The Buddha becomes a saint — and reaches Hebrew

Sanskrit bodhisattva → Middle Persian Bodisav → Arabic Būdhāsaf, where one misplaced dot makes it Yūdasaf → Georgian Iodasaph → Greek Ioasaph → Latin Josaphat. By the eleventh century Barlaam and Josaphat are Christian saints with a feast day. One branch runs into Hebrew: Ibn Ḥasdai's Ben ha-Melekh ve-ha-Nazir, Barcelona, c. 1230.

The first crossing, and the reason it is a near-miss rather than a meeting: the Buddha's biography reached the cradle of the Kabbalah wearing a false name, and nobody noticed for eight hundred years.