Matt, Dave, and the Bible, Part Two

Added Notes for a Play or Story

By Tom Slattery

Like my previous post, the following text is not a scholarly paper. It is merely notes for a
possible play or novel. But readers may be interested. So here are some additional notes.

A brief consideration here: I use the name "Jesus" in this text for ease of understanding.
As Isaac Asimov and others have pointed out, the name "Jesus" slowly evolved through
Aramaic, Greek, and Latin, from the name "Joshua." You might recall that as Matthew's
account of the Egyptian sojourn ends (Matthew 2:15), he quotes from Hosea (11:1) "out
of Egypt I called My son."

As some of you recall, in the Book of Exodus the name Joshua undergoes a name-change
from Hosea. Thus properly using the name "Joshua" rather than the widely understood
"Jesus" might reveal some yet undiscovered connection to the account that could be
overlooked when using the name "Jesus." I don't know. I'm just wondering. But ease of
understanding of my text and thoughts will take precedence here, and I use "Jesus."

Research for a Play or Novel

This collection of notes in the form of an essay looks at the biblical flight into Egypt and
the sojourn in Egypt. In doing so it implies questions concerning connections of Jesus to
Egyptian nationality and Egyptian national leadership.

Lurking in the background were the events leading up to the time in which the flight took
place. These events revolved around the turmoil of Egyptian military defeat and the
larger Hellenistic military defeat to new Roman ascendancy.

The turmoil continued to rage hot and cold for decades following the defeat of Imperial
Egypt in 30 BC. Sixty-eight to seventy years after the flight into Egypt there are hints of
clandestine attempts at Egyptian and Hellenistic rebellion and swift Roman reaction.
These hints include:

(1) In the turmoil in Egypt, the Roman prefect of Egypt, Flaccus, could not maintain
order and may have been siding with the Egyptian independence movement. The Roman
emperor Caligula called Flaccus to Rome and executed him there in 38 AD.

(2) Herod Antipas, Tetrarch of Galilee throughout virtually all of Jesus' life, was accused
of conspiracy against Rome by his nephew Herod Agrippa and exiled by the emperor
Caligula to southern Gaul in 39 AD and apparently died there some time later.

(3) King Ptolemy of the Roman protectorate of Mauritania, the grandson of Cleopatra VII
the final Egyptian pharaoh was invited on a ruse to Rome by the emperor Caligula and
executed there in 40 AD.

Something secretive and desperate would appear to have been going on.
Possibly unrelated to those two executions and one exile, Jesus had been executed by
crucifixion about a decade earlier. But one might wonder about the flight into Egypt
episode four decades earlier, just before 1 AD.

Were there implied Egyptian nationality connections to Jesus in the infancy story that
Matthew alone takes pain to offer? Might Matthew have known some fascinating secrets
but took care to disguise them for unknown but understandable reasons amid the intrigues
and violence running rampant in the newly established Roman Empire?

In the canonical New Testament Gospels, only the Gospel of Matthew tells about a flight
to Egypt and a sojourn there by Mary, Joseph, and their infant, Jesus. And there are no
other accounts datable to that time.

The Koran, from another religious tradition, touches on the story. But while the Koran
contains text on Mary and Jesus -- Sura 19 (Chapter 19) of the Koran is titled "Maryam"
("Mary") -- the Koran has no direct comment about their flight into Egypt and time spent
there.

Beyond the canonical New Testament account by Matthew there are other "gospels" and
writings that tell of the stay in Egypt. They appear to have been written centuries after the
events in the New Testament could have taken place. They seem, therefore, to have been
composed to fill a terrible craving for more to the story that Matthew so conspicuously
leaves out in his account.

Nevertheless, even though these apocryphal writings may be largely fiction, they may
have utilized scattered nonfiction fragments known in those days but lost now.

The "Infancy Gospel of Thomas" contains material on the time in Egypt, but is not
reliable as history.

And a word of caution: the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas" is a document completely

different from "The Gospel of Thomas." The "Gospel of Thomas" is composed of sayings
of Jesus and may have been written down by Thomas the Disciple. But Thomas rather
clearly did not write the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas".

(a.) "The Infancy Gospel of Thomas" dates to the 2nd or 3rd centuries (100s to 200s AD)
and contains considerable story text concerning Jesus in Egypt, much of which stretches
credibility.

