The lost years of Jesus Christ...

There much debate over what happened in the 17 years missing from the life of christ. Where did he disappear to?

There are scriptures that might explain what happened in those 17 years. Im not saying this is true but the debate is open for discussion. Some believe this is about him, some deny it.

What is known is that theres well over 80 "gospels" missing or left out of what we have in the bible today. They were left out for various reasons, different agendas, or even because of who wrote them. Either way its an interesting read.

The life of St. Issa - Chapters I-V

1 The earth has trembled and the heavens have wept because of a great crime which has been committed in the land of Israel.

2 For they have tortured and there put to death the great and just Issa, in whom dwelt the soul of the universe,

3 Which was incarnate in a simple mortal in order to do good to men and to exterminate their evil thoughts

4 And in order to bring back man degraded by his sins to a life of peace, love, and happiness and to recall to him the one and indivisible Creator, whose mercy is infinite and without bounds.

5 Hear what the merchants from Israel relate to us on this subject.

CHAPTER II
1 The people of Israel, who dwelt on a fertile soil giving forth two crops a year and who possessed large flocks, excited by their sins the anger of God

2 Who inflicted upon them a terrible chastisement in taking from them their land, their cattle, and their possessions. Israel was reduced to slavery by the powerful and rich pharaohs who then reigned in Egypt.

3 These treated the Israelites worse than animals, burdening them with difficult tasks and loading them with chains. They covered their bodies with weals and wounds, without giving them food or permitting them to dwell beneath a roof,

4 To keep them in a state of continual terror and to deprive them of all human resemblance.

5 And in their great calamity, the people of Israel remembered their heavenly protector and, addressing themselves to him, implored his grace and mercy.

6 An illustrious pharaoh then reigned in Egypt who had rendered himself famous by his numerous victories, the riches he had heaped up, and the vast palaces which his slaves had erected for him with their own hands.

7 This pharaoh had two sons, of whom the younger was called Mossa. Learned Israelites taught him diverse sciences.

8 And they loved Mossa in Egypt for his goodness and the compassion which he showed to all those who suffered.

9 Seeing that the Israelites would not, in spite of the intolerable sufferings they were enduring, abandon their God to worship those made by the hand of man, which were gods of the Egyptian nation,

10 Mossa believed in their invisible God, who did not let their failing strength give way.

11 And the Israelitish preceptors excited the ardor of Mossa and had recourse to him, praying him to intercede with the pharaoh his father in favor of their co-religionists.

12 Wherefore the Prince Mossa went to his father, begging him to ameliorate the fate of these unfortunates. But the pharaoh became angered against him and only augmented the torments endured by his slaves.

13 It happened that a short time after, a great evil visited Egypt. The pestilence came to decimate there both the young and the old, the weak and the strong; and the pharaoh believed in the resentment of his own gods against him.

14 But the Prince Mossa told his father that it was the God of his slaves who was interceding in favor of these unfortunates in punishing the Egyptians.

15 The pharaoh then gave to Mossa his son an order to take all the slaves of the Jewish race, to conduct them outside the town, and to found at a great distance from the capital another city where he should dwell with them.

16 Mossa then made known to the Hebrew slaves that he had set them free in the name of their God, the God of Israel, and he went out with them from the city and from the land of Egypt.

17 He led them into the land they had lost by their many sins, he gave unto them laws, and enjoined them to pray always to the invisible Creator whose goodness is infinite.

18 On the death of Prince Mossa, the Israelites rigorously observed his laws, wherefore God recompensed them for the ills to which he had exposed them in Egypt.

19 Their kingdom became the most powerful of all the earth, their kings made themselves famous for their treasures, and a long peace reigned among the people of Israel.

CHAPTER III
1 The glory of the riches of Israel spread throughout the earth, and the neighboring nations bore them envy.

2 For the Most High himself led the victorious arms of the Hebrews, and the pagans dared not attack them.

3 Unhappily, as man is not always true to himself, the fidelity of the Israelites to their God did not last long.

4 They began by forgetting all the favors which he had heaped upon them, invoked but seldom his name, and sought the protection of magicians and sorcerers.

