Did Jesus travel before he started teaching?

The short answer

The Gospels do not say. They are silent about his life between age twelve and about thirty, so nobody knows whether he traveled. Far Country is a novel, and it imagines that he did.

What the record says

The last thing Luke tells us about the boy Jesus is this:

And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

Luke 2:52

The next time Luke picks up the story, Jesus is a grown man:

Jesus himself, when he began to teach, was about thirty years old

Luke 3:23

Luke tells nothing about the years in between. Apart from the family’s flight to Egypt when he was a small child (Matthew 2), the Gospels tell of no trip abroad before his teaching began.

Over the centuries, legends grew up to fill those years, some of them telling of long travels. None of them come from the Gospels.

How Far Country tells it

Far Country is a novel. It imagines the years the Gospels skip. In the novel he goes by Yeshua, the name his family would have called him. In chapter one, “The Sea,” Yeshua stands at the rail of a ship out of Caesarea, bound for Alexandria, Rome and Athens. He travels with Asok, a man who ships cargo, and Asok’s twelve-year-old son, Vidar, who keeps a book of the names each country gives its god. Yeshua has not slept in two nights, and he has not unpacked his bag. The boy has written that he might be afraid to unpack. Yeshua offers another reason.

“That a man does not set his pack down until he knows the floor will take the weight.”

Later chapters carry him through Alexandria, Crete, Carthage, Naples, Rome, Athens and Ephesus. After two years he walks home to Nazareth in chapters ten and eleven.

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