Thread by @BonicMichael

What was Jesus Christ doing & where was He from the time He was 12 to 29?
Unknown years of Jesus
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_y…
“The 18 unknown years:
Following the accounts of Jesus' young life, there is a gap of about 18 years in his story in the New Testament. Other than the

2/“statement that after he was 12 years old (Luke 2:42) Jesus "advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men" (Luke 2:52), the New Testament has no other details regarding the gap.

Claims of young Jesus in India and/or Tibet:
In 1887, Russian war correspondent

3/“Nicolas Notovitch claimed that while at the Hemis Monastery in Ladakh, he had learned of a document called the "Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men" – Isa being the Arabic name of Jesus in Islam. Notovitch's story, with a translated text of the "Life of Saint Issa",

4/“was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ (Unknown Life of Jesus Christ).

According to the scrolls, Jesus abandoned Jerusalem at the age of 13 and set out towards Sind, “intending to improve and perfect himself in the divine understanding and to

5/“studying the laws of the great Buddha”. He crossed Punjab and reached Puri Jagannath where he studied the Vedas under Brahmin priests. He spent six years in Puri and Rajgirh, near Nalanda, the ancient seat of Hindu learning. Then he went to the Himalayas, and spent time in

6/“Tibetan monasteries, studying Buddhism, and through Persia, returned to Jerusalem at the age of 29.”

Fact or fiction? Can’t rule either out, but you have to read Nicholas Notovictch’s “The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ” first before forming an opinion:
amazon.com/JESUS-CHRIST-T…

7/Max Muller, who “stated that either the monks at the monastery had deceived Notovitch (or played a joke on him), or he had fabricated the evidence” has been “severely criticised for being anti-Christian”, and:
“In 1922, Swami Abhedananda, the president of the Vedanta Society of

8/“New York between 1897 and 1921 and the author of several books, went to the Himalayas on foot and reached Tibet, where he studied Buddhist philosophy and Tibetan Buddhism. He went to the Hemis Monastery, and allegedly found the manuscript translated by Notovitch, which was a

9/“Tibetan translation of the original scrolls written in Pali.”
I’ve read Notovitch’s book & found it not only credible but believable. As one who became a Born Again Christian in 1979 at 22 (same time as Bob Dylan coincidentally), before fully embracing Krsna & His Eternal

10/Consort Radha as together comprising the Supreme Deity, aka God, the creator of the spiritual world (Vaikuntha) & material world (Samsara),
(the seeds of my belief were planted by George Harrison’s songs My Sweet Lord and Awaiting On You All -
“By chanting the names of the

11/Lord and you’ll be free
The Lord is waiting on you all to awaken and see” -
on All Things Must Pass, my favorite solo Beatles album, and watered thru my devotional experiences of greeting the Deities at the Krsna temple in Hawaii and thru temple living w/ my spouse in NYC)

12/Notovitch’s book was like finding a missing puzzle piece: “So after He told his parents: “I have to be on my Father’s business” after rebuking the Pharisees in the temple when He was 12, Jesus hit the Silk Road for Jagannath Puri!! It all makes sense!!”
Will do a thread later

13/lends credulity to the position that Notovitch’s book cannot be written off or dismissed. For one, there’s reason to believe Swami Abhedananda who “allegedly found the manuscript translated by Notovitch, which was a Tibetan translation of the original scrolls written in Pali.”

14/Tibetan monks have always been very wary of Western Christians like Max Muller, b/c Christians typically burned their manuscripts in the past. So when Muller contacted the Hemis Monastery in Ladak asking about Notovitch (whom they allegedly trusted b/c they saw he was sincere)

15/do you think the monks would say: “Oh, Nicholas? Whom we allowed to read and translate the manuscript "Life of Saint Issa" written 19 centuries ago? Oh yes, yes. He was here.”??? Their response would’ve been: “Nicholas who? Uh…Nope. No one by that name has passed thru here.”

16/The truth seeker has to dig deeper. I might follow up on Swami Abhedananda & read Nicholas Notovitch’s natal chart. Srila Prabhupada in his translation & purports of Bhagavad-Gita & Srimad Bhagavatam says Jesus Christ was an avatar sent from God. So the Vedic lit respects

17/Jesus as God’s son. Which means Jesus is Krsna’s son. Srimad Bhagavatam foretells Buddha appearing as an incarnation of Krsna. So if Buddha was an incarnation of Krsna, then when Jesus was studying the Buddha’s teachings He was studying what His Father taught (as the Buddha)

18/in preparation for His own ministry. It makes sense. To be truly objective you leave no stone unturned. Just dismissing Notovitch's account is intellectual laziness and spiritual slothfulness involving no critical thinking. How else do you explain at least two of Buddha's

19/parables finding their way into Jesus's ministry?

https://twitter.com/BonicMichael/status/1436586723941568514?s=20

It's totally believable that Jesus hit the Silk Road for India & Tibet (leaving at 12, Dylanesque), rebuked the Bhramins for not teaching the outcasts & studied Buddha's teachings b4 returning to Israel.

@threadreaderapp compile