Lost years of Jesus
Encyclopedia
The lost years of Jesus concerns the undocumented timespan between Jesus
's childhood and the beginning of his ministry as recorded in the New Testament
.
The gospels have accounts of events surrounding Jesus' birth, and the subsequent flight into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod
(Gospel of Matthew
2:13-23). There is a general reference to the settlement of Joseph and Mary, along with the young Jesus, at Nazareth
(Matthew 2:23; Gospel of Luke
2:39-40). There also is that isolated account of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus' visit to the city of Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover
, when Jesus was twelve years old (Luke 2:41-50).
Following that episode, there is a blank space in the record that covers eighteen years in the life of Christ (from age 12 to 30). Other than the generic allusion that Jesus advanced in wisdom, stature, and in favor with God and man (Luke 2:52), the Bible gives nothing more about Jesus' life during this time span. A common assumption amongst Christians is that Jesus simply lived in Nazareth during that period, but there are various accounts that present other scenarios, including travels to India.
Several authors have claimed to have found proof of the existence of manuscripts in India and Tibet that support the belief that Christ was in India during this time in his life. Others cite legends in a number of places in the region that Jesus passed that way in ancient times. The Jesus in India manuscript was first reported in modern times by Nicolas Notovitch
(1894). Subsequently several other authors have written on the subject, including the religious leader Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
(founder of Ahmadiyya
movement in Islam
) (1899), Levi H. Dowling
(1908), Swami Abhedananda
(1922), Nicholas Roerich
(1923–1928), Mathilde Ludendorff
(1930), Elizabeth Clare Prophet
(founder of Ascended Master Teachings
New Age
group) (1956) and more recently Holger Kersten in his book Jesus Lived in India (1981).
, published in 1908, claims to be the true story of the life of Jesus
, including "the 'lost' eighteen years silent in the New Testament."
The narrative follows the young Jesus across India, Tibet, Persia, Assyria, Greece and Egypt.
, described by the authors as teachers of the Buddhist Theravada
school then living in Judaea.
They assert that Jesus lived the life of a Buddhist and taught Buddhist ideals to his disciples; their work follows in the footsteps of the Oxford New Testament scholar Barnett Hillman Streeter, who established as early as the 1930s that the moral teaching of the Buddha
has four remarkable resemblances to the Sermon on the Mount."
Some scholars believe that Jesus may have been inspired by the Buddhist religion and that the Gospel of Thomas
and many Nag Hammadi
texts reflect this possible influence. Books such as The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels
and The Original Jesus by Gruber and Kersten discuss these theories.
, visited India and Tibet. He claimed that, at the lamasery or monastery of Hemis
in Ladakh
, he learned of the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men." Issa is the Arabic name of Jesus. His story, with a translated text of the "Life of Saint Issa," was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ. It was subsequently translated into English, German, Spanish, and Italian.
Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial. The German orientalist Max Mueller, who'd never been to India himself, published a letter he'd received from a British colonial officer, which stated that the presence of Notovitch in Ladakh was "not documented."
J. Archibald Douglas, then a teacher at the Government College in Agra also visited Hemis monastery in 1895, but claimed that he did not find any evidence that Notovich had even been there. But, there is very little biographical information about Notovitch and a record of his death has never been found. The diary of Dr. Karl Rudolph Marx of the Ladane Charitable Dispensary, a missionary of the Order of the Moravian Brothers, and director of the hospital in Leh, clearly states that he treated Nicolas Notovitch for a severe toothache in November 1887. However, Edgar J. Goodspeed in his book "Famous Biblical Hoaxes" claims that the head abbot of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as an outright liar; this claim has not been independently verified.
The corroborating evidence of later visitors to the monastery having yet to appear, Notovich responded to claims that the lama at Hemis had denied that the manuscript existed by explaining that the monks would have seen enquiries about them as evidence of their value to the outside world and of the risk of their being stolen or taken by force. Tibetologists Snellgrove and Skorupski wrote of the monks at Hemis, "They seem convinced that all foreigners steal if they can. There have in fact been quite serious losses of property in recent years." Notovitch also provided the names of several people in the region who could verify his presence there.
In 1922, after initially doubting Notovitch, Swami Abhedananda
, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna
, and a close acquaintance of Max Müller, journeyed to Tibet, investigated his claim, was shown the manuscript by the lama and with his help translated part of the document, and later championed Notovich's views. Having spoken at Max Müller's funeral, his opposing Müller's assertion that Notovitch's document was a forgery, was no small matter.
