Jesus in Egypt

Magi Visit, Escape from Herod, Living in Egypt

When Was the Birth of Jesus? and When Did The Magi Come?

When Was Jesus Born? When Did the Magi Come? When Did Herod Die?

And what do all these questions have to do with one another? Quite a bit, it seems, according to the second chapter of Matthew. Jesus was born during the reign of Herod the Great, as seen at Matthew 2:1. Herod the Great died in Jericho in 4 BC, according to the contemporary Jewish historian Yosef son of Matityahu, whose pen name was Flavius Josephus. This means that Jesus must have been born DURING OR BEFORE 4 BC.

The Bible is not incorrect on the issue of dates. Rather, it is our calendars that are incorrect. The system of dividing the years into AD and BC was invented in the year 525 by Dionysius Exiguus, a prominent monk in Rome. Using his calculations, he missed the supposed date of Jesus' birth by at least 5 years. AD (Anno Domino) stands for the "Years of Our Lord," which were to begin in AD 1 at Christ's birth. BC means the  years "Before Christ," which ended in 1 BC. By this system there is no zero year, either BC or AD. Across the non-Christian world, they use CE (Common Era) and BCE (Before the Common Era) as the politically correct replacement for the Christian AD and BC.

So the Magi, like Jesus, also had to arrive in Judea before Herod the Great died in 4 BC. But there is more. The Magi had seen a star appear, announcing the new King of the Jews. Herod took them aside in secret to find out the EXACT TIME (Matthew 2:7) that the star appeared, and instructed them to come back to him when they found this new king who would challenge Herod's rule.

But the Magi were warned in a dream from God not to return to Herod. When Herod saw that he had been tricked, in a rage he ordered the killing of the male children in and around Bethlehem. But Joseph had also been warned, and had already escaped for Egypt with Mary and Jesus. And here's a clue: Herod killed all the male children two years old and younger, according to the EXACT TIME (Matthew 2:16) that he had extracted from the Magi.

Does this mean that Jesus was two years old when the Magi appeared? Herod wasn't taking any chances, and killed them all. But if Jesus was two, that means he may have been born 6 BC or sooner, rather than 5 BC. This would make Jesus at least 32 (about 30 years old, Luke 33:2) when he began his ministry in AD 27, and at least 35 years old at the crucifixion in AD 30.

The Traditional Flight to Egypt

The image above has bought into the two-year-old Jesus theory, for there he is, on Mary's back being carried to Egypt. I would think that he could do much of the walking himself, but you probably know what two-year-olds are like.  But what about Joseph's other children: four boys and two or three girls? It would have been quite dangerous to leave his other children behind, with a paranoid maniac on the throne in Jerusalem. Even if Joseph could squirrel them away in Nazareth, that would not be safe enough. And with the haste to get out of town, there would be little time for making other plans. No, Joseph needed to bring his whole clan along to keep them out of the clutches of King Herod.

Jesus and His Family in Egypt

I used this image to depict Joseph's move from Nazareth to Bethlehem, showing Joseph's youngest son Jude on the donkey with the pregnant Mary. But if this is Joseph's family on its way to Egypt, then there's a boy missing. The best explanation for that is that James, the oldest boy, is the one taking the picture. At least that's my experience with family photos. I was often missing from the family photo because, as the oldest boy, I was operating the Brownie camera. And James went on to write one of the most practical books in the New Testament.

On a more serious note, Joseph did not need to worry about his reception in Egypt. The Egyptian city Alexandria was one of the greatest cities of the ancient world, which included a population of Jews that outnumbered even the inhabitants of Jerusalem. There would be no problem finding someone willing to take in a refugee from Herod the Great, famous for his ferocity. They would probably settle in for a two-year stay, at least, until the political situation in Judea and Galilee settled down a bit.

For the boy Jesus, this would  present his first solid contact with Greek-speaking Jews. Jews in Egypt did not speak Aramaic, and their scrolls of scripture were written in Greek rather than Hebrew. Such encounters would go double for the older children. Turned out on the street to play, they would immediately be immersed in a 100 percent Greek language milieu.

I found evidence for such an encounter in the book of Jude in the Bible, when I was preparing my master's thesis, Jude and the Scoffers (2006). Although Jude's birth language was clearly Aramaic, his writing shows an extensive Greek vocabulary unsurpassed by any of the other writers of the New Testament. In the short span of 25 verses, he makes use of no less than 22 words or word usages not to be found elsewhere in the Greek Bible. Yet his use of Greek is unsophisticated, learned on the street rather than in the academy. There isn't a bit of complex sentence structure in the Book of Jude, not even so much as an "if...then" clause.

The friendships that Jude and his brothers acquired in Egypt no doubt extended into adulthood, with an occasional reunion with old friends, for Alexandria was one of the greatest sources of Jewish visitors to the Holy Land for great feasts such as the Passover. The occasion for the Book of Jude is a contact from the Holy Land to a Jewish church in Egypt that was struggling to take in some of its first non-Jewish Christians, who had very different ideas on how to relate to a supreme deity.

Next week we will take on the exploits of the 12-year-old boy Jesus.