Saint Josaphat (also known as Iosaphat or Ioasaph) is said to have lived and died in the 3rd century or 4th century in India.
According to legend, a King Abenner or Avenier in India persecuted the Christian church in his realm, founded by the Apostle Thomas. When astrologers predicted that his own son would someday become a Christian, Abenner had the young prince Josaphat isolated from external contact. Despite the imprisonment, Josaphat met the hermit Saint Barlaam and converted to Christianity. Josaphat kept his faith even in the face of his father's anger and persuasion. Eventually, Abenner himself converted, turned over his throne to Josaphat, and retired to the desert to become a hermit. Josaphat himself later abdicated and went into reclusion with his old teacher Baarlam.
The story of Josaphat and Baarlam was popular in the Middle Ages, appearing in such works as the Golden Legend. Josaphat and Barlaam were canonized in the Roman Catholic Church (feast day November 27) and are recognized among the Eastern Orthodox.
Wilfred Cantwell Smith traced the story from a second to fourth-century Sanskrit Mahayana Buddhist text, to a Manichee version, to an Arabic Muslim version, to an eleventh century Christian Georgian version, to a Christian Greek version, and from there into Western European languages. He traced Josaphat's name from the Sanskrit term bodhisattva via the Middle Persian bodasif.
Myths and legends
According to the 1907 Catholic Encyclopedia, the story is one of the legends of "Buddha" in which the claim is Buddha was Saint Josaphat. It is said that this is a corruption of the original Joasaph, which is again from the middle Persian Budasif (Budsaif=Bodhisattva). The Greek text of the legend, written beginning of the seventh century, probably by a monk of the Sabbas monastery near Jerusalem, was first published by Boissonade in "Anecdota Graeca" (paris, 1832), IV, and is reproduced in Migne, PG, XCVI, among the works of St. John Damascene. The legend cannot, however, have been a work of the great Damascene, as was proved by Zotenberg in "Notices sur le livre de Barlaam et Josaphat" (Paris, 1886) and by Hammel in "Verhandl. des 7 interneat. Orientalisten Congresses", Semit. Section (Vienna, 1888).