Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1883 — QUESTION. [ARTICLE]

QUESTION.

Was the Flight Into Egypt by Water? It has always been assnmed by the commentators that Joseph, ’ accompanied by the Virgin and the infant Savior, undertook the arduous journey from Bethlehem by Gaza and el ’Arish to Ismalia and Memphis. It is true that legendary art and later tradition represent the holy family to have been protected by miraculous interposition on the difficult undertaking. Without divine aid, specially rendered, it is imEossible to conceive that it could have een accomplished. The route must always have been costly and fatiguing. In this case it was peculiarly unsuitable. Traversed by Boman couriers, and patrolled to the north by the “river of Egypt,” by the soldiers of Herod,the little party must have excited the attention it sought to avoid, aud a report would have been at once made to the officer charged, with the murderous duty of slaughtering the infants of Bethlehem. The frontier fortress of Rhinocolura would have been an insuperable obstacle. The desert and the sea offered no alternative road. There is nothing, however, in the sacred narative to imply that Joseph did not act as any one else seeking to escape from Southern Palestine would undoubtedly do. St. Matthew says that when the magi “were departed, behold. the, angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying j Arise, take the }oung child and his mother and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word; for Herod will seek the'young child to destroy him. When he arose he took the young child and his mother by night and departed into Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod.” Starting a little before dawn, he would make his wav to the coast, where a boat might have been procured at any point between the Azetus and Gaza. Having baffled pursuit at the start, the numerous mouths of the Nile offered a similar opportunity of entering Egypt unobserved. The Coptic tradition of Matariveh tends to confirm this view. The holv plat es of Egypt were not “invented” to satisfy the Em-press-mother, nor arethey conveniently distributed along favofite pilgrim roads. This legend, therefore, may be taken ‘as showing how the passage was interpreted at an early period. The Virgin rested where she disembarked, not far from the junction of the Plusiac branch of the Nile with the pareny stream. They undoubtedly returned b water. For “when Herod was dead, behold, an angel of the Lord appearefl. in a dream to Joseph, in Egypt;'saying : Arise and take the young child arttl his mother and go into the land of Israel; and he arose and took the young child and his mother and came into, the land of Israel.” There is no reason for supposing that the term “land <f Israel,” used nowhere else in the New Testament, should have been employed by the first evangelist in any other than its common restricted application to the region previously inhabited by the ten tribes. This explains away the difficulty which is so often felt. For, “when” having landed at Casareaor Sy< aminum (Hanifa), and traveling ■ south ward, “he heard that Archeiaus did re gn in Judea in the room of his father Herod, lie was afraid to go thither, notwithstanding being warned of God in a dre; m,” he obeyed the divine mandate as he had received it (qv. in Egypt) and “turned aside into the parts of Galilee; and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth.” — London Academy.