5 The kings and the captains substituted their own laws for those which Mossa had written down for them. The temple of God and the practice of worship were abandoned. The people gave themselves up to pleasure and lost their original purity.

6 Several centuries had elapsed since their departure from Egypt when God determined to exercise once more his chastisements upon them.

7 Strangers began to invade the land of Israel, devastating the country, ruining the villages, and carrying the inhabitants into captivity.

8 And there came at one time pagans from the country of Romeles, on the other side of the sea. They subdued the Hebrews and established among them military leaders who by delegation from Caesar ruled over them.

9 They destroyed the temples, they forced the inhabitants to cease worshipping the invisible God, and compelled them to sacrifice victims to the pagan deities.

10 They made warriors of those who had been nobles, the women were torn away from their husbands, and the lower classes, reduced to slavery, were sent by thousands beyond the seas.

11 As to the children, they were put to the sword. Soon in all the land of Israel naught was heard but groans and lamentations.

12 In this extreme distress, the people remembered their great God. They implored his grace and besought him to forgive them; and our Father, in his inexhaustible mercy, heard their prayer.

CHAPTER IV
1 At this time came the moment when the all-merciful Judge elected to become incarnate in a human being.

2 And the Eternal Spirit, dwelling in a state of complete inaction and of supreme beatitude, awoke and detached itself for an indefinite period from the Eternal Being,

3 So as to show forth in the guise of humanity the means of self-identification with Divinity and of attaining to eternal felicity,

4 And to demonstrate by example how man may attain moral purity and, by separating his soul from its mortal coil, the degree of perfection necessary to enter into the kingdom of heaven, which is unchangeable and where happiness reigns eternal.

5 Soon after, a marvelous child was born in the land of Israel, God himself speaking by the mouth of this infant of the frailty of the body and the grandeur of the soul.

6 The parents of the newborn child were poor people, belonging by birth to a family of noted piety, who, forgetting their ancient grandeur on earth, praised the name of the Creator and thanked him for the ills with which he saw fit to prove them.

7 To reward them for not turning aside from the way of truth, God blessed the firstborn of this family. He chose him for his elect and sent him to help those who had fallen into evil and to cure those who suffered.

8 The divine child, to whom was given the name of Issa, began from his earliest years to speak of the one and indivisible God, exhorting the souls of those gone astray to repentance and the purification of the sins of which they were culpable.

9 People came from all parts to hear him, and they marveled at the discourses proceeding from his childish mouth. All the Israelites were of one accord in saying that the Eternal Spirit dwelt in this child.

10 When Issa had attained the age of thirteen years, the epoch when an Israelite should take a wife,

11 The house where his parents earned their living by carrying on a modest trade began to be a place of meeting for rich and noble people, desirous of having for a son-in-law the young Issa, already famous for his edifying discourses in the name of the Almighty.

12 Then it was that Issa left the parental house in secret, departed from Jerusalem, and with the merchants set out towards Sind,

13 With the object of perfecting himself in the Divine Word and of studying the laws of the great Buddhas.

CHAPTER V
1 In the course of his fourteenth year, the young Issa, blessed of God, came on this side of Sind and established himself among the Aryas in the land beloved of God.

2 Fame spread the reputation of this marvelous child throughout the length of northern Sind, and when he crossed the country of the five rivers and the Rajputana, the devotees of the god Jaine prayed him to dwell among them.

3 But he left the erring worshippers of Jaine and went to Juggernaut in the country of Orissa, where repose the mortal remains of Vyasa-Krishna and where the white priests of Brahma made him a Joyous welcome.

4 They taught him to read and understand the Vedas, to cure by aid of prayer, to teach, to explain the holy scriptures to the people, and to drive out evil spirits from the bodies of men, restoring unto them their sanity.

5 He passed six years at Juggernaut, at Rajagriha, at Benares, and in the other holy cities. Everyone loved him, for Issa lived in peace with the Vaisyas and the Sudras, whom he instructed in the holy scriptures.

6 But the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas told him that they were forbidden by the great Para-Brahma to come near to those whom he had created from his side and his feet;

7 That the Vaisyas were only authorized to hear the reading of the Vedas, and this on festival days only;

8 That the Sudras were forbidden not only to assist at the reading of the Vedas, but also from contemplating them, for their condition was to serve in perpetuity as slaves to the Brahmans, the Kshatriyas, and even the Vaisyas.

