The Lost Years of Jesus

[Peter Wyzlic]

On Fri, 20 Feb 1998, jonathan silk wrote:

> Apologies for this, but:
>
> A friend has sent me the following question:
>
> A book called The Lost Years of Jesus is going to be published in
> Japanese translation and the translator wants to know what was the
> reaction of Indologists in the West to the theory that Jesus was in
> India and Tibet during those 17 years.
>
> Any references to debunking of this nonsense?  Many thanks in advance!

The "classic" for this form of the "Jesus-was-in-India"-theory is
Nicolas Notovitch's book: La vie inconnue de Jesus-Christ. Paris
1894. At that time this book aroused a great upstir in Europe,
it was very often reprinted and was translated in other European
languages as well. During a travel through Ladakh, Notovitch
allegedly found an old Tibetan book in the monastery of Hemis
which was translated from a Pali (!) original. A short time after
the publication Max Mueller wrote an article where all this is
clearly unmasked as a forgery.

You'll find a critical assessment in a book of Guenter Groenbold
who is an indologist and tibetologist (and known as a serious
scholar):
        Groenbold, Guenter:
        Jesus in Indien : Das Ende einer Legende. -- Muenchen :
        Koesel, 1985. -- 152 pp.

Groenbold took pains to unravel the different threads of this
theory which are often mixed together. For example, Notovitch
deals only with Jesus' "lost years", he did obviously not know
the story that Jesus survived the crucification and died later in
Kashmir. This form of the Jesus legend appeared first with Ghulam
Ahmad, the founder of the Ahmadiyya movement.

If one has sense of humour the reading of this sort of literature
is great fun, otherwise it is merely annoying.

\bye
Peter Wyzlic