Unknown years of Jesus

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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 (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; Lk. 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.[1] 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 Qadiani offshoot of Islam) (1899), Levi H. Dowling (1908), Swami Abhedananda (1922),[2] Nicholas Roerich (1923–1928),[1] Mathilde Ludendorff (1930), Elizabeth Clare Prophet (founder of Ascended Master Teachings New Age group) (1956)[3] and more recently Holger Kersten[4] in his book Jesus Lived in India (1981).

Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ

Main article: The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ

The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ by Levi H. Dowling, 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.

Jesus in India

Jesus and Buddhism

Gruber and Kersten (1995) claim that Buddhism had a substantial influence on the life and teachings of Jesus.[5] They claim that Jesus was influenced by the teachings and practices of Therapeutae, 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."[6]

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.

Saint Issa

In 1887 a Russian war correspondent, Nicolas Notovitch, 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.[3] 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.[7]

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.[3] 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." [8] Notovitch also provided the names of several people in the region who could verify his presence there.[3]

In 1922, after initially doubting Notovitch, Swami Abhedananda, a disciple of Sri Ramakrishna, and a close acquaintance of Max Müller,[3] 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.[2] Having spoken at Max Müller's funeral, his opposing Müller's assertion that Notovitch's document was a forgery, was no small matter.[3]

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.[3] However, she reprints objections and rebuttals of Life of Saint Issa, citing both sides of the controversy in detail.[3] 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." [3][Note 1]

Christ and Krishna

See also: Jesus myth theory

The Jesus in India idea has been associated with Louis Jacolliot's book La Bible dans l'Inde, Vie de Iezeus Christna (1869)[9] (The Bible in India, or the Life of Jezeus Christna),[10] 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. [Note 2] 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[10], though it is not even a Sanskrit term at all – "it was simply invented"[11] by Jacoillot.

Bhavishya Maha Purana

According to Kersten, the Hindu Bhavishya Maha Purana, 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).'"[12]

Ahmadiyya views

See also: Jesus in India (book)

According to some people on the subcontinent, the Ahmadiyyas in particular, the further sayings of Muhammad mention that Jesus died in Kashmir at the age of one hundred and twenty years. Ahmadiyyas have advocated this view for over 100 years. 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.

The Urantia Book

Main article: 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 fictional accounts with no pretense of historical accuracy:

  • The book Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal, 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 men, 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 metaphysical philosophies into the story.

Television

On the National Geographic Channel, 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.[13]

As proof that Jesus was in Galilee during that time, one scholar presents the Biblical quotation, "Is not this the carpenter (carpenter's son)" [14] as proof that he was well known to the local people. He adds that Jesus "went walkabout, he went out on tour." [13] 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." [13] 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." [13]

Notes

  1. ^ 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."
  2. ^ 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.

References

  1. ^ a b New York Times (May 27, 1926)
  2. ^ a b Swami Abhedananda (1987) Journey into Kashmir and Tibet (the English translation of Kashmiri 0 Tibbate), Ramakrishna Vivekananda Math, Calcutta
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i Prophet, Elizabeth Clare. The Lost Years of Jesus: Documentary Evidence of Jesus' 17-Year Journey to the East. ISBN 0-916766-87-X.
  4. ^ Holger Kersten (1994) Jesus Lived in India: His Unknown Life Before and After the Crucifixion, Element Books ISBN 1-852-30550-9
  5. ^ Gruber, Elmar and Kersten, Holger. (1995). The Original Jesus. Shaftesbury: Element Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ Chandramouli, N. S. (May 1, 1997). "Did Buddhism influence early Christianity?". The Times of India. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  7. ^ Goodspeed, Edgar J. (1956). Famous Biblical Hoaxes or, Modern Apocrypha. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House.
  8. ^ D.L. Snellgrove and T. Skorupski (1977) The Cultural Heritage of Ladakh, p. 127, Prajna Press ISBN 0877737002
  9. ^ L. Jacolliot (1869) La Bible dans l'Inde, Librairie Internationale, Paris (digitized by Google Books)
  10. ^ a b Louis Jacolliot (1870) The Bible in India, Carleton, New York (digitized by Google Books)
  11. ^ Max Müller (1888), Journal of the Transactions of the Victoria Institute Volume 21, page 179
  12. ^ Saving the Savior
  13. ^ a b c d National Geographic Channel (25 May 1996) Mysteries of the Bible, "The Lost Years of Jesus"
  14. ^ The Gospel According to St. Mark (St. Matthew)

Further reading

  • Fida Hassnain. 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

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