9 "'Death only can set them free from their servitude' has said Para-Brahma. Leave them then and come and worship with us the gods, who will become incensed against thee if thou cost disobey them."

10 But Issa listened not to their discourses and betook him to the Sudras, preaching against the Brahmans and the Kshatriyas.

11 He inveighed against the act of a man arrogating to himself the power to deprive his fellow beings of their rights of humanity; "for," said he, "God the Father makes no difference between his children; all to him are equally dear."

12 Issa denied the divine origin of the Vedas* and the Puranas*. "For," taught he to his followers, "a law has already been given to man to guide him in his actions; *[The Abhedananda version of the Himis transcript does not include this denunciation]

13 "Fear thy God, bend the knee before him only, and bring to him alone the offerings which proceed from thy gains."

14 Issa denied the Trimurti and the incarnation of Para-Brahma in Vishnu, Siva*, and other gods, for said he: *[The Abhedananda version of the Himis transcript does not include this denunciation]

15 "The Judge Eternal, the Eternal Spirit, comprehends the one and indivisible soul of the universe, which alone creates, contains, and vivifies all. *Inasmuch as Jesus' closest disciple, John, begins his Gospel with a quote from the Vedas, "In the beginning was the Word . . . ," the authenticity of this passage may be questioned. (Notation added by Notovitch)

16 "He alone has willed and created, he alone has existed since all eternity, and his existence will have no end. He has no equal either in the heavens or on earth.

17 "The Great Creator has not shared his power with any living being, still less with inanimate objects, as they have taught to you; for he alone possesses omnipotence.

18 "He willed it and the world appeared. In a divine thought, he gathered together the waters, separating from them the dry portion of the globe. He is the principle of the mysterious existence of man, in whom he has breathed a part of his Being.

19 "And he has subordinated to man the earth, the waters, the beasts, and all that he has created and that he himself preserves in immutable order, fixing for each thing the length of its duration.

20 "The anger of God will soon be let loose against man; for he has forgotten his Creator, he has filled his temples with abominations, and he worships a crowd of creatures which God has made subordinate to him.

21 "For to do honor to stones and metals, he sacrifices human beings, in whom dwells a part of the spirit of the Most High.

22 "For he humiliates those who work by the sweat of their brow to acquire the favor of an idler seated at his sumptuous board.

23 "Those who deprive their brethren of divine happiness shall be deprived of it themselves. The Brahmans and the Kshatriyas shall become the Sudras, and with the Sudras the Eternal shall dwell everlastingly.

24 "Because in the day of the last judgment the Sudras and the Vaisyas will be forgiven much because of their ignorance, while God, on the contrary, will punish with his wrath those who have arrogated to themselves his rights."

25 The Vaisyas and the Sudras were filled with great admiration and asked Issa how they should pray so as not to lose their eternal felicity.

26 "Worship not the idols, for they hear you not. Listen not to the Vedas, for their truth is counterfeit. Never put yourself in the first place and never humiliate your neighbor.

27 "Help the poor, support the weak, do ill to no one, and covet not that which thou hast not and which thou seest belongeth to another."

Plenty more where that came from.... I'll post more if people want to read the rest.

Hope you enjoyed it, i know i did...

He went forward in time to 1977 New York City, incarnated into the body of an 16 year old girl and started a No-Wave band.

"and enjoined them to pray always to the invisible Creator whose goodness is infinite"
Sorry, stuff like this always gives me a good laugh, sad that people forget its all fiction though.

reply to post by laterallateral


Lydia Lunch FTW!!!

although I always had jesus pegged as Stiv Bators myself...

Everybody, everywhere seems to have an angle on Jesus. However, the most likely thing He was doing during the "lost" years was traveling with his great-uncle Joseph of Arimathea, who was one of the richest men in that part of the world at that time. He held the tin franchise in Corwall, and there is a huge body of myth and legend in that area concerning Jesus, and His followers who are believed to have come there after the first persecutions. He probably travelled a lot around parts of the Roman world, and I think He was known in the Parthian Empire as well. There is evidence that He was personally acquainted with a Parthian vassal king named Abgar, who almost went to war when he found that his Friend had been crucified.

