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The traditional calendar of saints includes Saint "Josaphat" or "Iodasaph,"
son of a fourth century king of India. A convert to Christianity, Iodasaph
abdicated the throne to embrace a life of ascetic piety. As scholars now
widely acknowledge, what was once taken to be the biography of a Christian
saint is instead the accidental Christianization of a story of Prince Siddhartha
from the Jataka Tales.
The legend of "Iodasaph," a garbled form of "Bodhisattva," meandered
over various Buddhist, Manichean, and Arabic paths on its way to being baptized
as a piece of medieval Christian hagiography. In various texts, the name
appears as "Budhasaf," "Bodisav," and "Bwdysdf" — all even closer to
the original. So there you have it: Gautama Buddha, a Catholic saint!
How tempting it is to imagine the hybrid saint as if the
historical-critical understanding of the tale were a component of it, as
if there really had been a Christian saint named Iodasaph who had Buddhist
leanings. What sort of saintly wisdom would he have imparted?
Longstanding Christian*New Age Quarterly readers will recall
Robert M. Price's "Tales of Saint Iodasaph," a series that ran intermittently
from our January-March '91 to October-December '94 issues. Then, a decade
later, the Saint reappeared! In these new tales — not quite fiction,
more than intellectual ingenuity — Dr. Price weaves together Eastern
and Western wisdom using as mouthpiece the curious historical happenstance
of a Buddhist legend canonized as a Christian saint.
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