Nicolas Notovitch

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Nicolas Notovitch (1858-?) was a Russian aristocrat, Cossack officer^[1], spy^[2][3] 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^{[4][5][6][7][8]}, India, where he studied Buddhism.

Contents 1 Life of Saint Issa 2 Controversy 3 Propagation of Notovitch's claims 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Life of Saint Issa

Notovitch claimed that, at the lamasery or monastery of Hemis, he learned of the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men." His story, with the text of the "Life," was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ. It was translated into English^[9], German, Spanish, and Italian.

Notovitch's account of his discovery of the work is that he had been laid up with a broken leg at the monastery of Hemis. There he prevailed upon the chief lama, who had told him of the existence of the work, to read to him, through an interpreter, the somewhat detached verses of the Tibetan version of the " Life of Issa," which was said to have been translated from the Pali. Notovitch says that he himself afterward grouped the verses " in accordance with the requirements of the narrative." As published by Notovitch, the work consists Of 244 short paragraphs, arranged in fourteen chapters.

The otherwise undocumented name "Issa" most closely resembles the Arabic name Isa (عيسى), used in the Koran to refer to Jesus.

This Hemis Tibetan monastery was along the silk route, when Ladakh was formerly part of Tibet, before India became a nation, and to this day, monks who live here claim that "Issa" was a former student.^{[citation needed]}

The "Life of Issa" begins with an account of Israel in Egypt, its deliverance by Moses, its neglect of religion, and its conquest by the Romans. Then follows an account of the Incarnation. At the age of thirteen the divine youth, rather than take a wife, leaves his home to wander with a caravan of merchants to India (Sindh), to study the laws of the great Buddhas.

Issa is welcomed by the Jains, but leaves them to spend six years among the Brahmins, at Juggernaut, Benares, and other places, studying the Vedas and teaching all castes alike. The Brahmins oppose him in this, and he denounces them and their sacred books, especially condemning caste and idolatry. When they plan to put him to death, he flees to the Buddhists, and spends six years among them, learning Pali and mastering their religious texts. He goes among the pagans, warning them against idolatry and teaching a high morality. Then he visits Persia and preaches to the Zoroastrians.

At twenty-nine Issa returns to his own country and begins to preach. He visits Jerusalem, where Pilate is apprehensive about him. The Jewish leaders, however, are also apprehensive about his teachings yet he continues his work for three years. He is finally arrested and put to death for blasphemy, for claiming to be the son of God. His followers are persecuted, but his disciples carry his message out over the world.

In the Notovich translation, the section regarding Pontius Pilate is of particular note; in this version of the events around the death of Jesus, the Sanhedrin go to Pilate and argue to save the life of Jesus, and they are the ones who 'wash their hands' of his death, instead of the Roman Pilate.

[edit] Controversy

Edgar Goodspeed describes the debunking of Notovitch's claims as a hoax.

Notovitch's writings were immediately controversial and after the German orientalist Max Mueller corresponded with the Hemis monastery Notovitch claimed to have visited, and J.Archibald Douglas visited Hemis Monastery, and neither found any evidence that Notovich (much less Jesus) had even been there himself, his claims were widely rejected. The head of the Hemis community signed a document that denounced Notovitch as an outright liar.^[10]

The story of his visit to Hemis seems to be taken from H.P. Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled.^[11] In the original, the traveler with the broken leg was taken in at Mount Athos in Greece and found the text of Celsus' True Doctrine in the monastery library.

The idea that Jesus was in India was also inspired by a statement in Isis that he went to the foothills of the Himalayas.^[12]

[edit] Propagation of Notovitch's claims

Notovitch's claims were taken up, however, by Mirza Ghulam Ahmad (d.1908), who proclaimed himself the awaited Messiah. Unlike Notovitch he claimed that Jesus had traveled towards India post-crucifixion in search of the lost tribes of Israel and there he died a natural death. Ghulam Ahmad founded the Ahmadiyya sect. Others claim to have seen the same manuscripts.

Many other New Age or Spiritualist authors have taken this information and have incorporated it into their own works and systems. For example, in her book "The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus' 17-Year Journey to the East", Elizabeth Clare Prophet asserts that Buddhist manuscripts provide evidence that Jesus traveled to India, Nepal, Ladakh and Tibet.^[13]

One of the skeptics who personally investigated Notovich's claim was Swami Abhedananda, who journeyed to the monastary determined to either find a copy of the Himis manuscript or to expose it as a fraud. His book of travels, entitled Kashmir O Tibetti, tells of a visit to the Himis gonpa and includes a Bengali translation of two hundred twenty-four verses essentially the same as the Notovitch text^[14].

In 1925, the Russian philosopher, Nicholas Roerich, also journeyed to the monastary. He apparently saw the same documents as Notovitch and Abhedananda. Both Abhedananda and Roerich were thereby convinced of the authenticity of the Issa legend^{[citation needed]}.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• The Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men
• The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ Notovitch manuscript with historical introduction.
• http://www.utahkrishnas.com/main/page.asp?id=431
• http://home.swipnet.se/corbie/Fuskwww/notov.html
• http://essenes.net/sstibetg.html
• http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/scanned/notovitch.htm
• Jesus in Tibet