Was there ever any contact between Buddhism and early Christianity (and, for that matter, other eastern cults popular at the time), especially considering the far-reaching range of Roman trading routes?
When you look at the practices of Christianity (particularly monasticism), there is much to suggest that.
During the second half of the first millennium, Buddhism, like Christianity and Islam, tried hard to evangelize the nomadic tribes of Central Asia and the great steppe, and there was a similar competition between the three over the souls of the Mongols in the 13th century. There's a great story from the reign of Mongke Khan (1251-1259) where he hosts a huge debate between Christian, Muslim, and Buddhist clergymen, and drafts the papal legate who is visiting Karakorum on diplomatic business to go take the side of the Christian team which is otherwise all Nestorians whom the papal legate would normally consider heretics. If you go before that, there's the famous story of "St. Barlaam," which was literally the Buddha story lifted wholesale and turned into a Catholic saint.
EDIT: Oh, early Christianity, missed the word early. For the longest time, there have been groups of Hindu monks and rival groups of Buddhist monks who claimed that Jesus had studied in (for the Hindus) Varanasi or (for the Buddhists) in Tibet, and that he learned there to merge Jewish law with dharmic religion. The idea of a working-class Galileean walking to Eastern India, let alone Tibet, is kind of ludicrous, but the concept's out there and has been popularized especially by Hindus who were trying to make their religion seem less foreign to Western audiences.
Poll
