Nicolas Notovich, 1887 In 1887, Russian war correspondent 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", was published in French in 1894 as (Unknown Life of Jesus Christ). Müller then wrote to the monastery at Hemis and the
head lama replied that there had been no Western visitor at the monastery in the past fifteen years and there were no documents related to Notovitch's story.
J. Archibald Douglas then visited Hemis monastery and interviewed the head lama who stated that Notovitch had never been there. However, once his story had been re-examined by historians – some even questioning his existence – it is claimed that Notovitch confessed to having fabricated the evidence.
Bart D. Ehrman states that "Today there is not a single recognized scholar on the planet who has any doubts about the matter. The entire story was invented by Notovitch, who earned a good deal of money and a substantial amount of notoriety for his hoax". However, others deny that Notovich ever accepted the accusations against him – that his account was a forgery, etc. Although he was not impressed with his story, Sir
Francis Younghusband recalls meeting Nicolas Notovitch near
Skardu, not long before Notovitch had visited Hemis monastery. In 1922,
Swami Abhedananda, the president of the
Vedanta Society of 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 Tibetan translation of the original scrolls written in Pali. The lama said that it was a copy and that the original was in a monastery at Marbour near Lhasa. After Abhedananda's death in 1939, one of his disciples inquired about the documents at the Hemis monastery, but was told that they had disappeared.
Levi H. Dowling, 1908 In 1908,
Levi H. Dowling published the
Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ which he claimed was
channeled to him from the "
Akashic records" as the true story of the life of
Jesus, including "the 'lost' eighteen years silent in the New Testament." The narrative follows the young Jesus across India, Tibet, Persia, Assyria, Greece and Egypt. Dowling's work was later used by
Holger Kersten who combined it with elements derived from other sources such as the
Ahmadiyya beliefs. , 1640s
Rejection by modern mainstream New Testament scholarship Modern mainstream Christian scholarship has generally rejected any travels by Jesus to India, Tibet or surrounding areas as without historical basis: •
Robert Van Voorst states that modern scholarship has "almost unanimously agreed" that claims of the travels of Jesus to Tibet, Kashmir or rest of India contain "nothing of value". •
Marcus Borg states that the suggestions that an adult Jesus traveled to Egypt or India and came into contact with Buddhism are "without historical foundation". •
John Dominic Crossan states that none of the theories presented about the travels of Jesus to fill the gap between his early life and the start of
his ministry have been supported by modern scholarship. •
Paula Fredriksen states that no serious scholarly work places Jesus outside the backdrop of 1st century Judaism. ==Other claims==