Barlaam og Ioasaph: et Buddha-livs vandring mod vest

It has long been known that the story of Barlaam and Ioasaph - or Barlaam and Iosafat as it was known in the Latin West - despite being a Christian legend is really a Buddha life that has gone through several transformations. From a probably Sanskrit original, the story passed through a Manichaean version, was turned into an Ismaelitic Muslim legend; from there it passed into a Georgian Christian frame, before it was translated and redacted into Greek translation to the tenth or early eleventh century, and this late dating makes the close relationship between the Greek text and the Metaphrastic texts even more intriguing, as they the two literary processes turn out to be very close in time as well as in style.