(b.) Then there is "The Arabic Infancy Gospel". It seems to have been originally
composed in Syriac, a language similar to Aramaic that Jesus spoke, in the fifth or sixth
century (400s to 500s AD) and later translated into Arabic. While possible, it is unlikely
that this translation into Arabic took place before the prophet Muhammad died in 632
AD. So "The Arabic Infancy Gospel" is thus effectively post-Islam.
"The Arabic Infancy Gospel" appears to have been used in its pre-Arabic forms by
Nestorian Christians and thus was widely known and read. And since this might be the
case, there is an intriguing sentence in its Part Two (or Sike's sentence 4 in Chapter One).
If ever found to be true, this sentence could shake to the ground present Biblical studies:

"In the three hundred and ninth year of the era of Alexander, Augustus put forth an edict,
that every man should be enrolled in his native place."

Consider this: Augustus Caesar ordered three censuses, one in 28 BC just before he
effectively became Roman emperor, and two while he was emperor, one in 8 BC, and the
other in the year he died, 14 AD (thus it is jointly with Tiberius).

The "era of Alexander" began when Alexander the Great became King of Macedonia
after his father was assassinated in 336 BC. Subtract 309th year of the era of Alexander
from its beginning in 336 BC and you get, given minor calendar overlaps and
adjustments, the first census of Augustus in 27/28 BC.

While this is more or less irrelevant to the subsequent essay, the sentence is startling.
Most have assumed that the Census of Augustus during which Jesus was born was the
one in 8 BC that was conducted locally by Publius Sulpicius Quirinius. If, however, Jesus
had been born during the first census of Augustus as "The Arabic Infancy Gospel" says,
Jesus would have been born into a different historical period and would have been 20
years older than scholars and other have long assumed.

In that chronology, Jesus would have been born two years after the last effective pharaoh
Cleopatra VII committed suicide in 30 BC following Egyptian defeat by the Romans.
Thus Jesus would have been born just after the end of the three-centuries-long line of
Greek-descended pharaohs that had begun when Alexander the Great was crowned
pharaoh on November 14, 332 BC.

And since Alexander and his Ptolemy successors claimed legitimacy for the three-
thousand-year-long line of pharaohs, Jesus being born just when the final pharaoh died
would have had some significance.

That being said, though, the birthday during the 28 BC census is unlikely. It shows up
only in that one late and possibly fictionalized document. The census of 8 BC is widely
accepted.

The trouble with the implication that Jesus would have been born during the census of 28
BC is that "The Arabic Infancy Gospel" on which it depends appears to have been a work
of commercial fiction.

Moreover, the original Arabic manuscript from which Henry Sike of Cambridge
University worked to translate it (and publish in 1697 under the title "The First Gospel of
the Infancy of Jesus Christ") was mysteriously lost. While its provenance into the Leiden
University library appears reasonable, the fact that this document disappeared after its use
for translation is unsettling.

(3.) But to alleviate doubts there is "The Syriac Infancy Gospel" from which "The Arabic
Infancy Gospel" may have been translated. It also covers the time that Mary, Joseph, and
Jesus were in Egypt.

Both of those late "gospels" seem to depend on the earlier Matthew story for their
inspiration, and Matthew only connects it to an unknown year of a census.

Whatever the year of the birth of Jesus, however, the infancy story of Matthew is one part
of Matthew's effort to claim that Jesus descended from a revered King David of mythical
recounting from ten centuries earlier and is therefore the new legitimate King of the Jews.

And yet there seems never to have been a King David in Jerusalem. There is no credible
archaeological evidence of anything like the magnificent Jewish Empire implied in the
story, and there are no mentions of any Jewish King David by contemporary rulers. But
there was, at exactly that time, an Egyptian "King David" reigning from the then
Egyptian capital of Tanis near the eastern end of the Nile Delta.

This Egyptian "King David" is widely known as the pharaoh Psusennes I who reigned
between 1047 BC and 1001 BC. You readers can see the "David" by replacing "Seba," an
Egyptian word for star, with an alternate Egyptian word for star. (I will put his name in
quotes because this word for star would have been pronounced differently than the
"David" that our English-language ears are familiar with, but it is "David" nevertheless.)
The hieroglyphics of Psusennes' Egyptian name could be rendered Puh "David" Kha En
Nuit (The Star Appearing On City).

So we might wonder if Matthew had been knowingly connecting Jesus and his right to
royal succession to Egyptian royalty. And might this have made Jesus "King of the
Egyptians" rather than "King of the Jews"?

The Gospel of Matthew endeavors to connect Jesus to "David," and the story of Joseph
taking Mary and Jesus to Egypt is one part of that effort.

