An exercise in comparison

[Devadatta]

This being comparative religion and all, here’s a comparison I think worth making more often: that between the New Testament and the Bhagavad Gita.

The first parallel is that each is a composite document. The BG epitomizes sanatana dharma, that is, the broad stream of Indian metaphysical thought preceding and underlying the BG. The NT, on the other hand, brings together much of what Jesus’ followers were saying about him, while also reflecting contemporary streams of Jewish and Greco-Roman thought.

Both the NT and the BG are expressions of a core concept: the gospel for the NT and yoga for the BG.

In both cases, the core concept can be seen as simultaneously multiple and one.

The gospel is one in signifying salvation through the arrival of the kingdom, with its features of present revelation and future prophecy, leading to reconciliation with God.

Yoga is one in signifying salvation through the means of a discipline leading to the realization of God.

The gospel is also one in the NT through its shaping by a dominant orthodoxy, especially by Paul, into what might be called the gospel of obedience.

In the BG, the concept of yoga is dominated by bhakti, or devotional yoga.

In both cases, the text appears shaped by the prevailing needs of the majority of the people to whom it’s directed. Here the two dominant needs are for an ultimate authority on the one hand, and an object of devotion on the other. The relative emphasis on these two needs distinguishes the two traditions.

But both the gospel in the NT and yoga in the BG are multiple as well.

The BG is explicit on this and spends much time in examining the differences and identities of various kinds of yoga: of knowledge, of action, of devotion, of meditation, etc., all the while affirming the ultimate unity of yoga as a concept.

In the NT this is of course not so explicit, and yet the myriad Christian sect, tendencies and heresies historically attest to multiple readings of the gospels. And these multiple readings aren’t made up, I don’t think. They’re based in the text: the gospel of the kingdom in the synoptics, the gospel of the incarnation in John, the gospel of metaphysical sin and redemption in Paul, the gospel of obedience, the gospel of love, etc.

So there’s the comparison? What do you think?