A number of authors have taken these accounts and have expanded upon them in their own works. For example, in her book The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus's 17-Year Journey to the East, Elizabeth Clare Prophet
cites Buddhist manuscripts that provide evidence that Jesus traveled to India, Nepal, Ladakh and Tibet. However, she reprints objections and rebuttals of Life of Saint Issa, citing both sides of the controversy in detail. She observes, "The fact that Douglas failed to see a copy of a manuscript was no more decisive proof that it did not exist than Notovitch's claim that it did." In the 1980s, in a videotaped sermon broadcast on Adelphia Cable Los Angeles' public access channel, Elizabeth Clare Prophet stated that a Roman Catholic priest had told her personally that the Hemis manuscript coincided with the content of a non-canonical edition of the gospels in the Vatican Library
. She did not expand on this statement other than to add, "I take great offence at an orthodoxy withholding from me the truth about my Lord."
's book La Bible dans l'Inde, Vie de Iezeus Christna (1869) (The Bible in India, or the Life of Jezeus Christna), but there is no direct connection between his writings and those of writers on the Himmis mauscripts.
Jacolliot compares the accounts of the life of Bhagavan Krishna
with that of Jesus Christ in the gospels and concludes that it could not have been a coincidence that the two stories have so many similarities in many of the finer details. He concludes that the account in the gospels is a myth based on the mythology of ancient India. As an example of a different interpretation, note that a number of well-known philosophers and writers, whose lifework has revolved around East-West comparative religion, (Ramakrishna
, Vivekananda, Sivananda among others), have written that the similarities in some of the events in the lives of two of the most important figures in Eastern and Western religion (Christ and Krishna), are proof of the divine harmony linking the great faiths of East and West. However, Jacolliot is comparing two different periods of history (or mythology) and does not claim that Jesus was in India. He spells "Krishna" as "Christna" and claims that Krishna's disciples gave him the name 'Jezeus", a name supposed to mean "pure essence" in Sanskrit, though it is not even a Sanskrit term at all – "it was simply invented" by Jacoillot.
, in the Pratisargaarvan (19.17-32), a 19th century redaction of a text purporting to tell future events, describes the arrival of Jesus thus:
, the further sayings of Muhammad mention that Jesus died in Kashmir at the age of one hundred and twenty years. Ahmadis have advocated this view for over 100 years, started by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
. Muslim and Persian sources purport to trace the sojourn of Jesus, known as Isa, or Yuz Asaf
("leader of the healed") along the old Silk Road to the orient. The books, Christ in Kashmir by Aziz Kashmiri, and Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten, list documents and articles in support of this view. They believe Yuz Asaf to be buried at the Roza Bal
shrine in Srinagar
, India.
with no pretense of historical accuracy:
, a documentary titled Mysteries of the Bible
refers to the Hemis manuscript and similar accounts as "wild stories of Jesus travelling to India to study with Eastern mystics." The documentary repeats the account of J. Archibald Douglas and the lama's denial of the manuscript's existence, without mentioning the corroborating evidence of Swami Abhedananda and Nicolas Roerich.
As proof that Jesus was in Galilee during that time, one scholar presents the Biblical quotation, "Is not this the carpenter (carpenter's son)" as proof that he was well known to the local people. He adds that Jesus "went walkabout, he went out on tour." Another scholar states that "any historian worth his salt" will go "with the earliest evidence, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." "You can envision the family spending many years building houses, building furniture ... that's the family business." The film continues, "He may not have been just a carpenter either, it is possible that he went [to the sea of Galilee] to fish. If he did, he would most likely have run into a group of fishermen." "It makes sense to presume ... [that Joseph died] and Jesus would have had to ... do the appropriate things as a son, namely ..." "By studying stories agreed on to be true, a clearer, albeit hypothesized, portrait of Christ's life can emerge."
. The story states that the inspiration for the Jesus story is from a Cro-Magnon
man who has survived for more than 14,000 years. The story also states that he was once a Sumerian for 2000 years, then a Babylonian under Hammurabi, then a disciple of Gautama Buddha in India. The film is presented as the Cro-Magnon
narrates his own story as a secret revealed to his modern day friends.
in his book Jesus the Master Builder: Druid Mysteries and the Dawn of Christianity (1998), which was the basis of the documentary titled And Did Those Feet (2009).
L. Taylor Hansen
wrote the book He Walked the Americas in 1963. In the book drawing from Native American
legends
, folklore
and mythology
discussed that a "White Prophet" had visited many different parts of America
. Mormons
believe that the "White Prophet" was Jesus Christ.
