Jesus in Egypt

Matthew gives the flight into Egypt nine verses. A warning to Joseph, a hurried departure in the night, and then silence until the family comes home. For two thousand years, believers in Egypt have filled that silence with stories. Jesus in Egypt follows author Paul Perry as he walks, rides, sails and drives along the path where those stories say the Holy Family traveled, from the Sinai coast to Luxor.

It is a three part journey with a calm, curious guide. Paul says up front that he is not particularly religious, that he prefers sources you can check, and that he was drawn in by the gap. What he finds is not proof. It is something more interesting. A living memory carried by churches, wells, trees, monks and ordinary families. This review follows the series in order and tells you what each episode shows, what it claims, and how to watch it with an open heart and a clear head.

The Gap and the Journey

Paul tells us the idea came to him on the bow of a boat while he was filming a documentary on the Pharaohs and the stone temples of the Nile. He asked people in every town whether they knew stories of Jesus in Egypt, and they told him several that are not in the Bible. He first made the journey a few weeks after September 11, wrote a book, and then returned about three years later, against the advice of those who still warned Americans not to go, to make this film.

Alongside him is archaeologist John DeBry, who speaks Arabic and helps identify stone relics and ancient sites. Along the way they meet bishops and priests, monks and nuns, Pope Shenouda III, and a Muslim archaeologist and a Muslim taxi driver who both know the Holy Family sites by heart. That last detail matters. Paul asks how a country that is roughly 85 percent Muslim and 15 percent Christian lives together in peace, and he offers his own answer. They share the same sacred places and the same stories.

Episode by Episode

Episode 1: Sinai, the Delta and the Footprint

The journey begins in Cairo’s old bazaar, then crosses the Sinai from El Arish by Bedouin camel toward Farma, a ghost town the Greeks and Romans called Pelusium. John reports the ruins of a large round church there, and his reasoning is that a church that size must have been built because worshipers knew the Holy Family had come through. At Tell Basta, once the city of the cat goddess Bastet, Egyptian Christians say Jesus toppled the temples after locals rejected the family. Paul is candid that this is a darker image than Jesus the healer, and he notes the text behind the legend, a story in the Infancy Gospels in which idols fall when Mary enters a temple with the child.

Then come the churches of the Delta. A priest in Zagazig reads Matthew 2:13 in Coptic. In Samanoud, a priest tells of the slaughter of the infants and of the saint whose relics are anointed. At the convent of Saint Damiana, Bishop Bishoy, who trained as an engineer, says he verified the Holy Family’s visit from medieval writings. The centerpiece is Sakha, where a priest places in Paul’s hands a dark stone, about half an inch deep in its imprint and polished by centuries of sacred oil, believed by tradition to hold the footprint of Jesus. Paul asks the honest question. It could be a footprint, but whose? He does not claim proof. He calls the stone a living representation of oral tradition. I think that is the wisest line in the series.

Episode 2: Monasteries, Visions and the Heart of Egypt

Here the series becomes a study in how a tradition holds together. In the monasteries of Wadi Natrun, monk Father Girgis finds a handwritten copy of the Vision of Theophilus, in which the Virgin Mary appears to a pope and tells of the Holy Family’s route. Paul explains why it matters. Most of the stories existed before the vision, and the vision tied them together. He also admits the chain is long, since the text was written down centuries after the event.

The episode also visits the Tree of Matariya, the Church of Maadi with its reported escape tunnel, and the Zeitoun church, where in 1968 thousands reported seeing a luminous woman above the dome. Paul arrives skeptical, then softens as senior clergy and Western scholars describe what they saw. Further south, at Oxyrhynchus, he notes a lovely real world detail. Oxford archaeologists found early Christian papyri there, including fragments of the Gospel of Thomas, while the same ground holds a legend of a palm that bowed and a well that sprang up. He drinks from it and says it tastes pure. At the cliffs of Gebel Atter, in a cave church whose altar sits on wood, the legend says Jesus made a handprint in a falling rock and touched the cliff to open a passage. The cave is real. The temple in the legend has never been found. Paul and John float one candidate, a small temple of Hathor with a nearby quarry, and Paul takes care to say it lends credence, not proof by Western standards.

