The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ

nThe Unknown Life of Jesus Christ is a classic biography of Jesus Christ that is taken from the original text of Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 discovery. Shulim or Nikolai Notovich, known in the West as Nicolas Notovitch, was a Crimean Jewish adventurer who claimed to be a Russian aristocrat, spy and journalist. Notovitch is known for his 1894 book claiming that during the unknown years of Jesus, he left Galilee for India and studied with Buddhists and Hindus there before returning to Judea. Notovitch's claim was based on a document he said he had seen at the Hemis Monastery while he stayed there, but he later confessed to having fabricated his evidence. Notovitch claimed that he broke his leg in India and while recovering from it at the Hemis monastery in Ladakh, he learned of the Life of Saint Issa, Best of the Sons of Men - Isa being the Arabic name of Jesus in Islam. Notovitch's story, with the text of the Life, was published in French in 1894 as La vie inconnue de Jesus Christ. It was translated into English, German, Spanish, and Italian. Notovitch claimed that the chief lama at Hemis told him of the existence of the work, which was read to him, through an interpreter, the somewhat detached verses of the Tibetan version of the Life of Issa, which was said to have been translated from the Pali. Notovitch says that he himself afterward grouped the verses in accordance with the requirements of the narrative. As published by Notovitch, the work consists of 244 short paragraphs, arranged in fourteen chapters. The otherwise undocumented name Issa resembles the Arabic name Isa used in the Koran to refer to Jesus and the Sanskrit isa, the Lord. The Life of Issa begins with an account of Israel in Egypt, its deliverance by Moses, its neglect of religion, and its conquest by the Romans. Then follows an account of the Incarnation. At the age of thirteen the divine youth, rather than take a wife, leaves his home to wander with a caravan of merchants to India, to study the laws of the great Buddhas. Issa is welcomed by the Jains, but leaves them to spend time among the Buddhists, and spends six years among them, learning Pali and mastering their religious texts. Issa spent six years studying and teaching at Jaganath, Rajagriha, and other holy cities. At twenty-nine, Issa returns to his own country and begins to preach. He visits Jerusalem, where Pilate is apprehensive about him. The Jewish leaders, however, are also apprehensive about his teachings yet