Photo: Manichaeans, from a manuscript of Khocho, Tarim Basin; public domain, Wikipedia.
“Jerome, for his part, attributes a tradition to the gymnosophists that “Buddha (Buddam), the founder of their sect, was generated from the side of a virgin” (Against Jovinian 1.42),12 which he then compares to the generation of Minerva from the head of Jupiter. This reference to the Buddha, as striking as it is, is not the first to be found in Latin literature.
Somewhat earlier in the 4th century, Marius Victorinus, the pagan rhetorician who converted to Christianity sometime around 355 CE, addresses one of his opponents with the question: “Now, then, do you see how much they are deceived by Mani, Zoroaster, or Buddha (Buddas), by teaching this?”13 In fact, this reference from Victorinus anti-Manichaean treatise Ad Iustinum manichaeum constitutes the first known direct reference to the Buddha in the Latin tradition.”
- Timothy Pettipiece: The Buddha in Early Christian Literature, Millennium 6/2009, pp. 135-136.
- German quotes: Buddha bei den Urchristen