Regarding Robert H. Countess' Criticism of the Christian Lindtner Theory, That if Mark was a Buddhist Missionary Attempting to Convert Jews to Buddhism, He Failed Miserably; for if Mark was a Convert to the Original Ancient Judaism, Mark would have had no Intention of Converting Anyone to Anything but the Personal Religion of Refined Jewish Buddhism, or Buddhist Refined Judaism, What We Call "Christianity"

I must offer that pastor and scholar Robert H. Countess, author of The Jehovah's Witnesses' New Testament: A Critical Analysis of the New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures, certainly had valid criticisms and questions for the Christian Lindtner Theory (CLT). Not the least of which was why would anyone pretending scholarship use a cult-fabricated Greek text for presumably serious and scholarly comparative research? But I digress.

What bothers me in Countess' criticism is his assumption that Buddhist Missionaries (=BM, or Mark), if they indeed wrote the Gospel of Mark as the CLT contends, intended it to promote Buddhism. Writes Countess: "If the purpose of the BM was to promote Buddhism under the guise of a fraudulently created corpus of NT documents, then the BM utterly failed in their purpose, since the result was a new and highly successful religion [Christianity] that at no significant point agrees with Buddhism" (emphasis mine).

Oddly, Countess' contention that Christianity at no point agrees with Buddhism contradicts fellow CLT critic Dr. Burkhard Scherer:

"Is there no Buddhist influence in the gospels? Since more than hundred years Buddhist influence in the Gospels has been known and acknowledged by scholars from both sides. Just recently, Duncan McDerret published his excellent The Bible and the Buddhist (Sardini, Bornato [Italy] 2001). With McDerret, I am convinced that there are many Buddhist narratives in the Gospels. I would differentiate between narratives (like parables), motifs (like Jesus walks on water) and some proper names like place-names etc. (like Magad[h]a). This narratives and elements were transmitted orally by mercenaries (esp. Parthians) along the trade routes, i.e. the Sea Routes and the Silk Route(s). They all have in common that they have a clear contextual and/or narratological functions in Buddhist sources and lack this function in the Gospels so that their Buddhist origin is narratologically proved even without taking more iconographical chronological evidence in favour of the Buddhist texts into consideration. I gave some examples in my book Buddha (Gütersloh 2001, Basiswissen). So there is 'much Buddhist stuff going on in the Gospel.' But its not the only source, not even a main source for the NT."

I agree with Scherer and believe Rev. Countess failed to perceive Mark's intention in writing the Gospel of Mark. I also content that Mark succeeded famously in what he intended until the church Paganized the Gospel by turning God's Anointing in every man into a separate and unique man itself.

A little wiki-history regarding Buddhism: "Siddhārtha Gautama was a monk, sage, philosopher, and teacher on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. He is believed to have lived and taught mostly in the northeastern part of ancient India sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE. Gautama taught a Middle Way between sensual indulgence and the severe asceticism found in the śramaṇa movement common in his region. He later taught throughout other regions of eastern India such as Magadha and Kosala. Gautama is the primary figure in Buddhism. He is believed by Buddhists to be an enlightened teacher who attained full Buddhahood and shared his insights to help sentient beings end rebirth and suffering." (Note that "Buddhahood" means Godhood.)

'Buddha' is God; i.e., Gautama supposedly attained the realization of his godhood, and thus he taught that there is no god other than the One who is also us. Long after he passed, Indian religionists determined that he had become a god, and worshiped the dead (where have we seen this pattern before?). Later, a deeply repentant Emperor Ashoka converted to Buddhism, and his Edicts of Ashoka were an early-on blog to convert the world to Buddhist morals. His emissaries went as far as the Mediterranean, and must presumably have met gnostic-leaning Essene Jews in the Levant and/or the Alexandrian area of Egypt.

My contention is that as a Buddhist missionary Mark would have realized that Gautama's teachings expressed exactly the ANCIENT Gospel Moses preached in Exodus and Genesis, that God's Life-giving, Living Branch Anointing is our inner consciousness of being, our "I am" (Exodus 3:14). He would also have put together that the recently ended Season of Grace had begun contemporarily with the Gautama's appearance in India. Might Mark have associated the advent of Buddha with the verse, "Behold, I send my messenger before your face, the voice of one crying, 'In the wilderness, prepare the way of YHWH'" (Isaiah 40:3)? The wilderness of Moses' meeting God "on Mt. Horeb" being meditation.

Thus Mark begins his Gospel: "He reveals the Life-giving, Living Branch Anointing." He who? God? One of the contemporary enlightened Jews? Gautama Buddha? My choice is the Anointing Itself. Read it, "The Anointing reveals the Life-giving, Living Branch." What Life-giving, Living Branch? Imagination! Our consciousness!

Countess overlooks Mark's conversion to the ancient Mosaic Judaism, a personal religion. Mark had no cause or intention to convert anyone to Buddhism, but to draw them to the original Judaism, the personal religion of acknowledging God’s Anointing in man. Exodus 3:14 can also be read: “I am the Creative Imagination of your Primal Power of Being.” Mark simply gives this power--the Life-giving Living Branch--person and voice.