Yes. And No.

I’m going to ignore the Buddhist monk idea for a moment because it’s historically laughable. As I get tired of saying, there’s zero evidence for Buddhist influence on Jesus.

Instead, let’s consider two teachings reflective of Jesus’ teaching on compassion and love for others. I’ll use Luke as our base text:

6:31 Do to others as you would have them do to you. (NRSV)

There are numerous parallels to this kind of statement, including Jewish sources such as Tobit 4:15, and Rabbi Hillel in the Babylonian Talmud, Šabbat. 31a, though they give it in a negative form, such as ‘don’t do to your neighbor what you hate done to you’.; Greek sources, such as Isocrates Nicocles 61. Roman: Seneca, On Benefits 2.1.1., even Confucius, Analects 15.23

The statement by Jesus is phrased positively, rather than negatively (i.e. ‘do to others what you would have them do to you’, rather than the merely prohibitive ‘don’t do to others what you don’t want them to do to you’). So there’s nothing especially unique about something like the Golden Rule, it has parallels in other ancient ethical and religious texts.

Right before this the Lukan Jesus says:

6::27 “But I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28 bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. (NRSV)

This has its parallel in Matthew 5:43-44. It turns on its head an ethical commonplace that it was proper to love one’s own, hate one’s enemies (i.e. love one’s natural relations, hate one’s community’s enemies). For example, Xenophon Memoribilia 2.6.35 says, ‘a man’s virtue consists in outdoing his friends in kindness and his enemies in mischief’. (A whole bibliography on this topic can be found in Betz, H.D. The Sermon on the Mount (1995). This is a fairly distinctive teaching. But it is not itself entirely unparalleled. One can find recommendations in Babylonian wisdom, Seneca, Cicero, for the practice of mercy/compassion towards one’s enemies.

In the end it is not the uniqueness of the teaching that stands out, but the centrality that this element of Christian ethics came to have in the early church communities, and the way it was embodied in their practices, that is actually remarkable. While it’s pretty easy to find parallels in ethical and religious texts, early Christian communities took this teaching from Jesus normatively and seriously, and made it one of the centerpieces in their understanding of the (ethical) shape of Christian Life.