The Flight into Egypt: Mary, Joseph, Christ, and That Other Guy

Now when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, “Arise, take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I bring you 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 for Egypt, and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, “Out of Egypt I called My Son.” (Matt. 2:13-15)

The longer I am Orthodox, the more I find myself getting angry and frustrated with the system of reason that is called Protestantism. Please don't get me wrong: I am not angry or frustrated with any particular individual. I don't place blame on anybody for my frustrations, but I do feel increasingly frustrated that things which once every Christian took for granted are now lost to the western Protestant mind, seemingly forever. If you will let me, I'd like to try and examine one lost part of the Nativity story that, if you are a Protestant, will probably blow your mind, and if you are Catholic or Orthodox will be very familiar. 

Let's talk about the Christmas story. This is the story that is so familiar to every Protestant that they can tell it in their sleep:

 It starts with a young peasant girl named Mary, who was engaged to a young man named Joseph. Before they could get married however, Gabriel the angel appears to Mary and tells her she's going to give birth to the Saviour of the World. Mary accepts what's been told her and she gets pregnant without a man. Joseph thinks she's been unfaithful and tries to divorce her, but an angel visits him as well and tells him the truth. He then takes Mary to Bethlehem for the census and while they are there, Mary gives birth to her son. This is a first for Joseph, too, and together they raise the child and there are born to Mary and Joseph several other children over the years, the most famous one being St. James, the brother of our Lord.

Right on. That's the story. That's how it's depicted throughout the Protestant world. Movies are made showing the young couple in love, excited and scared about raising their first child. Then, Joseph gets warned in a dream and he flees to Egypt with Mary. The three of them alone in Egypt until Herod is dead. 

As you can probably realize by now, that's not exactly true. That's not the tradition of the Church at all. Elements of it are true, but not the details. And it's not like the details are hidden from us. The details have been preserved in Church tradition for centuries, but, therein lies the problem and the source of my frustrations. Protestants have ignored Church tradition for so long, it's become lost to them. It was lost to me until I learned of the story around the story. It all starts with an icon of the flight into Egypt.

A quick word about icons in the Orthodox church: they are not mere art, but visual theology. The iconographer is not an artist, he is a writer and recorder of the theology of the icon. He is not free to add things which only he thinks should be there. No, he is bound by Tradition. And that is why reading an icon (yes, reading) is one of the methods the Church has to pass on its truths to its faithful. You don't even have to be literate in order to understand the story of an icon. This is useful in a practical sense as well. Icons allow us to answer even mundane questions like: Was Paul bald? (He was, by the way). Icon are windows into heaven, a visual record of the theology of the Church. So let's look at an example of an icon of the Flight of Mary and Joseph into Egypt.

Icons are one of my favourite aspects of being Orthodox. They are laden with imagery and meaning. Here is an icon of Mary and Joseph, together with the Christ child and some other guy. Wait, who's the other guy? One important aspect of an icon is the halo around the head of a figure. This depicts that the person is a Saint. We see four people, each with a halo. Christ's halo is usually inlaid with a cross, which we can see on the young child riding on Joseph's back.

But who is that other person who looks to be a youth of some kind? He has a halo as well and if you read Greek you would be able to pick out his name: St Jacob, which, thanks to King James I of England and his arrogance, has been changed in English Bibles to St James. 

Yes, that is St James, the brother of our Lord, and he was with Mary and Joseph as they fled to Egypt.

But wait! Wasn't Jesus Mary's firstborn son? yes.

Welcome to the wonderful world of Church tradition which has preserved many traditions like this that Protestants today have forgotten. If you'll also look at Joseph, you'll see he has a head of white hair and looks rather, aged. But I thought Mary was like sixteen at the time. How can this old man be Joseph? He's old enough to be her father!

I would also like to point out the three stars on Mary's head and shoulders. How does it all tie together?

Before we continue, I need to say a word about Tradition. Tradition is simply the knowledge that the Church has kept throughout her life. Tradition is passed from generation to generation through various mediums. Some are written down in books. Others are written down in hymns. Others are preserved in Icons. Still others find themselves preserved in Church architecture. The Bible itself is part of the Tradition of the Church. Tradition is in no way a scary thing, something to be avoided, but rather embraced. It is the totality of the Church's Traditions that help us to understand our faith in a deep way. The problem with the Protestant understanding is that "everything except the Bible is suspicious and open to interpretation and has no bearing on our faith whatsoever so we are free to ignore it and fill in the gaps ourselves with whatever comes into our brains at the time as dictated by us or by society around us." (deep breath in, deep breath out)

The story of Mary (and Joseph) is preserved in the Church's iconography and in writings from the second century. There is no question about it. Here is the time-honoured Tradition of the Church regarding the story Protestants seem to know so well:

Mary was born to aged parents, Joachim and Anna, and sent to live in the Temple. Yes, you read that right. She was from an early age devoted to a Holy Life. Tradition has it that she was often fed by angels (insert icons and hymns here). This is important because when Gabriel comes to visit her on that fateful day, this was not her first encounter with the angelic. She is more perplexed at how she will become pregnant than the visitation of the Arch-Angel Gabriel himself.

Before her visitation with Gabriel that day, the priests were wondering what to do with her because she was about to hit puberty, and certain things that happened to a woman at that time weren't allowed to happen in the temple. So it was decided that she would have to leave the temple, but be assigned a protector. This would be someone who would provide for her and protect her, but would never be interested in becoming her husband in the traditional sense. This is what made Joseph so perfect for the job, even though he didn't want it at first. He was chosen from a group of Widowers and assigned to protect Mary for the rest of her life. Joseph's first wife had died at some point in the past and his children from that marriage were already adults, or, in the case of St James, well on his way.

This was not Joseph's first go around with raising children, and this was not a scenario where Mary would then give birth to more children in the future. That is what the three stars on Mary's body represent: her ever-virginity. They symbolize the fact that she was a virgin before, during, and after giving birth to Christ, and she remained a virgin until her death (which we commemorate every year on August 15).

Every year I see the same depictions of Mary and Joseph in modern society, but every year they are so completely wrong. You might be asking why is this all important? It's important for various reasons, but the most important in my opinion is that it is what happened. We don't need to fill in the blanks. We don't need to speculate how Joseph felt about all this. We don't need to wonder if Mary gave birth to more children in her future. There are real theological reasons why these are important, but I'm not a theologian. If you are interested, I would direct you to those who are. All I can do is wave my hands and say "Hey, this is all preserved for us. Why did we stop paying attention?"

If you are curious about the written record of all this, you can read the Proto-Evangelium of James online. Keep in mind that this is only one of the ways this Tradition has been preserved. You'll also be able to read in the same document the story surrounding the birth of Mary to her parents Joachim and Anna, who also happen to be the patron saints of my wife and me.

Thanks for your time,

Joey