The story is brimming with symbols of royal significance. From beginning to end there
are:

(1) a genealogy implying legitimacy to a throne of David.

(2) a visit by foreign emissaries to stated royalty who bear gifts fit for a king.
(3) a mass-murder of children to prevent a potential succession to a throne of the Jews.
(4) even at the end there is a crown of thorns to mock a claim to royalty.

Matthew really wants to establish a connection to royalty and to David. But while the
book that has come down to us has a "Flight Into Egypt" infancy story, it says almost
nothing about the stay in Egypt.
It does not appear that Matthew ever gave or intended to give an account of Jesus in
Egypt. Possibly to avoid distraction, Matthew sticks to material that largely takes place
Galilee-Judea. He gives the cause for the flight into Egypt, that fact that the journey was
made, and notes that after some time the family returned from Egypt. That's all.

There is, however, other material on the stay of the family in Egypt. And that is curious
in itself.

That is to say, if a lone poor husband and wife with an infant were fleeing in terror from
state-sanctioned murder and trying to avoid attention at all costs, they would try to leave
no tracks or traces. Decades later some people might vaguely remember them, but those
scattered people would not likely trace a definite route from Egyptian location to
Egyptian location.

People in an underground network, however, would remember them. And at that time in
history there would have been a profusion of underground networks.

Not long before, Egypt had been one of two superpowers in the Western World. Then
suddenly they had been defeated by the Romans, and Roman legions were marching
through their land and looting what was not hidden. The conquerors worshipped foreign
gods and were telling Egyptians what to do and were taking censuses of all Egyptians in
order to control and tax them.

So a good reason why the Egyptian itinerary was remembered might be that this family
had some notable significance. It had to be protected and moved for safety by a robust
underground network probably not unlike the French resistance during WW II.

Christianity as we know it had not yet begun. This was a flight to save the life of the very
first Christian. So what other than Christianity might that notable significance have been?

European-derived Christians omit the time in Egypt of Mary, Jesus, and Joseph. But the
Coptic (Egyptian) Christian church has an itinerary. In 2001 Al Ahram, the Cairo daily
newspaper published an English-language article on it. There are also maps. (see links at
end of this text)

The route as it is presented now by the Coptic Church was revealed "in a dream" to
Coptic Pope Theophilus, 23rd Patriarch of Alexandria (384-412 AD). I have to guess,
however, that prior to the dream there was considerable tradition in Egypt concerning the
exact route the family took.

Input into Pope Theophilus' dreaming, however, logically would not have gone far astray
of four centuries of established tradition. If it had been too different, people would have
left alone a man's dreaming in favor of centuries of cherished custom.
One might speculate that the dream may have brought the church peace by settling a few
local conflicts over the itinerary. But in general the itinerary would represent that which
had been known since the original events.

And there may even be an independent partial confirmation of the traditional Coptic
route.

West of Marseilles, in southern France and a few miles inland from the Mediterranean
Sea, in an area rich in Christian tradition that includes Avignon, is a town named Béziers.
Tradition holds that Aphrodisius, who was later made a saint of the Roman Catholic
Church, founded the diocese of Béziers.

Wikipedia (from where I got much of the information for these notes) says that Béziers
was founded about 35 BC as a Roman "colonia" for veterans, the Colonia Julia Baeterrae
Septimanorum.

Aphrodisius, the traditional first Christian bishop of Béziers, would probably have been
born before Mary and Joseph, let alone Jesus.

Decades before he came to Béziers, Aphrodisius is said to have been the prestigious and
powerful High Priest of the Temple of On, the sacred sun temple of the ancient
Egyptians, a place the Greeks called Heliopolis. The ruins of On-Heliopolis are in an
eastern suburb of modern Cairo. Heliopolis was one of the holiest of ancient Egyptian
sites and connected to pharaohs from the earliest dynasties.

During their flight into Egypt, Aphrodisius sheltered the Holy Family at Hermopolis.
Interestingly, Hermopolis is slightly southwest from being just across the Nile River from
the city of Akhet Aton, the new capital the heretic pharaoh Akhnaten (died circa 1336
BC) had built in the name of his new proto-monotheistic religion.

Akhet Aton had in ruins for a millennium-and-a-third when Aphrodisius found refuge for
Mary, Joseph, and Jesus at Hermopolis. But it had been the center of the new proto
monotheistic sun worship of Akhnaten, a proto-monotheism that arguably influenced the
genuine monotheism of Moses several centuries later.

