Thanks for your response.

You may have perhaps not completely understood the discussion between Baron and myself (there has been an awful lot of previous, which you're probably not aware of.) It's not a debate between Buddhism and Christianity, for I also call myself a Christian, although a somewhat freethinking one, and I'm certainly not a Buddhist. My complaint is that he has, if I may dare to use the word, a somewhat 'superficial' understanding of Christianity, and has been persuaded of the truth of some of its conventional teachings.

What you say about Jesus and the connection with the East could well be true. My theory would be that Jesus was a spiritual teacher, probably an Essene, and it has been speculated that the Essenes had a strong connection with Buddhist teachings – it's believed that Buddhist missionaries had travelled widely. There is also a well-known theory that Jesus survived the crucifixion and died in India (there is even claimed to be a tomb there). You can easily find material on the internet, if you're not aware of that already.

I also believe that true spiritual teachers all teach the same message, so it wouldn't be surprising to find connections between Buddha and Jesus.

You're also right about the connection with the Eleusinian Mysteries.