Some Mormon
scholars believe that Quetzalcoatl
, who they describe as a White, bearded God who came from the sky and promised to return, was actually Jesus Christ, in contrast with the Mesoamerican interpretation of their feathered serpent deity. According to the Book of Mormon
, Jesus visited the American natives after his resurrection.
Latter-day Saint President John Taylor wrote:
This idea was adapted by science fiction author and Mormon Orson Scott Card
in his story America
.
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
's childhood and the beginning of his ministry as recorded in the New Testament
New Testament
The New Testament is the second major division of the Christian biblical canon, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament....
.
The gospels have accounts of events surrounding Jesus' birth, and the subsequent flight into Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod
Herod the Great
Herod , also known as Herod the Great , was a Roman client king of Judea. His epithet of "the Great" is widely disputed as he is described as "a madman who murdered his own family and a great many rabbis." He is also known for his colossal building projects in Jerusalem and elsewhere, including his...
(Gospel of Matthew
Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel According to Matthew is one of the four canonical gospels, one of the three synoptic gospels, and the first book of the New Testament. It tells of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth...
2:13-23). There is a general reference to the settlement of Joseph and Mary, along with the young Jesus, at Nazareth
Nazareth
Nazareth is the largest city in the North District of Israel. Known as "the Arab capital of Israel," the population is made up predominantly of Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel...
(Matthew 2:23; Gospel of Luke
Gospel of Luke
The Gospel According to Luke , commonly shortened to the Gospel of Luke or simply Luke, is the third and longest of the four canonical Gospels. This synoptic gospel is an account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. It details his story from the events of his birth to his Ascension.The...
2:39-40). There also is that isolated account of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus' visit to the city of Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover
Passover
Passover is a Jewish holiday and festival. It commemorates the story of the Exodus, in which the ancient Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt...
, when Jesus was twelve years old (Luke 2:41-50).
Following that episode, there is a blank space in the record that covers eighteen years in the life of Christ (from age 12 to 30). Other than the generic allusion that Jesus advanced in wisdom, stature, and in favor with God and man (Luke 2:52), the Bible gives nothing more about Jesus' life during this time span. A common assumption amongst Christians is that Jesus simply lived in Nazareth during that period, but there are various accounts that present other scenarios, including travels to India.
Several authors have claimed to have found proof of the existence of manuscripts in India and Tibet that support the belief that Christ was in India during this time in his life. Others cite legends in a number of places in the region that Jesus passed that way in ancient times. The Jesus in India manuscript was first reported in modern times by Nicolas Notovitch
Nicolas Notovitch
Nicolas Notovitch was a Russian aristocrat, Cossack officer, spy and journalist known for his contention that during the years of Jesus Christ's life missing from the Bible, he followed travelling merchants abroad into India and the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, India, where he studied Buddhism.-Life...
(1894). Subsequently several other authors have written on the subject, including the religious leader Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was a religious figure from India and the founder of the Ahmadiyya Community. He claimed to be the Mujaddid of the 14th Islamic century, the promised Messiah , and the Mahdi awaited by the Muslims in the end days...
(founder of Ahmadiyya
Ahmadiyya
Ahmadiyya is an Islamic religious revivalist movement founded in India near the end of the 19th century, originating with the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad , who claimed to have fulfilled the prophecies about the world reformer of the end times, who was to herald the Eschaton as...
movement in Islam
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
) (1899), Levi H. Dowling
Levi H. Dowling
Levi H. Dowling was an American preacher. He was born in Bellville, Ohio. His father, of Scots and Welsh descent, was a pioneer preacher among the Disciples of Christ...
(1908), Swami Abhedananda
Swami Abhedananda
Swami Abhedananda was a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, who Swami Vivekananda sent to the West to head the Vedanta Society, New York in 1897, and spread the message of Vedanta, a theme on which he authored several books through his life, and subsequently founded the Ramakrishna Vedanta Math,...
(1922), Nicholas Roerich
Nicholas Roerich
Nicholas Roerich, also known as Nikolai Konstantinovich Rerikh , was a Russian mystic, painter, philosopher, scientist, writer, traveler, and public figure. A prolific artist, he created thousands of paintings and about 30 literary works...
(1923–1928), Mathilde Ludendorff
Mathilde Ludendorff
Mathilde Friederike Karoline Ludendorff was a German teacher and doctor. She was the second wife of Erich Ludendorff - he was her third husband - as well as a leading figure in the Völkisch movement, where she was known for her esoteric and conspiratorial ideas...