Episode 3: Deir Muharraq and the Road to Luxor

The final episode crosses the Nile to Abu Hinnis, an entirely Christian village with cave paintings and a priest who says only terrified people see ghosts. Then comes Deir Muharraq, which the Coptic Church calls its holiest site. A monk says the Holy Family stayed there six months and five days, and the altar holds a stone Jesus is said to have slept on. Paul touches it and prays to know whether the trail is real. In Asyut, he photographs a church steeple with a time exposure and sees an orange spray of light. He takes it as his answer and says the trail is authentic.

The closing stretch moves through the never before filmed caves of Raifa, the White and Red Monasteries, and then Karnak and Luxor Temple, where Christian, pharaonic and Islamic layers sit on top of one another. It is a beautiful visual argument about how religions overlap. Paul’s final words are the most honest of the series. He saw nothing that would satisfy Western archaeologists. What matters to him now is the effect these stories have on the people who believe them.

Three Kinds of Evidence

One reason this series rewards a second look is that it quietly mixes three kinds of material. A careful viewer can sort them.

• Scripture and history. Matthew’s account of the flight, the pharaonic temples of Tell Basta and Karnak, the archaeological papyri at Oxyrhynchus, the 1968 reports at Zeitoun, and the ruins of early churches.
• Tradition and legend. The footprint at Sakha, the bowing trees, the wells, the toppled idols, the stay of six months at Deir Muharraq, the Infancy Gospels and the Vision of Theophilus.
• The host’s interpretation. The idea that churches mark the trail, that Horus and the ankh prefigure Christian symbols, and that a photograph is a reply to prayer.

None of these cancels the others. Tradition can carry real meaning without being history, and interpretation can be sincere without being proof. The series is strongest when Paul says so himself.

The Heart of the Film: Oral Tradition

Paul admits his bias. He prefers written material that can be checked, and accepting these stories puts him on a slippery slope. The film then offers two answers from the Egyptian side. One is that persecution preserves tradition, because people guard what costs them dearly. The other is that in Christian oral history, whole congregations pass stories along together, so errors are corrected by the community. Paul calls this a self-correcting quality. Pope Shenouda says the traditions are believed as if written in stone.

You do not have to settle the question to feel its weight. Whether or not Jesus stood on these banks, millions of people have walked this trail for centuries because someone told them the ground was holy. The film asks you to take that human fact seriously.

Watching with Discernment

This is a gentle and moving series, and it also benefits from a few notes. The film presents its dates loosely. The Vision of Theophilus is placed in different centuries in different places, and the Karnak church is dated in more than one way, so treat the specific dates lightly. The stay of the Holy Family appears as a few days in one town, six months at Deir Muharraq and a general idea of five years overall, and the film does not reconcile these. The Infancy Gospels are not part of the New Testament, and the film does not stress that. A few narrated asides, such as the burial place of Alexander the Great, are stated without sources and are worth checking on your own. Several comparisons, like Horus as a figure of Christ, are offered as opinion and should be held that way. And parts of the narration describe the family’s feelings and hardships as though known, which is imaginative.

None of that spoils the film. It simply keeps you honest, which Paul does too.

Questions to Carry With You

• What does a story need in order to feel true to you, a document, a witness, or a community that has kept it alive?
• Where in your own life has a place felt holy because of what people have believed about it?
• Can a story be meaningful without being provable?
• What would it change for you if Jesus did spend part of his childhood in Egypt?

Follow the Wider Story of Jesus

Egypt is one chapter in a much larger question: where was Jesus between the cradle and the ministry, and what did he actually teach? These pages follow that thread from different directions.

• Jesus in India: The Story, the Evidence, and the Debate. The other great travel tradition, from Kashmir to Ladakh, set beside the Egyptian one.
• The Lost Years of Jesus Christ. India, Tibet, Egypt, Persia and the mystery schools, gathered into one map.
• Marketing the Messiah and What Jesus Actually Taught. How the story was shaped over the centuries, and what may have been set aside.
• The Gnostic Gospels Explained. The Nag Hammadi library and the early writings that Egyptian soil kept safe.
• The Gospel of Thomas Explained. The hidden sayings of Jesus, found in Egypt in 1945.
• Who Was Mary Magdalene?. The woman at the center of the lost teachings.
• The Hidden Teachings of Jesus Christ and The Christ Within. Two audio courses on the inner teachings.
• Jesus Christ’s Hidden Teachings with Aaron Abke and The Love, Light and True Teaching of Jesus Christ with John Davis. Two conversations on what Jesus taught.

You can also explore spiritual enlightenment or browse the full Spiritual Cinema collection on Next Level Soul.

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