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Perhaps I can be of some slight service here. The whole "lost years of jesus" thing is originally the concoction of a loveable, swashbuckling, larger then life russian nutjob; one Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich (1874-1947): artist, explorer, ethnographer, visionary, mystic, self-proclaimed guru, possible spy and all-around adventurer who, by turns bamboozled his fellow tsarists, then bolshevists, colonial british but above of all, we soft-hearted, mushy-headed americans. He can be fairly credited as the Father of the New Age and that is how I first heard of him, when I was dabbling in that stuff in my early twenties. Of the many tall tales he schlepped around in the 1920's was that he had found (in his many travels throughout Central Asia) in an obscure tibetan monastery (of course) a manuscript proving that Jesus Christ from age eighteen to age thirty left Palestine and traveled the Silk Road to India and there studied under Hindu sages and Bhuddist lamas, conmingling with his rabbinical teachings therein to forge his ministry. In the intervening decades many kooks have taken up the story and put their stamp on it but Roerich was the kook of origin.

The man was more full of it than the mythical Baron Munchausen (Roerich, I mean) yet somehow he managed to wander over an incredibly dangerous part of the world in an extremely violent time and make an outrageous pest of himself yet somehow avoid arrest and/or execution and always garner publicity and sponsorship among the high and mighty. He is forgotten now, except among the New Agers, but he was once paraded through Manhattan, received by President Herbert Hoover, and nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. His highest-placed devotee and acolyte was none other than Henry Wallace, FDR's Vice President, Secy of Ag. and Truman's fired Secretary of Commerce. Roerich is widely suspected of influencing Wallace's design of the one-dollar bill's Great Seal (take that, Nicholas Cage!).

Roerich did a great deal to popularize Eastern Mysticism and his works were likely the source material for James Hilton's 1933 bestselling novel Lost Horizon. He first made a name for himself as a set designer in his native St. Petersburg. He was a pretty good painter and I recommend his (art)works highly. Peace out.