Hermopolis across the river was important in its own right. The city was the religious
center of the Ogdoad, the eight gods of the ancient Egyptian creation myth, another of the
holiest places in ancient Egypt.

Tradition has it that Aphrodisius met Jesus in Judea or Galilee and became one of his
disciples. Months (maybe years?) after the death of Jesus Aphrodisius is said to have
arrived in Béziers on a camel and for a while to have lived in a cave. He is said to have
been martyred on April 28, 65 AD, when Nero was Roman emperor. The town of Béziers
would have only been a hundred years old at that time.
Near the end of a Wikipedia entry accessed by Googling "Flight into Egypt" and
"Matthew 2:13" is this (Wikipedia's words, not mine):

"A local French tradition states that Saint Aphrodisius, an Egyptian saint who was
venerated as the first bishop of Béziers, was the man who sheltered the Holy Family
when they fled into Egypt. It is also held that the Holy family visited many areas in Egypt
including Farama, Tel Basta, Wadi El Natrun, Samanoud, Bilbais, Samalout, Maadi, Al-
Maṭariyyah (Al-Matariyyah is another name for Heliopolis) and Asiut among others."

If this "local French tradition" is separate from the Coptic tradition, it would indicate an
independent support for the traditional Coptic itinerary. It is plausible because other
disciples or people with deep connections to the life of Jesus appear to have settled in the
region. One may wonder how many, but there were some notable ones.

In the list of 70 disciples in the Bible is one named Crisces (Crescens). He is said have
become bishop of Carchedon in Gaul.

And another is tinged with irony. The Jewish tetrarch (effectively king) who ruled Galilee
throughout Jesus' life, Herod Antipas, was exiled to Gaul and died there, probably where
the present French city of Lyon is now. Antipas' new and less violent control over the
territory of Galilee, which included the towns of Nazareth, Cana, and Mary Magdalene's
town of Magdala, allowed Mary, Joseph, and Jesus to leave Egypt and return home.
Decades later, however, Antipas ordered the beheading of John the Baptist and was one
of the legal authorities who could have prevented the crucifixion of Jesus, and did not.

But the point here is that after the year 42 AD and probably due to increasing anti-
Christian tension and persecution, a number of people who knew or met Jesus during his
lifetime ended up living in Gaul. There also seems to have been a famine that peaked in
Judea between 46 and 48 AD during the reign of the emperor Claudius.

It was apparently not unusual in the first century for people from Galilee and Judea to
permanently move to Gaul. Surviving stories about them and by them could be true or at
least contain elements of fact.

But history is not kind to historians. Stories, both remembered and passed down in an
oral tradition and possibly written down may have been destroyed in a crusade to stamp
out the Cathars. As part of the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, on July 22, 1209,
Pope Innocent III’s army killed circa 20,000 people, indiscriminately both Catholic and
Cathar, in the town of Béziers.

Among other things, the Cathars held that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ wife. The Cathars
also leaned toward Gnosticism. With the discovery in 1896 AD and 1945 AD of several
Gnostic gospels, including a large part of the "Gospel of Mary" believed to have been
written by Mary Magdalene, we understand more about Gnosticism.
Probably the Cathar belief that most upset Innocent III and his zealots was a Gnostic-
notion that there were two equal "Gods," a good God and an evil God. And considering
that the present Catholic Church tolerates almost exactly this same belief with their
version of God and Devil, one can only wonder at the bloodthirstiness at Béziers on July
22, 1209. Perhaps the Devil made them do it.

If there might be a silver lining, what this sad episode shows is that there was a tenacious
Gnostic presence in southern France. It would not have just come out of nowhere. And
since the apocryphal gospels of Mary, Thomas, Phillip, and others suggest that early
Christians allied with Mary Magdalene were Gnostics, it tends to support the legends that
still circulate in southern France that Mary Magdalene preached there and that other
relatives and disciples of Jesus landed there.

But a word of caution: later Egyptian traders could have brought the told and retold
French version of the Egyptian itinerary into Gaul.

On the other hand, those who had experienced the flight into Egypt, including
Aphrodisius and Mary the mother of Jesus, just as well could have brought knowledge of
it to Gaul.

A short drive east of Béziers is a French seaside town called Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

where it is said that the "two Marys" came ashore after arriving from the Middle East.

