The Life of Saint Issa

Book excerpt: Notovitch's biography of Saint Issa, in which he asserts that Jesus Christ spent many of his missing years traversing India, is presented here. A Crimean Jewish adventurer and explorer of India, Notovitch traveled widely across the East in the late nineteenth century. He claimed to have discovered a biographical document in Hemis Monastery - located in modern-day India - from which he created this book. The bold and fantastical claims about Christ attracted attention from scholars of Christianity and the popular media of the time. Spotting inconsistencies in Notovitch's account, it was only after being confronted with these that he apparently confessed to having fabricated the biography of Jesus Christ. For some years the entire matter was considered a hoax; until the Indian mystic Swami Abhedananda visited the Hemis Monastery where a monk confirmed that Notovitch had stayed some six weeks there, convalescing with a broken leg, whereupon he read the disputed documents concerning Christ.