Bump!!

Originally posted by Lazarus Short
Everybody, everywhere seems to have an angle on Jesus. However, the most likely thing He was doing during the "lost" years was traveling with his great-uncle Joseph of Arimathea, who was one of the richest men in that part of the world at that time. He held the tin franchise in Corwall, and there is a huge body of myth and legend in that area concerning Jesus, and His followers who are believed to have come there after the first persecutions. He probably travelled a lot around parts of the Roman world, and I think He was known in the Parthian Empire as well. There is evidence that He was personally acquainted with a Parthian vassal king named Abgar, who almost went to war when he found that his Friend had been crucified.

I live in England and have visited the alleged site of the tin mine you refer to but it is just fields now. On the whole Jesus came to England thing, in one of his books, Ralph Ellis claims that King Arthur is Jesus and that the Knights (12) of the round table were his disciples!! Very speculative but also very interesting reading.
Ps - the book I refer to is - King Jesus by Ralph Ellis

I see no reason at all why there should be a "lost years" theory based simply on the fact that the gospels don't say much. I've already made this point in another thread, but I'll repeat it;

I think the answer to the alleged mystery is fairly straightforward.
Little is recorded about these years because those are the years when nothing much was happening.
"He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man". That was it- nothing much more to say.

If I see a blank page in an old diary of mine, I don't assume that this was the time when I went on a long journey to strange and exotic places. Instead, my thought is "obviously nothing much happened that day".
Part of my reasoning is that if I had started on anything exciting that day, I would have thought it worth recording.

Similarly, if Jesus had been travelling and living in distant lands in his youth, that is precisely the kind of thing which would have been remembered and mentioned in the gospels.
The gospels mention two journeys during the childhood of Jesus. There is the escape into Egypt, and there is the trip to Jerusalem where he appeared to get lost. Why are these journeys mentioned? Because they were the only memorable incidents in what was outwardly an uneventful life.
That's the common-sense answer to the "lost years" theory.

I can't believe i forgot the link when i made this thread :bnghd:

reluctant-messenger.com...

reply to post by DISRAELI


If the Bible that you and I read was infallible, 18 years of the most documented human being ever unequivocally summed to 11 words would be acceptable. However, it is not and we have a chance to examine works not apart of the homogeneous structure of the Bible, that might have documentation of the lost or quiet years of Jesus. Certainly due to the irony of the situation and the extraordinary claims these works merit some attention.

For example, the King James Bible authorized by the Vatican. The same Vatican that sponsored religious massacres and persecutions against it's uniformity. One does not have to give much thought that if these works did not conform to the status quo of Jesus, they would not be included in their Bible.

Originally posted by SankeySugar
"and enjoined them to pray always to the invisible Creator whose goodness is infinite"
Sorry, stuff like this always gives me a good laugh, sad that people forget its all fiction though.

Oh - I don't think its fiction - - - exactly.

I do think it is an interpretation of something not understood.

Moses also had "lost" years, several decades in fact. And we hardly know anything of the life of Jonah and several others.

The corresponding years of Lincoln were spent in such mundane things as running a general store, delivering mail, chopping wood, serving in the militia during the Blackhawk wars, etc. Nothing terribly exciting and very little by which to predict his future greatness.

In the case of Biblical figures, I think better to theorize on very ordinary life instead of remarkable adventures.

reply to post by CaptainNemo

I would not call Jesus the "most documented human ever". Most written-about, certainly, but that's not the same thing. When a historian calls something "well-documented", he means that there's a lot of contemporary written evidence available. That isn't the case for Jesus. What is written about him at the time is comparatively little, and limited to the few stories about which the early church was interested. In the circumstances, I think my explanation is the most straight-forward; nothing is remembered about the early years of Jesus, because nothing was happening worth remembering. As for the "other accounts", they are easily recognised as fantasies that people worked up in those early days, partly prompted by the same dubious reasoning that I've been criticising.

