Yellow Hat Productions
Paul Davids
Documentary

The just-released DVD of what has been called “the most controversial film ever to play on the Sundance Channel” chronicles the 4,000-mile journey of Edward T. Martin, a former fundamentalist Christian from Texas, who became disillusioned with his faith while working in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan. It was there that he first heard East Asian accounts of the historic Jesus, including the possibility that he had joined a caravan following the Silk Road and had lived with Hindus and Buddhists in the East before returning to the Holy Land to begin his work. Martin sold all he had to fund his decades of research in India, Nepal, Afghanistan, and the Himalayas; to this day he is considered “a pariah” in his community and was thrown out of his church for his suggestion that Jesus’ “lost” years were spent in the study of the wisdom of the East.

Martin is the author of two books on the subject of Jesus’ “lost years”: Jesus in India: King of Wisdom — The Making of the Film and New Findings on Jesus’ Lost Years, and King of Travelers: Jesus’ Lost Years in India. Included are interviews with the Dalai Lama, Vatican authorities, a Hindu spiritual leader, author and professor Elaine Pagels of Princeton University, a leader in Paramahansa Yogananda’s Self-Realization Fellowship, and others, together with excerpts from Muslim writings that speak of the existence among them of a man known as Issa, who is thought to be Jesus of Nazareth.