The present name Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer only dates from 1838 AD, but it was so
named because there was a long tradition of two or three Marys landing there in mid-first
century when the settlement was named Oppidum Priscum Ra for a Celtic fortification
that had been on a bluff there.

Located adjacent to where the slower flowing Petit-Rhone meets the Mediterranean, it is
an excellent location for a trading colony. Boats heading north with goods would not
have had to fight the somewhat more powerful flow of the Grand-Rhone to the east until
the two branches of the Rhone met farther north.

And good location it was into pre-history. Phoenician and Egyptian artifacts have been
excavated there. The present Church of Saint Michael (seen in a painting by van Gogh)
seems to have been built over the location of a temple to the Persian god Mithras (whose
birthday is celebrated on December 25). In other words, it seems to have been quite an
international trading colony.

Jewish traders would have been in business there. And if the tradition that Joseph of
Arimathea was a tin trader with interests in Cornwall might be true, Joseph would have
been a frequent visitor to the trading colony at Oppidium Priscum Ra. He might even
have had an office there.

If one of his ships had been carrying the two or three Marys and others fleeing from the
Levant or Egypt in the mid-first century (42 AD or later), that would have been a logical
place for it to come ashore. From the size and make-up of tomb that he gave for the burial
of Jesus, Joseph of Arimathea seems to have been a businessman of some substance. That
ship could have been a first-century analogy of a modern corporate jet.

Legend has it that on board were Lazarus, his sisters Mary Magdalene and Martha, Mary
Salome (mother of the Apostles John and James son of Zebedee), Mary of Clopas,
Maximinus, Sidonius, and possibly Mary the mother of Jesus.

Also, possibly later added to the legend as being with them, but possibly in original story
versions all along, was a pre-adolescent girl, perhaps nine to twelve years old. She is
usually called Sarah, but sometimes referred to as Marcella. This legend claimed that
Sarah was an Egyptian servant girl of one or more of the Marys. But it also seems that
this claim was made with a winking eye. If you think about it, Sarah would not likely
have been a servant girl.

In those days many children sold into slavery. But slaves were salable property. Hauling
a nine-to-twelve-year-old "servant girl" along, instead of, say, selling her and buying
another one later, would seem impractical.

So it is more likely that this was an important girl to bring along. She would have been, at
very least, a relative.

Refinement of the legend has it that this girl Sarah was a daughter of Mary Magdalene.
And if Jesus and Mary Magdalene had been married, as many now propose, that Sarah
would have been in addition to being daughter of Mary Magdalene, daughter of Jesus.

For knowledgeable inner-circle core of a fledgling political-religious movement she

would have been one precious girl. But there is the other side of the coin.

Given the growing animosities and persecutions, not to mention growing belief by some
powerful Christian factions that Jesus was God and too pure to father children, her life
would have been in grave danger if anyone found out who she really was. As a stranger
in a strange new land it might have been both wise and timely to give her a new identity.

All that legend has preserved, however, is that a young girl, widely accepted to have been
named Sarah, landed with the adults who had known Jesus at the place that was then
called Oppidium Priscum Ra and now is named Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer some time
around 42 AD or shortly after.

And there might be an added irony to Herod Antipas' exile to southern Gaul. His route
north toward Lyon would have begun up the Petit-Rhone. It is not unreasonable to
speculate that in 39 AD Herod Antipas, so influential in the life and death of Jesus, had
also passed through this trading colony on his way to exile in what is now the city of
Lyon.
Another short drive east from Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is the village of Saint-Maximin-
la-Sainte-Baume where local tradition says that Mary Magdalene lived and died. What is
said to be her remains are in the tomb there under the basilica of St Maximin in Provence.

There were known exiles and plausible legendary refugees from the eastern
Mediterranean and Egypt scattered around southern Gaul. These allow tenuous reasons to
believe that the local French tradition concerning the journey of Mary, Joseph, and the
baby Jesus through Egypt could be independent of the Coptic one. This would lend
credibility to the Coptic itinerary. It is similar to the one from southern France.

What is interesting about both itineraries is that they so often touches on places sacred to
Egyptian polytheism and Egyptian-god-incarnated pharaohs. The flight into Egypt might
strike one as more like a non-Christian, pre-Christian pilgrimage than a flight for safety.

One might ask, why would the world's first Christian be taken as an infant to these pagan
historical and holy places? Was it to show them to a baby? Would a baby have known or
cared? Or could it have been to show that particular baby to important people of those
sacred and historical sites, possibly people interested in preserving Egyptian history and
restoring the Egyptian monarchy?

