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ones we have, but we can never really tell which are which, because these documents are so late
in origin.
The last issue just raised, beyond the actual date of composition, concerns the date of the
earliest surviving copies. Hexham notes that, “The earliest extant Buddhist documents date from
the seventh century A.D.” 61
This difference of at least some 1300 years after Buddha’s death
fails to insure the creeping in of foreign ideas, which is one of Conze’s exact points: “Different
schools wrote down different things.” 62
One result is that, “Scholars still dispute which school
[Buddha] actually belonged to.” 63
Other similar historical problems were also apparent even in our brief look at other major
founders. This would include not only the earliest forms of Buddhism, but Confucianism and
Taoism not even having supernatural beliefs, let alone producing miracles. The major
Zoroastrian theological texts were not even written until some 1500 years after Zoroaster lived.
But the actual extant copies of the Avestas date to about 1800 years after Zoroaster! For
Krishna, the existing text of the Bhagavad Gita dates from 3300 to perhaps as late as 4200 years
after him, for those who think that he even lived!
Lastly, no miracles are reported of Muhammad in the Qur’an beyond his recording the
words themselves, though miraculous reports do appear in the Hadith tradition, beginning some
Conze, while the majority of such accounts are clearly quite late (Yamauchi, Jesus, Zoroasterm Buddha, Socrates,
Muhammad, Rev. Ed. [Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1972], 6-7, 18). Stephen Neill points out that the Pāli
Buddhist canon does not even begin to take its present form for 400 years (Neill, Christian Faith and Other Faiths:
The Christian Dialogue with Other Religions, Third ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 1984), 125, emphasis added.
61 Hexham, Concise Dictionary of Religion, 40.
62 Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, 11-12.
63 Conze, Buddhist Scriptures, 34.
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