Zacharias P. Thundy

Zacharias Pontian Thundy actually Zacharias Pontian Thundiyil (born September 28, 1936 in Changanacherry , Kerala ) is an Indian - American , Roman Catholic theologian and religious scholar . Until his retirement he was Professor of Indian Philosophy and Religions at Northern Michigan University .

Live and act

Thundy is the son of Joseph Joseph Thundy and Mary Joseph Thundy. In 1958, Thundy graduated from the Pontificium Athenaeum in Pune (today's Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas ) with a Bachelor of Arts . Four years later he received his Bachelor of Theology and Master of Theology from the same university.

Thundy began his career in 1963 as a teacher at Dharmaram College in Bengaluru , a position he held for a year.

It was 1964 when he immigrated from India to the USA. In 1965, Zacharias received his Master of Arts degree from DePaul University . Also in 1968 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame .

In 1968 he took the position of assistant professor in the English Department of Northern Michigan University. In 1972 Zacharias was appointed associate professor at the same university. Then in 1976 he became a professor at Northern Michigan University, where he worked until his retirement in 2001. On December 15, 1983, he married his wife Gina Marie Thundy. You have two children.

The result of his research sees u. a. the influence of Buddhist missionaries on the authors of the New Testament . Using literary-critical methods , he was able to show that materials from other cultural environments were incorporated into the Gospel editorial team as components. Thundy also takes up positions of Richard von Garbe , who in 1914 also dealt with the influences from India on early Christianity . Garbe saw mainly the Buddhist influences on the New Testament, on the apocryphal gospels and the Christian legend literature.

In 1993 he dealt intensively with the possible influence of Buddhist ideas on some currents in Judaism . He saw a possible connection point in the monastic community of therapists in Alexandria (Egypt), which was established there by Jewish hermits from the beginning of the 1st century BC. Existed until the beginning of the Christian era in the 1st century AD. This community was reported by Philo of Alexandria , who lived in the first half of the 1st century AD. Philo described the therapists in De Vita contemplativa .

Under Ptolemy II Philadelphus , he was in contact with King Ashoka , Alexandria experienced a strong boom. For the Ptolemies there was a great interest in an exchange of goods with the Indian subcontinent. In the process, not only the land route but, to a greater extent, the sea route across the Red Sea to the mouth of the Indus and on to southern India developed significantly. According to Thundy, the term θεραπευτής for the grouping of therapists, according to his hypothesis , goes back to the Sanskrit word " Theravada " ( Sanskrit स्थविरवाद sthaviravāda "the teaching [ vāda ] of the ancients [ thera ]"). By language change the Indian word with is consonant "ʊ" and "ð" by Grimm's been converted into a Greek "π" and "τ". He sees evidence of this, among other things, in the fact that with Clemens von Alexandria , a Greek theologian and church writer , “ Buddha ” always appears in the spelling “Boutta” ( Βοττα ).

Fonts (selection)

• Buddha and Christ: Nativity Stories and Indian Traditions. Brill, Leiden 1993, ISBN 90-04-09741-4
• Religions in dialogue: East and West meet. University Press of America, Lanham [Md.] 1985.
• Holy Mary Magdalene: Old and New. Createspace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016
• Rabbouni by Mary Magdalene: Misreading. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016
• The Trial of Jesus and His Death on the Cross. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015
• Contact between early Christianity and Buddhism in the gnostic milieu. 1987

Web links

• Zacharias P. Thundy: The Temptation of Buddha / Christ and the Fourth Gospel. ( [2] on academia.edu)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Zacharias Pontian Thundy educator author ( [1] on prabook.com)
2. ↑ Richard von Garbe : India and Christianity. Tübingen 1914; Reprint: VDM, Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-8364-2193-5 .
3. ↑ Michael von Brück , Whalen Lai : Buddhism and Christianity. History, confrontation, dialogue. CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42646-8 , pp. 713-714, footnote 56.
4. ↑ Zacharias P. Thundy: Buddha and Christ: Nativity Stories and Indian Traditions. Brill, Leiden 1993, ISBN 90-04-09741-4 , pp. 206-208; 245 (books.google.de)
5. ↑ Heinz Gerster : Budjas Buddhists. Ways and Worlds of Early Buddhism. Elster, Zurich 2015, ISBN 978-3-906065-33-5 , pp. 26–28
6. ^ "Theravada" (teaching of the elders), also known as the southern tradition, traces its roots back to the community of elders (Sthavirada). They only accepted the Tripitaka (three baskets of discourses preserved in the form of the Pali canon ) as the legal basis. In Theravada the goal is to become an arhat (worthy one). An arhat is someone who has attained enlightenment ( bodhi ) and is no longer reborn through attaining nirvana . In early Buddhism no distinction is made between the Buddha's enlightenment and the enlightenment of his disciples.
7. ↑ see also Hermann Detering : Buddha, Josua, Jesus and the way to the other bank. Independently published, ISBN 978-1-980796-05-3 , 2018, p. 49.
8. ↑ see also Elmar R. Gruber , Holger Kersten : The Ur-Jesus: the Buddhist sources of Christianity. Ullstein, Frankfurt am Main 1996, p. 249 f.