(1930), Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Elizabeth Clare Prophet was an American spiritual author and lecturer who was the leader of The Summit Lighthouse and Church Universal and Triumphant, a New Age religious movement which gained media attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s while preparing for potential nuclear disaster.During...
(founder of Ascended Master Teachings
Ascended Master Teachings
The students of "Ascended Master Teachings" organizations believe that the Presence of Life/God - Individualizes as the "I AM", and incarnates throughout the created universes until it achieves The Ascension . The "Teachings" as all Religious Teachings.....
New Age
New Age
The New Age movement is a Western spiritual movement that developed in the second half of the 20th century. Its central precepts have been described as "drawing on both Eastern and Western spiritual and metaphysical traditions and then infusing them with influences from self-help and motivational...
group) (1956) and more recently Holger Kersten in his book Jesus Lived in India (1981).
Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ
The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by Levi H. DowlingLevi H. Dowling
Levi H. Dowling was an American preacher. He was born in Bellville, Ohio. His father, of Scots and Welsh descent, was a pioneer preacher among the Disciples of Christ...
, published in 1908, claims to be the true story of the life of Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
, including "the 'lost' eighteen years silent in the New Testament."
The narrative follows the young Jesus across India, Tibet, Persia, Assyria, Greece and Egypt.
Jesus and Buddhism
Gruber and Kersten (1995) claim that Buddhism had a substantial influence on the life and teachings of Jesus. They claim that Jesus was influenced by the teachings and practices of TherapeutaeTherapeutae
The Therapeutae were a Jewish sect in which flourished in Alexandria and other parts of the Diaspora of Hellenistic Judaism in the final years of the Second Temple period. The primary source is the account De vita contemplativa by the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria who appears to have...
, described by the authors as teachers of the Buddhist Theravada
Theravada
Theravada ; literally, "the Teaching of the Elders" or "the Ancient Teaching", is the oldest surviving Buddhist school. It was founded in India...
school then living in Judaea.
They assert that Jesus lived the life of a Buddhist and taught Buddhist ideals to his disciples; their work follows in the footsteps of the Oxford New Testament scholar Barnett Hillman Streeter, who established as early as the 1930s that the moral teaching of the Buddha
Gautama Buddha
Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...
has four remarkable resemblances to the Sermon on the Mount."
Some scholars believe that Jesus may have been inspired by the Buddhist religion and that the Gospel of Thomas
Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel According to Thomas, commonly shortened to the Gospel of Thomas, is a well preserved early Christian, non-canonical sayings-gospel discovered near Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in December 1945, in one of a group of books known as the Nag Hammadi library...
and many Nag Hammadi
Nag Hammadi library
The Nag Hammadi library is a collection of early Christian Gnostic texts discovered near the Upper Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi in 1945. That year, twelve leather-bound papyrus codices buried in a sealed jar were found by a local peasant named Mohammed Ali Samman...
texts reflect this possible influence. Books such as The Gnostic Gospels and Beyond Belief: the Secret Gospel of Thomas by Elaine Pagels
Elaine Pagels
Elaine Pagels, née Hiesey , is the Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion at Princeton University. The recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship, she is best known for her studies and writing on the Gnostic Gospels...
and The Original Jesus by Gruber and Kersten discuss these theories.
Saint Issa
In 1887 a Russian war correspondent, Nicolas NotovitchNicolas Notovitch
Nicolas Notovitch was a Russian aristocrat, Cossack officer, spy and journalist known for his contention that during the years of Jesus Christ's life missing from the Bible, he followed travelling merchants abroad into India and the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, India, where he studied Buddhism.-Life...
, visited India and Tibet. He claimed that, at the lamasery or monastery of Hemis
Hemis Monastery
Hemis Monastery is a Tibetan Buddhist monastery of the Drukpa Lineage, located in Hemis, Ladakh . Situated 45 km from Leh, the monastery was re-established in 1672 by the Ladakhi king Sengge Namgyal...
in Ladakh
Ladakh
Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...
, he learned of the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men." Issa is the Arabic name of Jesus. His story, with a translated text of the "Life of Saint Issa," was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ. It was subsequently translated into English, German, Spanish, and Italian.
Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial. The German orientalist Max Mueller, who'd never been to India himself, published a letter he'd received from a British colonial officer, which stated that the presence of Notovitch in Ladakh was "not documented."