Here is one example. The town of Samannud (also known as Sebennytos and other
names) shows up in both the French and the Coptic lists. It does not appear to have had a
striking Christian or related Jesus-story connection. But as with Heliopolis and
Hermopolis it had a connection with Egyptian history and tradition.

This town, in the geographical center of the Nile Delta, was where the final three native
Egyptian pharaohs had been born. These three final native Egyptian pharaohs make up
the total of the 30th Dynasty, the last native Egyptian dynasty. The third of the three
monarchs was the final native Egyptian pharaoh, Nectanebo.

Nectanebo reigned from 360 BC to 343 BC, over three centuries before Mary, Joseph,
and Jesus arrived at his native town of Samannud. The Persian occupation government
threw him out of office in 343 BC, and he is said to have gone to Nubia.

Three centuries may seem like a long time for a lineage to seek to reclaim a throne. But
look at our time. The last Stuart monarch of England was Queen Anne. She died in 1714.
But three centuries later there is a living Stuart descendant that some promote as available
for the throne, Franz, Duke of Bavaria.

So it seems reasonable that a Restoration underground was alive and well in Egypt three
centuries after Nectanebo had been fired from his job by the Persians.

Like ousted modern European monarchs, there no doubt still was a lineage of legitimacy
known to the polytheistic clergy, the various monarchists, and the family itself. And at
the same time, there was another legitimate lineage of claimants to the pharaoh's throne.
Ten years after the Persians fired Nectanebo, Alexander the Great defeated the Persians
in Egypt. He bypassed Nectanebo. Alexander had himself crowned pharaoh of Egypt on
November 14, 332 BC. A new Greek lineage of pharaohs was initiated.

Following Alexander's death, his general, Ptolemy continued the Greek dynasty that
Alexander had founded. But in 30 BC the last of these Greek-Egyptian pharaohs,
Cleopatra VII, committed suicide. It brought to an end a long line of Egyptian pharaohs.
There was never another pharaoh. But the Ptolemys themselves were not quite through.

The daughter of Cleopatra VII, Cleopatra Selene, became effective co-regent of the
Roman protectorate of Mauritania at the western end of the Mediterranean. And her son,
King Ptolemy I of Mauritania, continued to rule there until he was executed by the
Romans in Rome in 40 AD.

But what happened to the legitimate Egyptian lineage of the pharaoh Nectanebo? They
were no doubt there and lurking behind the political scenes in those three centuries
between the overthrow of Nectanebo in 343 BC and the end of the Greek-Egyptian
pharaohs in 30 BC.

The town of Samannud/Sebennytos in the middle of the Nile Delta is not the only town
connected to past Egyptian pharaohs. The Egyptian journey of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus
might arouse some suspicion about ancient political/religious intrigues and possibly links
of Jesus to legitimate Egyptian royalty

When Alexander had himself crowned pharaoh in 332 BC, the legitimate pharaoh
Nectanebo, who had only been out of office for a decade, was probably still alive. He
Probably would have had or designated a legitimate Egyptian heir to the Egyptian throne.
And from there the lineage would have been kept alive.

So it seems likely that a continuity of legitimate Egyptian heir to the throne would have
been lying in waiting, perhaps underground, when Jesus was born.

So what might Matthew and Luke have been saying? Could this baby Jesus have been
one of several in that continuity, or better yet, the only one alive and available?

These two authors of gospels bend over backwards to connect Jesus to the fictitious King
David. And it now appears that the fictitious King David was the real pharaoh Psusennes
I (1047 BC to 1001 BC). In the cartouche of Psusennes I are the Egyptian hieroglyphs for
star and for city. Hardly anyone would not be reminded of the storied "Star of David" and
"City of David."

As mentioned earlier, in his Egyptian name Pa-Sheba-Kha-En-Nuit is the Egyptian

character for "star" (Sheba). Another Egyptian word for star is pronounced "djwd"
(David). In other words, there was an Egyptian king named (or partly named) David who
lived at the same time as the fictitious King David, but his capital was not Jerusalem. It
was Tanis, in the Nile Delta of Egypt.
On the Coptic Church's map, Mary, Joseph, and Jesus entered Egypt the usual way at
Pelusium. It would have been a kind of garrisoned border crossing, at very least to
control movements of Bedouin tribes to the east.

But Pelusium was also the place where five centuries earlier the Persian army of
Cambyses defeated the Egyptian army of the pharaoh Psamtik III in 525 BC. When
Psamtik III attempted a revolt against the Persian victors, Cambyses had him executed.

