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[pynchonoid]

The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ
by Nicolas Notovitch
[1890]
Contents    Start Reading

One of the mysteries of the Bible has always been
where Jesus was during his twenties. There is a huge
gap in the biography from puberty until about three
years before the crucifixion. The simplest inference
is that he was working as a carpenter with his father
and that nothing remarkable happened to him during
this period. This prosaic scenario, Jesus as a
salt-of-the-earth working man, is in character with
the rest of what we know about him, and there is no
good reason to invalidate it.

One rumor that has circulated for years has been that
Jesus went to India during this time. There were
well-established trade routes, so it would not be
impossible. If Alexander the Great got there several
centuries earlier, why not Jesus?

This book is the source of that rumor. In the late
nineteenth century a Russian, Nicolas Notovitch,
published a travelogue of a trip through India, into
Kashmir, eventually reaching Ladakh in Tibet. At this
point, the book takes a sensational turn. A lama
informs him that Jesus is revered as a Boddhisattva,
under the name Issa, by a splinter sect of the Tibetan
Buddhists. While Notovitch is convalescing from a
broken leg, an ancient manuscript read to him about
Issa. This tells of Jesus trekking to India to study
the Vedas and Buddhism. Jesus stirs up a caste war
against the Brahmins and has to leave India. Then
Jesus returns home, stopping off briefly in Persia,
where he preaches against Zoroastrianism. This account
was supposed to have been written shortly after Jesus'
death.

Of course, this caused quite a stir. Max Müller sent a
letter to the monastery where Notovitch had claimed to
have made the discovery, and they disavowed any
knowledge of such a manuscript. There are many things
that don't add up in the "Life of Saint Issa." First
of all, no authentic Hindu or Buddhist text from that
period references Jesus or any of the events described
in Notovitch. Jesus is described as having studied in
the Orissa area, but the ceremonial complexes,
particularly the Jagannath temple in Puri, date to the
12th century CE, over a millennium later. Jesus is
called Issa in this account, but this is an Islamic
name for him which was not used until much later.

This concept, however, has refused to die. Other
travelers to Tibet, such as Swami Abhedenada, Nicholas
Roerich, and others claimed that they have been told
similar stories by monks. Possibly the monks were just
catering to what the visitor wanted to hear, a known
problem for field ethnologists. The controversial
Ahmadiyya Muslims believe that Jesus survived the
crucifixion, and then fled to India, where he died of
old age. The 'channeled' Aquarian Gospel of Jesus
repeats Notovitchs' narrative with much embellishment.
The "Jesus in India" story was also incorporated by
Elizabeth Clare Prophet.

On the balance, there may be some core truth to this
hypothesis which has yet to be uncovered. There are
some parallels between the traditional stories of
Krishna and Christ (not to mention the similar names).
The Hindus were well aware of the Greeks, and the
Egyptian Hermetic and Gnostic schools were more than
likely influenced by Hinduism. Buddhism and
Christianity have more in common than their adherents
are usually willing to admit. It may not have happened
exactly as in Notovitch claimed, and there may not be
an 'Issa Sutra' gathering dust in some remote Tibetan
lamasery. However, there are many points of similarity
between the first millennium religious movements of
the Near East and India which remain to be explored.

--J.B. Hare, 8/30/2006

http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/uljc/index.htm

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