Articles
“The "Lost Years" of Jesus”
And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.
Luke 2:52
In Luke’s Gospel account, he tells of the birth and infancy of Jesus, then fast-forwards to a story when Jesus was twelve years old (2:41-51). In chapter 3, Luke time-warps again to tell us of Jesus’ ministry when he “was about thirty years of age” (3:23). All he provides of the life of Christ in the interim is a one-verse summary reporting that he “increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man” (2:52). The Bible gives us no other details about this time.
These “lost years” of Jesus have caused some wild and, more often than not, conflicting speculation. In the decades and centuries following Jesus’ earthly ministry, many texts were written attempting to fill in that large gap. The so-called “infancy gospels,” written in the 2nd to 3rd centuries, include sensationalized stories about the boy Jesus doing miracles: chastising his schoolteachers; bumping into kids while playing, then striking them dead only to raise them up again; shaping clay birds, then making them come to life, etc. Examples are the Gospel of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Arabic Infancy Gospel.
These texts were written long after the 1st century by cultish groups who broke from Christian doctrine. While these stories are interesting, they are not historically reliable. The earliest sources report that the people from Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth were surprised when he began to do miracles (Mt. 13:54-58; Mk. 6:1-6) and rejected him (Lk. 4:16-30). If Jesus were doing regular miracles as a boy, why would the villagers be surprised by Jesus’ supernatural abilities as an adult? There is no merit to the fanciful stories of the “infancy gospels.”
One of the more popular stories claims that teenage Jesus traveled to India and was influenced by the teachings of Buddhism and Hinduism. This theory of his supposed pilgrimage to the East was popularized by a Russian journalist from the 19th century named Nicolas Notovitch. He claimed to have found a Tibetan text called The Life of Saint Issa in a Buddhist monastery which recorded Jesus’ journey to India, then further east to Nepal, to study with Buddhist monks and Hindus before returning to Judea. Then, in 1894, he published his claims in a book entitled The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ.
Is there any merit to Notovitch’s claim? In short, no, and here’s why.
First, consider the distance covered. From Galilee to Nepal is about 4,000 miles as the crow flies. However, for a poor Jewish peasant traveling on foot in the 1st century, navigating river crossings and mountain passes, the journey would have been considerably longer. Such a voyage is possible but not probable. According to Notovitch’s claim, Jesus would have traveled farther east than even Alexander the Great during his conquests 400 years earlier.
Second, listen closely to Jesus’ teaching. They were deeply rooted in Jewish monotheism and contrast with Eastern worldviews in several important ways. He taught that there was one, transcendent, relational Being who is distinct from the universe he created. Eastern religions, such as Hinduism, embrace polytheism (the belief in many gods) or pantheism (the belief that God is identical to the universe). Buddhism focuses on discovering the true nature of reality (that “self” is an illusion) through enlightenment. Christ taught that God is the foundation for all reality, being the Creator and Author of life, and that ‘enlightenment’ only comes through a relationship with him (Mt. 22:37-38). Spiritual liberation in Eastern religions (achieving nirvana in Buddhism, cessation from suffering; achieving moksha in Hinduism, escaping the cycle of karma) comes through self-effort. In contrast, Jesus taught that spiritual liberation (forgiveness of sins, receiving eternal life) is a divine gift of grace that can never be earned. Jesus’ central message, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the gospel” (Mk. 1:15), would have made no sense to Eastern mystics.
Third, look deeper into Notovitch’s claims. Digging deeper into Notovitch’s claims reveals that they were a hoax. Shortly after Notovitch published his findings in The Unknown Life of Christ, Lama Lobsang, the head of the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, where he claimed to have found the ancient Tibetan manuscript chronicling Jesus’ journey to the East, publicly stated that no Russian had ever visited the monastery and that no such writing on ‘Saint Issa’ existed there. Once scholars exposed Notovitch, who, by this time, had gained a good deal of wealth and notoriety through his claims, he confessed to fabricating the whole thing.
Despite all the evidence against Notovitch’s claim, it still makes the rounds in shallow documentaries (ahem—National Geographic, we’re looking at you!) and poorly researched articles. Why do people hold any regard for this myth? I suppose we’re enamored with the idea of secret knowledge, that the tradition view is always the wrong view, that “the truth” is being kept from us. There is something mysteriously attractive about uncovering hidden conspiracies, but in this case, the only conspiracy was Notovitch’s.
A question worth asking is, why is Jesus’ childhood largely undocumented in the Gospels? Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John were not simply negligent biographers. Rather, they wrote with a specific goal in mind. Though their writings are historical and report events that occurred, their primary goal was to elicit faith (Jn. 20:30-3; Lk. 1:1-4), not catalogue a full history of Jesus’ life. It’s not that Jesus’ childhood was unimportant, but that it must not have contributed to that goal. So they focused instead on the adult ministry of Jesus. Christ came to establish God’s kingdom. The authors record everything we need to enter into that kingdom.