Then Cambyses had himself appointed first pharaoh of his new 26th Dynasty and gave
himself the Egyptian name Mesuti-Re.

And this suggests a point at which an apparently fictitious King David of Jerusalem could
have been created whole cloth out of a real historical "King David" of Tanis, Egypt. This
is how it may have happened.

The Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Jerusalem in about 586 BC. The Jewish
population was marched off into exile. This ended a "golden age" of Old Testament
writing and probably destroyed many documents.

But 47 years later in 539 BC the Persian king Cyrus the Great defeated the Babylonians
and allowed the Jews to return to Cyrus' new Persian province of Judah. Cyrus never got
to Egypt, but his son, the already mention Cambyses, conquered Egypt.

Cambyses' father Cyrus had sponsored the building of what is commonly called the
Second Temple in Jerusalem (which for lack of credible archaeological evidence seems
to have actually been a first temple on any kind of national grand scale).

If Cyrus liked the Jews, legend and archaeological evidence suggests that his son
Cambyses did not like the Egyptians. Cambyses, for instance, is said to have raided the
tomb and burned the mummy of the pharaoh Amasis II, father of the defeated and
executed pharaoh Psamtik III.

Cyrus had subsidized building the (commonly called) Second Temple, and by extension
his son Cambyses may still have been supporting that building project, or at least
supportive of it.

Amid the shaky situation of at nation rebuilding, temple rebuilding, literature salvaging,
and property dispute solving, Jewish religious and political leaders might have sought to
distance their history from all things Egyptian.

Moreover, there would have been a national security issue. Offending Cambyses might
have stopped needed Persian subsidies of designers, skilled labor, money, and material
for the Temple-building project and other rebuilding projects. More importantly, it might
have brought military conflict with the powerful Persian army at a time when the quality
of life in Judea was slowly getting back to normal.
And Cambyses was only the first of the Persian pharaohs of Egypt. It lasted a while. In
the century-plus of Persian rule between Cambyses in 525 BC and Darius II in 404 BC
there were nine Persian rulers of Egypt. Then a descendant of the old genuinely Egyptian
Twenty-sixth Dynasty temporarily overthrew the Persians. The native Egyptian Twenty-
eighth and Twenty-ninth Dynasty pharaohs, and then the three final Egyptian Thirtieth
Dynasty pharaohs ruled Egypt for fifty years. The Persians again took charge and threw
out Nactanebo II in 343 BC and held on to Egypt for another eleven years until
Alexander the Great in 332 BC.

One can guess that with anti-Egyptian Persian armies repeatedly crossing their land for
almost two centuries and Persian "pharaohs" heavy-handedly running Egypt, any Jewish
connection to Twenty-first Dynasty pharaohs could have taken on a tinge of
inconvenience. One can speculate that a part of Jewish history as well as religious and
popular lore was once entangled in ways we now do not know with an Egyptian pharaoh
with "David" in his name, Pasebakhaemniut (The Star [David] Appearing On City)
whom we commonly call Psusennes I.

It is not hard to imagine that in the kind of secrecy always associated with national
security. Jewish religious, political, and business leadership would have disconnected the
connection and created a cover story to fill in the gap in chronology. Amid the chaos and
uncertainty of the return from Mesopotamia, it might not have been too difficult to pull
off.

Time went on. The inner circle guardians of state secrets passed away. Generations later
if some might have known, they would not have known directly and would therefore
have succumbed to uncertainty. Five centuries later the convenience of publicly
promoting the nationalistic cover story would have far outweighed offering vaguely
known history blurred by the passage of time.

And yet some may still have known at least something. To put it in perspective, five
centuries after the Italian and Spanish national hero Christopher Columbus had been
mythologized into super-hero sainthood, research was done that debunked the mythology
and unmasked the less-than-saintliness. Five centuries after the creation of a David myth
some might have had remnant knowledge.

We can only pick at possible cryptic hints and wonder now what Matthew might have
known of this. And if Matthew knew nothing or almost nothing, what might the heirs to
the ancient national security secret have known, the appointed and elected of the
guardians of Jewish law and history, the Sanhedrin, both the Sadducees and Pharisees in
it?

