helpful to read or to watch something like what you've created, Greg, to get that framework. So I'm just joking when I do it. I know you want people to read their Bibles too. All right. Thank you so much. And we'd love to hear from you. If you have a question, send it on X with the hashtag STR Ask or go to our website at STR.org. This is Amy Hall and Greg Coker for Stand to Reason.