J. Archibald Douglas, then a teacher at the Government College in Agra also visited Hemis monastery in 1895, but claimed that he did not find any evidence that Notovich had even been there. But, there is very little biographical information about Notovitch and a record of his death has never been found. The diary of Dr. Karl Rudolph Marx of the Ladane Charitable Dispensary, a missionary of the Order of the Moravian Brothers, and director of the hospital in Leh, clearly states that he treated Nicolas Notovitch for a severe toothache in November 1887. However, Edgar J. Goodspeed in his book "Famous Biblical Hoaxes" claims that the head abbot of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as an outright liar; this claim has not been independently verified.
The corroborating evidence of later visitors to the monastery having yet to appear, Notovich responded to claims that the lama at Hemis had denied that the manuscript existed by explaining that the monks would have seen enquiries about them as evidence of their value to the outside world and of the risk of their being stolen or taken by force. Tibetologists Snellgrove and Skorupski wrote of the monks at Hemis, "They seem convinced that all foreigners steal if they can. There have in fact been quite serious losses of property in recent years." Notovitch also provided the names of several people in the region who could verify his presence there.
In 1922, after initially doubting Notovitch, Swami Abhedananda
Swami Abhedananda
Swami Abhedananda was a direct disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, who Swami Vivekananda sent to the West to head the Vedanta Society, New York in 1897, and spread the message of Vedanta, a theme on which he authored several books through his life, and subsequently founded the Ramakrishna Vedanta Math,...
, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna , born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay , was a famous mystic of 19th-century India. His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda – both were influential figures in the Bengali Renaissance as well as the Hindu...
, and a close acquaintance of Max Müller, journeyed to Tibet, investigated his claim, was shown the manuscript by the lama and with his help translated part of the document, and later championed Notovich's views. Having spoken at Max Müller's funeral, his opposing Müller's assertion that Notovitch's document was a forgery, was no small matter.
A number of authors have taken these accounts and have expanded upon them in their own works. For example, in her book The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus's 17-Year Journey to the East, Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Elizabeth Clare Prophet
Elizabeth Clare Prophet was an American spiritual author and lecturer who was the leader of The Summit Lighthouse and Church Universal and Triumphant, a New Age religious movement which gained media attention in the late 1980s and early 1990s while preparing for potential nuclear disaster.During...
cites Buddhist manuscripts that provide evidence that Jesus traveled to India, Nepal, Ladakh and Tibet. However, she reprints objections and rebuttals of Life of Saint Issa, citing both sides of the controversy in detail. She observes, "The fact that Douglas failed to see a copy of a manuscript was no more decisive proof that it did not exist than Notovitch's claim that it did." In the 1980s, in a videotaped sermon broadcast on Adelphia Cable Los Angeles' public access channel, Elizabeth Clare Prophet stated that a Roman Catholic priest had told her personally that the Hemis manuscript coincided with the content of a non-canonical edition of the gospels in the Vatican Library
Vatican Library
The Vatican Library is the library of the Holy See, currently located in Vatican City. It is one of the oldest libraries in the world and contains one of the most significant collections of historical texts. Formally established in 1475, though in fact much older, it has 75,000 codices from...
. She did not expand on this statement other than to add, "I take great offence at an orthodoxy withholding from me the truth about my Lord."
Christ and Krishna
The Jesus in India idea has been associated with Louis JacolliotLouis Jacolliot
Louis Jacolliot was a French barrister, colonial judge, author and lecturer.Born in Charolles, Saône-et-Loire, he lived several years in Tahiti and India during the period 1865-1869....
's book La Bible dans l'Inde, Vie de Iezeus Christna (1869) (The Bible in India, or the Life of Jezeus Christna), but there is no direct connection between his writings and those of writers on the Himmis mauscripts.
Jacolliot compares the accounts of the life of Bhagavan Krishna
Krishna
Krishna is a central figure of Hinduism and is traditionally attributed the authorship of the Bhagavad Gita. He is the supreme Being and considered in some monotheistic traditions as an Avatar of Vishnu...
with that of Jesus Christ in the gospels and concludes that it could not have been a coincidence that the two stories have so many similarities in many of the finer details. He concludes that the account in the gospels is a myth based on the mythology of ancient India. As an example of a different interpretation, note that a number of well-known philosophers and writers, whose lifework has revolved around East-West comparative religion, (Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna
Ramakrishna , born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay , was a famous mystic of 19th-century India. His religious school of thought led to the formation of the Ramakrishna Mission by his chief disciple Swami Vivekananda – both were influential figures in the Bengali Renaissance as well as the Hindu...
