This book is about the lost years of earliest Christianity, about the 30s and 40s of the first century, about those dark decades immediately after the execution of Jesus. It is a silence similar to that in Jesus’ own life. Where did Jesus go, it is sometimes asked, in those decades before he emerged to public life as a follower of John the Baptist? He went, it is sometimes answered, to India and learned wisdom. I no more believe that story than that he went to Ireland and learned Gaelic. Be that as it may, there is, for earliest Jesus and earliest Christianity, a parallel period of emptied years and darkened decades. But it is also more surprising to have such lost years for a social movement than for an individual person. It is not at all unusual that the ancient record of a personal life should begin at full maturity. [from author website].