I saw a show on PAX last night, about the missing years of Jesus and all the speculation there in. In any event, I became curious-Are there any credible books that investigate this?
I’m also planning on buying a copy of the apocrapha, are there any other books like the apocrapha out there?
I mentioned credible, because although this show had some authors on it-I’m a little skeptical of their credibility because one of the authors was the nutball Hogue (who did a lot of Nostradamus books).
There are lots of “lost books” from the New Testament and the Old. The Gnostic Gospels is a must, as are the Pseudepigrapha, both of which are available on the Internet. I’ve yet to find the ultimate copy of the Aggadah, though.
Hopefully, Shodan or Zev will post to this thread as they’re the resident authorities on obscure Judaica.
BTW, avoid like the plague books on the missing years of Jesus written by Elizabeth Clare Prophet. She was a cultleader (of the 100,000 acre armed to the gills Montana compound type) who essentially made it up as she went along- they’re not the least bit scholarly.
Meatros,
The truth is that there is absolutely no historical info about the “missing years” of Jesus. There is much speculation but that’s it. There are apocryphal gospels which claim to talk about Jesus’ childhood but these are from the third and fourth centuries, they are pure fictions written hundreds of years after the crucifixion.
As a matter of fact, there is very little extra-Biblical evidence that Jesus even existed. We have a couple of mentions by Josephus and Tacitus that speak of a guy who was crucified under Pilate but that’s pretty much it.
The missing years are basically impossible to research because there is nothing to look at, no documents, no traditions, no clues at all. The books that are written about this tend to be wildly hypothetical. The two most common themes that I’ve seen are that he was an Essene (in which theories are fabricated from murky passages in the Dead Sea Scrolls about a “Righteous Teacher.” Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls by James H. Charlesworth is a typical example of this theory) or that he travelled to India or the Far East and studied Buddhism or Hinduism (See Jesus Lived in India by Holger Kersten).
Then there are the truly wacky theories (Jesus was an alien, Jesus was an avatar of Krishna, Jesus was from the future, etc.).
Of all the theories I’ve read, the Essene hypothesis at least has the quality of plausibility to it. It would also seem reasonablt that Jesus was at some point a follower of John the Baptist before he began his own mission. Truthfully, though, we just don’t know a damned thing.
Though this is not in any way an attempt at a true historical account, a rather clever and thoughtful book (as well as being very funny at times) is Lamb, by Christopher Moore.
Part of the Essene theory’s credibility is found in what the Gospels record of Jesus:
-the washing of the Apostle’s feet was almost identical to an Essene ritual (as was baptism)
-the Lord’s Prayer is very similar to an Essene prayer that predates the era of Jesus by at least a generation
-Essenes were neither Paroshim/Pharisee or Zadokim/Sadducee, and Jesus clearly had issues with both
-Essenes were celibate, which Jesus according to tradition was also (though the Gospels never clearly say this)
-Essenes lived in the desert and Jesus’s ministry began in the desert
-Essenes lived comunally, as by implication did Jesus and his disciples
One of the best researched novels I’ve ever read about “the Missing Years” was Frank Yerby’s “Judas My Brother”. The writing is at times a big ole mess, trying to imitate Ben Hur and The Greatest Story Ever Told but in a completely humanist perspective. However, it’s well researched, copiously footnoted, and quite educational about the time frame. (Yerby is most famous as the bestselling author of historical fiction from the 1950s whose sales plummeted when his mostly white female readership learned he was black [actually, he was a mixture of Irish, Seminole, and African American, but by the laws of the time that equalled black]; he wrote JUDAS while living in self-imposed exile in Spain.)
How old was he during those Missing Years? He was, what, 33 when he died? Was it his teen years—is it possible he went to Hawaii and partied? Maybe he was in his 20s and hung out in a Greenwich Village pub, writing bad poetry and growing a goatee.
Also good: the movie JESUS OF MONTREAL. It’s about a method actor hired to play Jesus in the Montreal Passion Play, but he does a lot of research for the role and incorporates it into the new play. The movie’s also hysterical in several scenes (it’s a comedy/drama).
Some say he was on a Mormon mission. Others claim he was in reform school for spraypainting ROMANS SVCK on the gymnasium wall. Either beats customer service.