, Vivekananda, Sivananda among others), have written that the similarities in some of the events in the lives of two of the most important figures in Eastern and Western religion (Christ and Krishna), are proof of the divine harmony linking the great faiths of East and West. However, Jacolliot is comparing two different periods of history (or mythology) and does not claim that Jesus was in India. He spells "Krishna" as "Christna" and claims that Krishna's disciples gave him the name 'Jezeus", a name supposed to mean "pure essence" in Sanskrit, though it is not even a Sanskrit term at all – "it was simply invented" by Jacoillot.
Bhavishya Maha Purana
According to Kersten, the Hindu Bhavishya Maha PuranaBhavishya Purana
The Bhavishya Purana is one of the eighteen major Hindu Puranas. It is written in Sanskrit and attributed to Rishi Vyasa, the compiler of the Vedas. The title Bhavishya Purana signifies a work that contains prophecies regarding the future...
, in the Pratisargaarvan (19.17-32), a 19th century redaction of a text purporting to tell future events, describes the arrival of Jesus thus:
- "One day, Shalivahana, the chief of the Shakas, came to a snowy mountain (assumed to be in the Indian Himalayas). There, in the Land of the Hun (= Ladakh, a part of the Kushan empire), the powerful king saw a handsome man sitting on a mountain, who seemed to promise auspiciousness. His skin was like copper and he wore white garments. The king asked the holy man who he was. The other replied: 'I am called Isaputra (son of God), born of a virgin, minister of the non-believers, relentlessly in search of the truth.'
- O king, lend your ear to the religion that I brought unto the non-believers ... Through justice, truth, meditation, and unity of spirit, man will find his way to Isa (God, in Sanskrit) who dwells in the centre of Light, who remains as constant as the sun, and who dissolves all transient things forever. The blissful image of Isa, the giver of happiness, was revealed in the heart; and I was called Isa-Masih (Jesus the Messiah).'"
Ahmadiyya views
According to the AhmadisAhmadiyya
Ahmadiyya is an Islamic religious revivalist movement founded in India near the end of the 19th century, originating with the life and teachings of Mirza Ghulam Ahmad , who claimed to have fulfilled the prophecies about the world reformer of the end times, who was to herald the Eschaton as...
, the further sayings of Muhammad mention that Jesus died in Kashmir at the age of one hundred and twenty years. Ahmadis have advocated this view for over 100 years, started by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Mirza Ghulam Ahmad
Mīrzā Ghulām Aḥmad was a religious figure from India and the founder of the Ahmadiyya Community. He claimed to be the Mujaddid of the 14th Islamic century, the promised Messiah , and the Mahdi awaited by the Muslims in the end days...
. Muslim and Persian sources purport to trace the sojourn of Jesus, known as Isa, or Yuz Asaf
Yuz Asaf
Similar to mainstream Islamic views, the Ahmadiyya Movement consider that Jesus was a mortal man, but go a step further to describe Jesus as a mortal man who died a natural death in India - as opposed to having been raised up alive to Heaven...
("leader of the healed") along the old Silk Road to the orient. The books, Christ in Kashmir by Aziz Kashmiri, and Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten, list documents and articles in support of this view. They believe Yuz Asaf to be buried at the Roza Bal
Roza Bal
Roza Bal is the name of a shrine located in the Khanyar area of district Srinagar, in Kashmir, India, venerated by some Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists. Some people identify the sage buried there with one Yuz Asaf, that is Jesus of Nazareth, whom they allege to have arrived in Kashmir after...
shrine in Srinagar
Srinagar
Srinagar is the summer seasonal capital of Jammu and Kashmir. It is situated in Kashmir Valley and lies on the banks of the Jhelum River, a tributary of the Indus. It is one of the largest cities in India not to have a Hindu majority. The city is famous for its gardens, lakes and houseboats...
, India.
