Dennis Price

The missing years of Jesus - part one

February 27, 2009 |  22 comments
Image Credit: Wikipedia Jesus is the single most famous human being ever to have lived and he has been known to us for around 2,000 years, increasing in fame all the while. He is the central figure in Christianity and the second most revered prophet in Islam, while his name is instantly recognizable to countless other people around the globe who do not subscribe to these faiths.

As such, literally billions of people are familiar with the details of his homeland, his birth, his early years, his ministry and his crucifixion, but there is a spectacular and seemingly inexplicable void in our knowledge of this man. The New Testament describes his life up until the age of 12, but the accounts fall mysteriously silent until Jesus reappears at the age of 30. As Jesus lived until he was 33, then this gap of 18 years constitutes over half his entire lifetime, leaving us with no knowledge whatsoever of his teenage years or his early adulthood, a period that we would describe in most other people as being their formative years.
I’ve read all manner of speculation about this mysterious period, but to my very great surprise, I’ve never been able to find a sustained and serious investigation into where Jesus was during his teenage years and early adulthood. There’s no question that he physically “went” somewhere during this time, because the New Testament makes it unmistakably clear that when he eventually reappeared at the age of 30, he was returning to his homeland as a stranger.

By virtue of the simple fact that Jesus is the most well-known person ever to have lived, then it seemed to me that his whereabouts, between the ages of 12 and 30, were by definition the greatest historical mystery of which we are aware. I assumed that a sizeable amount of people around the world would be interested in reading a genuine, unbiased and meaningful investigation into these “missing years”, so because such a detailed study didn’t seem to exist, I decided to compose one and the result is my forthcoming book “The Missing Years of Jesus – The Greatest Story Never Told.”

For now, it’s best to begin at the beginning. The New Testament tells us of the life of Jesus up until the age of 12, then there is a notable gap until the account resumes when he is 30 years old and about to embark on his famous ministry. All we are told in the gospels is that during this time “He grew in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and with men”, something I don’t doubt for a moment, although I’m certain that there’s far more to this apparently general statement than initially meets the eye.
When Jesus reappears, he returns to his homeland as a stranger, unrecognized by many of those who should have known him best. It is natural that we should be extremely curious about these unaccounted-for 18 years, from roughly AD 12 to AD 30, so my book is a detailed investigation into the precise whereabouts of Jesus during this period. Many people harbour the fond idea that Jesus spent his ‘missing years’ in India and Tibet and there’s no doubt that these places have a certain allure about them, but I could find very little to substantiate the idea of some trek to the east. A few months ago, a documentary team funded by Universal Studios went in search of traces of Jesus in Tibet, but returned with little to show for their efforts.

I ended up focusing on a region in the West of Britain, and I’m well aware that this will come as a surprise to many people around the world who are unaware of the many legends and traditions that place Jesus there in the early years of the first century. There are of course those who cast doubt on the reliability or veracity of such legends and I’ve gone into these arguments in great depth in my book, but I should also point out that these tantalising stories were certainly not the only avenues that led me to the West of Britain and South Wales from the shores of the eastern Mediterranean. While these legends may be little-known outside Britain, they find their most famous expression in the words of William Blake’s poem Jerusalem, which, with its evocative opening line “And did those feet in ancient time, walk upon England’s mountains green?” has long gone on to become Britain’s unofficial national anthem.Of course, it’s inevitable that many people reading this will simply shrug and maintain that it’s impossible to retrace the footsteps of a young man who lived 2,000 years ago, long before he came to the prominence for which he was famed in his later years and during a time when he effectively vanishes from the Biblical record. My personal view, however, inclines towards the opposite extreme, because from what I can see, there is abundant material that tells us not only where Jesus was during the period in question, but a great deal else besides.

Nor is any of this material hidden away in some secret archive, in the pages of an apocryphal gospel, in some insanely complex Bible Code, in the diaries of a nineteenth century traveller to Tibet, in a “lost” Dead Sea Scroll or on some mystical plane of existence accessible only to initiates - on the contrary, it is all from highly reputable or “officially endorsed” sources that are squarely in the public domain, so it only remains for us to find it, evaluate its worth, then see if we can discern some meaningful and credible pattern from the scattered pieces.

At this point, it is perhaps worth spelling out what kind of “meaningful and credible pattern” emerges, because there will naturally be those who will politely remark that “The Greatest Story Never Told” is a very ambitious title indeed, regardless of the subject matter it deals with. I’ll simply say that in my opinion, there’s ample clear evidence to tell us precisely why Jesus left his homeland when he did, why his ultimate destination was a specific region in the West of Britain, how he journeyed there and whom he journeyed with.

Furthermore, I believe we can tell with a great degree of accuracy what kind of reception awaited him from the different groups of people he encountered, where he spent the majority of his time, how he sustained himself, some of the places he visited, his reasons for doing so and the dispositions of the various people he mingled with. There is much else besides, but perhaps the most important other detail concerns precisely why he eventually chose to return home to embark on his famous ministry, knowing full well the fate that awaited him in the land of his birth.

Finally, it will become apparent over the course of the coming months that I believe there’s a great deal of “admissible evidence” in this investigation into the missing years of Jesus - to put it another way, it doesn’t rely on the “there’s no good reason he couldn’t have come to Britain” argument. While not everyone will agree with the inferences I’ve drawn, I’m as confident as I can be that what I’ve written constitutes the first ever truly in-depth study into the whereabouts of Jesus as a teenager and as a young adult. So, even if you don’t agree with my conclusions, then perhaps the evidence that I’ve compiled and presented will allow you a glimpse of your own into this apparently mysterious and unfathomable period in the life of the most famous person who has ever lived.

[Dennis Price first started working in archaeology in the 1970s; most recently, he’s spent 10 years on Salisbury Plain, just a few miles away from Stonehenge. During his time with Wessex Archaeology, he was intimately involved with the world-famous discoveries of the King of Stonehenge, or Amesbury Archer, and with the Boscombe Bowmen; he was also the last archaeologist allowed inside Silbury Hill, Britain’s only pyramid, before work began to seal if off forever. He runs the Eternal Idol site and is the author of the forthcoming book The Missing Years of Jesus – The Greatest Story Never Told.] Comments (22)

 Total Posts: 7,616,950    Topics: 316,944    Members: 201,977

 Not a member yet ? Click here to join - registration is free and only takes a moment!