Where Did Buddha Come From

 

We know the Old and New Testaments were originally written by wealthy goat herders. Only the extremely wealthy were literate. After that, this writing was copied over and over by another set of wealthy people, scribes. They corrected and revised according to current thinking centuries after the original writing. Buddha was said to have existed long before Jesus. Millions have read about him or written about him. No one claims to have known either Jesus or Buddha. New evidence is slowly coming out about the earliest people who wrote about Buddha. The suggestion is the version of Buddha that emerged was influenced by ancient Greeks.

While I know little of Buddhism, I make the assumption it is like all other belief systems. That is, there is a religious figure and the human mind assigns human views to that figure. Ancient literature has Buddha saying he himself is not a god, has no super-natural powers. Within yourself lies the strength to deal with whatever bad events comes your way, Buddha is supposed to have said.

Yet, people around the world "pray" to Buddha. A close relative to me lived for a while with a Buddhist woman. The woman was basically illiterate and navigated her world quite well with street smarts. There were candles and an altar-type thing in her home. She spent at least a few minutes each day on her knees in front of the alter. My relative once asked her what she prayed for. The answer was not clear but was something about good fortune. 

Odds are that Buddha came from some set of cultural values during his time or afterwards. Today, I think it safe to say a large part of Buddhism thinks of him as a super natural god-like figure.