The Buddha from Babylon - The Lost History and Cosmic Vision of Siddhartha Gautama by Harvey Kraft

Ongoing major efforts are underway to learn more about the life of Jesus and teachings, yet little to no attempt has been made to date regarding the real lifetime of another religious giant, the historical Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama. That's about to change. Based on a variety of reliable sources, linguistics evidence, archeological clues, and interpretations of mythological documents, the picture of a Lost History of the Buddha has emerged. It appears that prior to his Enlightenment, he was a famous religious leader, who became Emperor in Babylon, only to be overthrown (522 BCE) in a murderous plot orchestrated by a religious competitor, Zoroaster, and the Persian King of Kings, Darius the Great. He was born west of today's India, not in Nepal, as some have suggested. The Buddha from Babylon is written as a narrative story, rather than as a research paper. It reads like a documentary covering the development of world religion from its shamanic inception through the Buddha's teachings. It tracks the pursuit of cosmic understanding and philosophy amidst chaos, war and natural disaster, as seers from Israel to the Indus proposed various explanations for the divine and meanings for Existence - who are we, where do we come from, what's our future?