The Lost Years of Jesus Revealed

Book excerpt: For centuries Christian students of the Bible have wondered where Jesus was and what he did during the so-called "eighteen silent years" between the ages of twelve and thirty. The amazing and dramatic scrolls of the great Essene library found in cave after cave near the Dead Sea have given us the answer at last. That during those "lost years" Jesus was a student at this Essene school is becoming increasingly apparent. Scholars are gradually admitting the startling parallels between his doctrines and vocabulary and those of the Essenes and their "Teacher of Righteousness, " who was evidently executed nearly a century before the birth of Jesus. It is to his title and authority that Jesus probably succeeded.