Comparison of Buddhism and Christianity

Since the arrival of Christian missionaries in India in the 1st century (traces of Christians in Kerala from 1st-century Saint Thomas Christians), followed by the arrival of Buddhism in Western Europe in the 4th and 5th centuries, similarities have been perceived between the practices of Buddhism and Christianity. During the 20th century, the differences between these two belief systems were also highlighted.

Despite surface level and non-scholarly analogies, Buddhism and Christianity have inherent and fundamental differences at the deepest levels, beginning with monotheism's place at the core of Christianity and Buddhism's orientation towards non-theism and its rejection of the notion of a creator deity, which runs counter to teachings about God in Christianity; and extending to the importance of Grace in Christianity against the rejection of interference with Karma in Theravada Buddhism, etc.

The central iconic imagery of the two traditions underscore the difference in their belief structure, when the death of Gautama Buddha at an old age is contrasted with the image of the crucifixion of Jesus as a willing sacrifice for the atonement for the sins of humanity. Buddhist scholars such as Masao Abe see the centrality of crucifixion in Christianity as an irreconcilable gap between the two belief systems.

Most modern scholarship has rejected the claims for the travels of Jesus to India or Tibet or influences between the teachings of Christianity and Buddhism as not historical,^: 303 and has seen the attempts at parallel symbolism as cases of parallelomania which exaggerate the importance of trifling resemblances.