Your criticism of one of the translations of the Bible has got no relevance to the question at issue, because the same "gap" is in ALL the translations, both before and after that one. The gap is also in the manuscripts written in the original Greek. Translation has got nothing to do with it.

Your suggestion that the Authorised Version was "sponsored by the Vatican" makes no sense at all, in the context of seventeenth-century history. You don't have any evidence for it. By "evidence", I don't mean being able to quote somebody else on the internet who has said the same thing. I mean real, historical, evidence that the Vatican prompted the king of one of the most violently Protestant (ie anti-Catholic) countries in seventeenth-century Europe to commission a translation of the Bible.

reply to post by DISRAELI

. . . nothing is remembered about the early years of Jesus, because nothing was happening worth remembering.

Probably why you have something like The Gospel of Luke, where it presents itself as if a historian (Luke) goes and interviews people who were family members of Jesus' to find interesting stories about the young Jesus, where they would have been the only people taking notice of such things, and had not caught the eye of contemporary historians, meaning people who wrote down the news of the day. There was no headline in the Jerusalem Post that day, "Twelve Year Old Boy Astounds Theologians in Temple by Posing Questions that They Could not Answer!".

reply to post by jmdewey60

Well, quite.
And this aids my point, because if the young Jesus had been doing exotic things like wandering over to India, that is exactly the kind of thing which would have been held in family memory and therefore recorded.

If anything (going from the Gospel accounts), Jesus was listening to debates and taking in what the issues were to get a good grasp on then, and what the proposed resolutions were to them, so when the time came for a revelation from God, as in what most likely happened at his baptism, he could sort through all that information and pick out the right answers, them speak on them to where what he was talking about was directly relevant and of use to the hearers.

reply to post by DISRAELI


Your answer wasn't straight-forward it was completely dismissive. Bias and favoritism has no place in the world of text criticism. If you had took the time to further investigate these fanciful tales, you would know that the translations of Notovich and his trip have been verified. But as now, there were people like you that outright slandered and disregarded the authenticity of the works simply because of the implications. You made no attempt to test the veracity of the works, which would have required only 20 minutes of your time.

On the contrary translations have everything to do with it, there is strong evidence to suggest that early christian authorities omitted key gospels and doctrines that might have proved Yeshua's travels to the East to minimize embarrassment. Take the decisions of the 2nd council of Constantinople for example:

An embarrassment for 20th-century scholars is that the statement suggests that the Logia were written in Aramaic or Hebrew, which implies that Matthew's gospel was also. The latter in turn implies that Matthew preceded Mark, which was probably the first Gospel to have been written in Greek. The embarrassment of "and each interpreted them as best he could" is that it implies that some other evangelists besides the compiler of Matthew had had some access to the Logia, but had difficulty "interpreting them" or incorporating any more from them into their own gospels than Matthew's compiler already had accomplished, because of the Logia's heresies.

www.proaxis.com...

I agree, every translation has it's gaps errors that's why the better picture relies on the interdependence of each other, not superiority. However, I have a serious bone to pick with the Greek Septuagint for it's gross inconsistencies and transparent attempt to protect some theological concept. Why did the authors decide to translate "Elohim" to angels or judges when it clearly means god or gods? Why did the authors translate "sheol" as grave some times, but then render to hell? Try it yourself, take the original texts and compare them. Don't take my word for it.

interlinearbible.org...

While your at it read up on the reliability of the Septuagint.

evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com...

reply to post by CaptainNemo

Your comments are now undermining your original criticism of the King James Bible.
If you are finding faults in the versions of early Christian authorities, how can that possibly be blamed on the King James version which was published one and a half thousand years later?
How did King James, reigning from 1603 to 1625, influence the proceedings of the Second Council of Constantinople more than a thousand years earlier? He had a time machine, did he?
And I am still waiting for your evidence that the King James Version published in1611 was authorised by the Vatican.
I would like to know how this authorisation worked.

reply to post by DISRAELI


It was merely an example to illustrate my point that a radical shift in the excepted paradigm would be suppressed or excluded from an authorized bible.

reply to post by CaptainNemo

And do you intend to justify the phrase "authorised by the Vatican", as a description of the King James Bible of 1611?