[3] According to Szekely's book 'Essene Gospel of Peace', he was a descendant of Hungarian philologist and orientologist Sándor Kőrösi Csoma (although the latter never married and had no children[4]).

In 1940 the couple opened a camp in Tecate, Baja California, Mexico, which they named Rancho la Puerta, where they could explore and test their ideas.

Szekely later said that he recognized several fragments in these that were either similar, or identical, to various passages from the Old and New Testaments, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the Avesta and thus he relied on available English editions of those works to produce the style of language used in his translations.

While Szekely's claimed translations of the so-called "Essene Texts" have drawn interest from followers of various faiths, the original manuscripts have never been located, and have been considered forgeries by some modern religious scholars.

When University of Lund theologian Per Beskow investigated Szekely's claims in Strange Tales About Jesus, both the Vatican and the National Library of Vienna denied that the original manuscripts existed.

It is one of the strangest frauds we know of in the biblical field, as it has been carried through by stages during a whole lifetime and has been built onto an entire body of research based on imagination only.

Young has written: Proof that Jesus was vegetarian is based on The Essene Gospel of Peace, which Szekely claims to have translated from an ancient text he supposedly discovered in the 1920s.

The camp had one adobe hut and the Szekelys started an organic garden, bought goats and began marketing cheese, and invited like-minded people to visit for $17.50 a week.

Guests (who chopped wood, milked goats, and brought their own tents) listened to Szekely's lectures on achieving good health, long life, and the interdependence of mind, body and spirit.

[citation needed] As the spa increased in size in the early 1950s and began to operate year-round, visitors of another sort were attracted by the weight-loss potential of Rancho la Puerta's vegetarian diet.

Szekely and his wife began searching for and hiring specialists in yoga and other mind/body exercise regimens, adding a fitness aspect to their offerings.

Today, Rancho La Puerta is a 3,000-acre (12 km2) holistic health spa and eco-resort with a staff of nearly 400, owned and operated by the Szekely family.