The Urantia Book
The Urantia Book claims to be a revelation of the life of Jesus. It offers a detailed account of his childhood, adolescence and early adulthood and provides a comprehensive narrative of later events as recorded in the Gospels. According to the Urantia Book, Jesus never visited India; instead, beginning in his 28th year (AD 22, according to the Urantia book) he travelled with a wealthy merchant from India and the merchant's son. Jesus was invited, on a number of occasions, to visit India by the wealthy Indian merchant, but Jesus declined, citing responsibilities relating to his family in Palestine.Novels
The "Jesus in India" topos has also been taken up by novelists, in fictionFiction
Fiction is the form of any narrative or informative work that deals, in part or in whole, with information or events that are not factual, but rather, imaginary—that is, invented by the author. Although fiction describes a major branch of literary work, it may also refer to theatrical,...
with no pretense of historical accuracy:
- The book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood PalLamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood PalLamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal is the sixth novel by absurdist author Christopher Moore, published in 2002. In this work the author seeks to fill in the "lost" years of Jesus through the point of view of Jesus' childhood pal, "Levi bar Alphaeus who is called Biff".The...
, by Christopher Moore, is a fictional story of Jesus's adolescence told from the point of view of Jesus's best friend. In it, he travels to India, China, and The Middle East to visit the three wise menBiblical MagiThe Magi Greek: μάγοι, magoi), also referred to as the Wise Men, Kings, Astrologers, or Kings from the East, were a group of distinguished foreigners who were said to have visited Jesus after his birth, bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh...
, where they in turn teach Jesus one different facet of his later teachings. However in the afterward Moore is specific in mentioning that Buddhism didn't reach China in the lifetime of Jesus. For him to study under a Buddha in Tibet would have been anachronistic.
- Yeshua: A Personal Memoir of the Missing Years of Jesus, by Stan I.S. Law (Stanislaw Kapuscinski), is a fictional account of Jesus's journey to India and his preparation there for his later Palestinian mission. Kapuscinski weaves his own philosophy into the story.
Television
On the National Geographic ChannelNational Geographic Channel
National Geographic Channel, also commercially abbreviated and trademarked as Nat Geo, is a subscription television channel that airs non-fiction television programs produced by the National Geographic Society. Like History and the Discovery Channel, the channel features documentaries with factual...
, a documentary titled Mysteries of the Bible
Mysteries of the Bible
Mysteries of the Bible is a documentary television series that was originally broadcast by A&E from March 25, 1994 until June 13, 1998 and aired reruns until 2002. The series is about biblical mysteries and was produced by FilmRoos. The Discovery Channel and BBC also released a series of the same...
refers to the Hemis manuscript and similar accounts as "wild stories of Jesus travelling to India to study with Eastern mystics." The documentary repeats the account of J. Archibald Douglas and the lama's denial of the manuscript's existence, without mentioning the corroborating evidence of Swami Abhedananda and Nicolas Roerich.
As proof that Jesus was in Galilee during that time, one scholar presents the Biblical quotation, "Is not this the carpenter (carpenter's son)" as proof that he was well known to the local people. He adds that Jesus "went walkabout, he went out on tour." Another scholar states that "any historian worth his salt" will go "with the earliest evidence, the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John." "You can envision the family spending many years building houses, building furniture ... that's the family business." The film continues, "He may not have been just a carpenter either, it is possible that he went [to the sea of Galilee] to fish. If he did, he would most likely have run into a group of fishermen." "It makes sense to presume ... [that Joseph died] and Jesus would have had to ... do the appropriate things as a son, namely ..." "By studying stories agreed on to be true, a clearer, albeit hypothesized, portrait of Christ's life can emerge."
Film
Jesus was mentioned in sci-fi movie The Man from EarthThe Man from Earth
The Man from Earth is a 2007 science fiction film written by Jerome Bixby and directed by Richard Schenkman. The film stars David Lee Smith as John Oldman, the protagonist of the story. The screenplay for this movie was conceived by Jerome Bixby in the early 1960s and was completed on his death bed...
. The story states that the inspiration for the Jesus story is from a Cro-Magnon
Cro-Magnon
The Cro-Magnon were the first early modern humans of the European Upper Paleolithic. The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon-like humans are radiometrically dated to 35,000 years before present....
man who has survived for more than 14,000 years. The story also states that he was once a Sumerian for 2000 years, then a Babylonian under Hammurabi, then a disciple of Gautama Buddha in India. The film is presented as the Cro-Magnon
Cro-Magnon
The Cro-Magnon were the first early modern humans of the European Upper Paleolithic. The earliest known remains of Cro-Magnon-like humans are radiometrically dated to 35,000 years before present....
narrates his own story as a secret revealed to his modern day friends.
