The Lost Years of Jesus (Part One)

Among the authors of the four gospels of the Bible, neither St Mark or St John make any reference to the life led by Jesus before he began his ministry. St Matthew limits his account to the birth of Jesus, and the subsequent flight by Joseph and Mary to Egypt in order to escape the death warrant issued by Herod.

St Luke is the only apostle who makes any mention of the early years of Jesus. In Chapter 2 of his gospel, he mentions that it was the custom of Joseph and Mary to go up to Jerusalem every year to celebrate the feast of the Passover. Jesus naturally accompanied them on these pilgrimages.

On one particular occasion, when Jesus was twelve years old, Joseph and Mary began their return journey to Nazareth after the festival had ended. But after travelling about a day, they discovered to their dismay that Jesus was not with them.

Hurriedly retracing their footsteps to Jerusalem, they found Jesus in the temple, three days later, “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.”

When Mary confronted Jesus, demanding to know why he had caused them such anxiety, he replied: “How is it that ye sought me? Know ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2: 46-49)

Despite the fact that Jesus makes it clear in this response that the time had come to begin “his Father’s work”, most interpreters of the Bible have assumed that Jesus was referring to his father Joseph and his work as a carpenter.

They believe that Jesus returned to Nazareth with his parents following this episode, as the Bible describes, and that he continued to live there working with his father as a carpenter for the next eighteen years.

The absence of any other reference in the Bible to the missing years of Jesus between the ages of twelve and thirty, continues to pose a mystery to those scholars who seek a deeper understanding of the formative years of Jesus, and of his further spiritual development.

For these scholars it seems clear that, if Jesus was able to astonish the religious elders at the temple with his grasp of spiritual matters and the profundity of his answers at the tender age of twelve, it would be highly unlikely that he would simply return to Narareth and live a life of obscurity for the next eighteen years.

The problem confronting these researchers is that no written record exists among the Jewish writers of those times about any other events in the life of Jesus during those intervening years. But there may be an unexpected answer to this mystery.

Perhaps Jesus did not remain in Nazareth as these Biblical scholars have assumed. Perhaps Jesus left Judea and travelled to other lands in search of greater spiritual wisdom.

This could well be the case, for there is ample written evidence elsewhere that Jesus did in fact leave Israel and travel to the East. These records show that his travels took him to such places as Nepal, India and Tibet, as we shall see from the following instalment.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 18th, 2009 at 9:02 pm and is filed under Lost Years of Jesus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comments and pings are closed.