I've come across this "theory" from Alan Watts and other New Age type people so I wonder about the historicity of it, basically Iesus Christus was to Judaism what Siddharta Gautama was to Hinduism, they both shared some core values and theres even some parallels like Mara distracting Buddha under the Bodhi tree vs Jesus meditating 40 days and 40 nights in the desert when the devil tempts him, etc.
Is there any linguistical/anthropological/historical actual evidence for this supposed influence and how confident would it be sensical to be about some influence at all? The only evidence I know of is circumstantial, mostly about how jesus supposedly went east to study and how buddhism was read in Jerusalem at the time, and the fact Jesus was literate while a carpenter somehow being thrown in there too.
Usually the idea of Jesus "real message" being dualistic-monism or actual non-dualism is sometimes mentioned too when I have read people discuss this, is there any base for this? Alan Watts said once how in a translation of the bible the text was changed from "I am A son of god" to "I am THE son of god" as an example of how the originally-similar-to-buddhism message was deliberately hidden by orthodoxy
Edit: Im glad to see my post created a lot of well intentioned discourse! I am not very active in reddit so im sorry if i couldnt respond or can't respond to people but thanks for all the very interesting replies! Exactly what I expected from this quesiton and even more!
Edit 2: I will link the quote from alan watts about the alleged deliberate misinterpretation of the gospel by orthodoxy, sorry for the cringe edit but its the best one i could find haha, it also proves that at least some people take this and other comments by alan watts that the message of the bible is talking about a "unified theory of religion" of sorts and that jesus was enlightened, you know like how new age people say all religions are the exact same etc
There are no serious scholars who believe this and no evidence. This is squarely in the realm of conspiracy theorists and new age thinking and the romantic humanism that underpins modernity’s philosophical leanings.
Buddhism emphatically rejects the idea of a creator or supreme deity, so Jesus having any teachings related to a God of any kind demonstrates he wasn’t studying Buddhism. Jesus’s teachings are essentialist (believing a soul exists) and eternalist (God and Heaven are forever), while Buddhism teaches emptiness (nothing has essence or soul) and impermanence. The idea that Jesus’s teachings are compatible with Buddhism are due to a misrepresentation of Buddhism.
You can read a little bit about this in David McMahan’s The Making of Buddhist Modernism (2008) and Donald S. Lopez’s Buddhism and Science (2009). These sources are mostly about misrepresentating Buddhism as Humanism, but also touch on rolling Jesus into the humanism zeitgeist of modernism.
Edit:
To the theists and (I assume mostly) Christians trying to argue with me that Buddhism allows for the possibility of God because some Buddhist monks use that term in English...
Go read Vasubandhu. Or Nagarjuna. Or Dharmakirti. Or Xuanzang. Or Bhaivaiveka. Or Dignaga. Or Woncheuk. Or Buddhagosha. Or literally any pre-modern Buddhist philosopher who wasn't trying to communicate with westerners using western language, and you will see continued rejection of creationism and a supreme deity spanning the full 2500 year old history of Buddhism.
Or just go read the very first text in the Pali canon, Digha Nikaya 1, where the Buddha emphatically tells the audience that the being worshipped as the supreme creator is not a creator and the reason people worship him as such is because of a mistaken view.
To add to what /u/SentientLight provided, as I understand it from a historical context, the first Christian notice of Buddhism is with Clement of Alexandria in 212AD. In his Stromata (ie, Miscellanies), he recognizes some Indians who obey the precepts of Boutta, "whom on the account of his extraordinary sanctity they have raised to divine honours." Clement spoke highly of Buddhism, calling it a philosophy "first in its ranks" for shedding light over the nations." He likely had access to Buddhist texts thanks to Ashoka's command to spread the dharma amongst Greek rulers in the 3rd century BC (Rock Edict XII). It wouldn't be far fetched for him to see similarities between the Buddhist "prajna" (roughly "wisdom" or "insight") and the Greek "sophia" (also, roughly "wisdom" or "insight into the true nature of reality") given the esoteric meanings of the words and their presence in cosmopolitan Alexandria.
I wrote a little bit about this in an answer related to the lack of Buddhism's spread to the west in a post awhile ago. Some more context is provided there around the "freeflow exchange of ideas and rituals" that fit within the early contexts of Christianity's interactions with various locals. That doesn't mean Jesus was influenced by Buddhism; the Stromata's time in the early 3rd century CE being the first Christian reference does seem to imply those ideas were not at the forefront of anyone's mind at the time. Then again, the exact timing of when various Buddhist texts were available on a wider scale is not something I know. Given trade routes and the melting pot that was Alexandria, it's likely there was awareness. But "awareness of" doesn't mean "influenced by" in my opinion.
David Scott's paper on Christian Responses to Buddhism in Pre-Medieval Times may be worth a read!
Is Watts referring to the death sea scrolls when he talks about translation errors?