There is much speculation about where and how Jesus spent his twenties. The bible does not tell us anything about his life during this time. This book by the Russian doctor Nicolas Notovitch is the source of the idea that he might have spent this time in India. The book contains a travelogue of the author's trip through India. Whilst convalescing from a broken leg an ancient manuscript is read to him about Issa. The manunscript allegedly tells of Jesus (Issa) as he treks through India studying the Vedas and Buddhism before he returns to Israel and take up his ministry as it is described in the bible. Even though the authenticity, or indeed the existence, of the manuscript has never been proven, the rumours of St Issa have refused to die.

Controversial since it was first published in 1890, Nicolas Notovitch's "The Unknown Life of Jesus" relates that Jesus Christ spent at least part of the years of his life unaccounted for in the Bible--from the age of 13 to 29--teaching and studying in India and other parts of Asia. Notovitch was on an "extended journey through the Orient...to study the customs and habits of the inhabitants of India." During his travels, he visited a Buddhist monastery near Mulbek, close to the Wakha River. Here a Lama told him that Jesus, whom the Buddhists called "Issa," had visited the region and that there were ancient manuscripts documenting Jesus' visit and that copies existed at other monasteries. Notovitch was able to convince the monks at the Hemis Monastery to read from these documents and, as an interpreter translated, Notovitch transcribed.

One of the mysteries of the Bible has always been where Jesus was during his twenties. There is a huge gap in the biography from puberty until about three years before the crucifixion. The simplest inference is that he was working as a carpenter with his father and that nothing remarkable happened to him during this period. This prosaic scenario, Jesus as a salt-of-the-earth working man, is in character with the rest of what we know about him, and there is no good reason to invalidate it. One rumor that has circulated for years has been that Jesus went to India during this time. There were well-established trade routes, so it would not be impossible. If Alexander the Great got there several centuries earlier, why not Jesus? This book is the source of that rumor. In the late nineteenth century a Russian, Nicolas Notovitch, published a travelogue of a trip through India, into Kashmir, eventually reaching Ladakh in Tibet. At this point, the book takes a sensational turn. A lama informs him that Jesus is revered as a Boddhisattva, under the name Issa, by a splinter sect of the Tibetan Buddhists. While Notovitch is convalescing from a broken leg, an ancient manuscript read to him about Issa. This tells of Jesus trekking to India to study the Vedas and Buddhism. Jesus stirs up a caste war against the Brahmins and has to leave India. Then Jesus returns home, stopping off briefly in Persia, where he preaches against Zoroastrianism. This account was supposed to have been written shortly after Jesus' death.

An unabridged edition translated by J. H. Connelly and L. Landsberg from Nicolas Notovitch's 1887 Discovery -