It is hard to believe that no one knew at least some small esoteric fragment. And maybe
the Jesus infancy story and the itinerary through Egypt suggests that some knew some
inconvenient truth.
So lets return to that infancy story and Egyptian itinerary following a crossing the border
at Pelusium. Mary, Joseph, and Jesus made their first stop inside Egypt at the Greek-
named town of Bubastis. In Egyptian the town was named Per Bastet (modern Tel
Bastet). From very ancient times it had a temple to the Egyptian cat goddess Bastet. She
was an important deity. Nearby is a cat cemetery containing the mummified bodies of
millions of cats.

The partially Libyan pharaohs of the XX II Dynasty restored the temple of Bastet, and
interestingly the pharaoh Nectanebo II built a new sanctuary for it.

As they had been doing, the family continues southward, away from the direction of
Bethlehem, to Mostorod. Then they double back northward to Belbeis, then to Zagazig,
none of which seem to have much pre-Christian significance.

The next town, however, is the birthplace of the final three native Egyptian pharaohs,
Samannoud. The last native pharaohs, Nectanebo I, Teos, and Nectanebo II, were all born
there.

Then westward to Sakha, also called Xois. Manetho notes that the 14th Dynasty pharaohs
came from there.

Fourteenth Dynasty Sakha (Xois) shared capital-city status with the simultaneous 15th
Dynasty (Hyksos) capital of Avaris after the Hyksos takeover of northern Egypt. One of
the Hyksos pharaohs was named Yaqub-El (Jacob).

The point here is that Sakha had played a significant part in Egyptian pharaonic history,
and there would have been remnant political-religious power and privilege from those
good old days in Sakha.

The next stop was Wadi Natron in the western desert where natron, the primary chemical
for sacred mummification of all pharaohs, was mined.

From there they headed east again and crossed the Nile to get to Heliopolis, the Greek
name for the sacred sun temple city of On, one of the oldest cities in Egypt, going back to
pre-dynastic times. It is probably the city of Pithom in the Bible.

Among others, the heretic proto-monotheistic pharaoh Akhnaten built a temple at

Heliopolis. Before and after Akhnaten it was another of the centers of the Creator Gods.
It was one of the holiest locations of ancient Egypt, and its high priest was powerful and
influential, a pagan pope of Egypt.

The Temple to Re at Heliopolis may have been an early-day National Archives with royal
Egyptian records stored there. And this would have attracted scholars and intellectuals.

The journey through Egypt continues through another two dozen locations, most if not
all, as in the above brief example, connected with Egyptian religion, Egyptian history,
and the Egyptian monarchy. But with this example of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus visiting
sites that were meaningful to ancient Egyptian history and religion having been said, let's
move on.

But let's move on with this caveat. Given the vast history of ancient Egypt and the
confined territory in which it occurred, it might be difficult to find places that were not
historically or religiously significant.

Having said that though, the locations on the itinerary had been prominent treasured
Egyptian places. Ancient Egyptians knew them as tourist locations.

So how and why did a carpenter and his wife and child with a foreign nationality and
religion and no known resources, and in flight from skillful agents of a foreign monarch,
go from conspicuous tourist trap to conspicuous tourist trap for years?

And this brings us back to the earlier-mentioned legend that at some time in this journey
through Egypt, Aphrodisius, the high priest of Heliopolis, went out of his way to see that
Mary, Joseph, and the infant Jesus were sheltered at the ancient Egyptian holy city of
Hermopolis.

Aphrodisius was effectively the pagan pope of Egypt. Egypt was defeated and was
occupied by Roman legions, but as a religious leader this effective pope of the ancient
Egyptian religion was powerful and influential.

Would this powerful potentate have gone out of his way to find refuge for an unknown
indigent foreign couple and their kid?

Or, as Matthew suggests, was there some deep and carefully guarded secret of inheritance
to an ancient throne that required protection and nurture?

If the House of David was actually the Twenty-first Dynasty and David its pharaoh
Pasebakhaemniut, the kid who seems to have been protected by an underground Egyptian
network could have been heir to the ancient Egyptian throne. And that kid would have
been Jesus.

Amid the turmoil of Roman empire-building, Egyptian military defeat, death of Egyptian
political leadership, Hellenistic political-military collapse, intrigues for revenge and
restoration, and murder to prevent royal succession, a kid like that would have been a
poor life insurance risk.

How much might the Romans have known about this? What was really with the Egyptian
sojourn? What did Matthew know and when did he know it?

END
Rocky River, Ohio
January 15, 2011
Links below to the Al Ahram article and one of several good maps.
Article: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2001/565/tr1.htm
Map: http://www.holyfamilyegypt.com/map/index.htm