Jesus in Britain
There have been various claims that Jesus travelled to Britain during his lost years. One such claim was made by Gordon StrachanGordon Strachan (minister)
Charles Gordon Strachan was a Church of Scotland minister, theologian, university lecturer and author. He was regarded as a radical thinker with unorthodox views, such as his claim that Jesus may have travelled to Britain during his lost years to study with the Druids.After attending St Edward's...
in his book Jesus the Master Builder: Druid Mysteries and the Dawn of Christianity (1998), which was the basis of the documentary titled And Did Those Feet (2009).
Jesus in America
The anthropologist and authorAuthor
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
L. Taylor Hansen
L. Taylor Hansen
L. Taylor Hansen was a science fiction writer and anthropologist who used a male writing persona for the early part of her career...
wrote the book He Walked the Americas in 1963. In the book drawing from Native American
Indigenous peoples of the Americas
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are the pre-Columbian inhabitants of North and South America, their descendants and other ethnic groups who are identified with those peoples. Indigenous peoples are known in Canada as Aboriginal peoples, and in the United States as Native Americans...
legends
Legends
Legends are historical narratives, symbolic representations of folk belief.Legends may also refer to:-Music:*Legend , a 1984 album*Legends , a 1998 album...
, folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and mythology
Mythology
The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...
discussed that a "White Prophet" had visited many different parts of America
Americas
The Americas, or America , are lands in the Western hemisphere, also known as the New World. In English, the plural form the Americas is often used to refer to the landmasses of North America and South America with their associated islands and regions, while the singular form America is primarily...
. Mormons
Mormons
The Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, a religion started by Joseph Smith during the American Second Great Awakening. A vast majority of Mormons are members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints while a minority are members of other independent churches....
believe that the "White Prophet" was Jesus Christ.
Some Mormon
Mormon
The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...
scholars believe that Quetzalcoatl
Quetzalcoatl
Quetzalcoatl is a Mesoamerican deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and has the meaning of "feathered serpent". The worship of a feathered serpent deity is first documented in Teotihuacan in the first century BCE or first century CE...
, who they describe as a White, bearded God who came from the sky and promised to return, was actually Jesus Christ, in contrast with the Mesoamerican interpretation of their feathered serpent deity. According to the Book of Mormon
Book of Mormon
The Book of Mormon is a sacred text of the Latter Day Saint movement that adherents believe contains writings of ancient prophets who lived on the American continent from approximately 2600 BC to AD 421. It was first published in March 1830 by Joseph Smith, Jr...
, Jesus visited the American natives after his resurrection.
Latter-day Saint President John Taylor wrote:
- "The story of the life of the Mexican divinity, Quetzalcoatl, closely resembles that of the Savior; so closely, indeed, that we can come to no other conclusion than that Quetzalcoatl and Christ are the same being. But the history of the former has been handed down to us through an impure LamanitishLamaniteAccording to the Book of Mormon, a Lamanite is a member of a dark-skinned nation of indigenous Americans that battled with the light-skinned Nephite nation...
source. "
This idea was adapted by science fiction author and Mormon Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card is an American author, critic, public speaker, essayist, columnist, and political activist. He writes in several genres, but is primarily known for his science fiction. His novel Ender's Game and its sequel Speaker for the Dead both won Hugo and Nebula Awards, making Card the...
in his story America
America (short story)
"America" is a short story by Orson Scott Card. It appears in his short story collection The Folk of the Fringe. Card originally published this story in the January 1987 issue of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.-Plot summary:...
.
Further reading
- Fida HassnainFida HassnainFida Hassnain is a prominent Kashmiri writer and advanced Sufi Mystic. He studied law and received his Ll.D. in 1946.-Career:...
. Search For The Historical Jesus. Down-to-Earth Books, 2006. ISBN 1878115170 - Suzanne Olsson. Jesus in Kashmir, The Lost Tomb. Booksurge, 2006. ISBN 1419611755
- Kersten, Holger. Jesus Lived in India. London: Element, 1986. ISBN 0906540909
- Potter, Charles. Lost Years of Jesus Revealed., Fawcett, 1985. ISBN 0449130398
- Rolland McCleary. Signs for a Messiah: The First and Last Evidence for Jesus. Christchurch: Hazard Press, Christchurch, 2003. ISBN 9781877270376
- Shawn Haigins. The Rozabal Line. 2007. ISBN 978-1430327547.
- Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus's 17-Year Journey to the East. Gardiner, Mont.: Summit University Press, 1987. ISBN 978-0-916766-87-0.
External links
- The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ Manuscript of Jesus's life in India found by Nicholas Notovitch
- The True Jesus Jesus' “Lost Years” not listed in the Bible from 13 to 29