Who Wrote This?

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ioannes_pius

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Without looking it up, guess who wrote this: “The émigré Holy Family of Nazareth, fleeing into Egypt, is the archetype of every refugee family. Jesus, Mary and Joseph, living in exile in Egypt to escape the fury of an evil king, are, for all times and all places, the models and protectors of every migrant, alien and refugee of whatever kind who, whether compelled by fear of persecution or by want, is forced to leave his native land, his beloved parents and relatives, his close friends, and to seek a foreign soil.”

The first person to guess correctly will get a congratulatory reply 😁.
 
Little Richard - before his Christmas Concert at the Paradigm Pavilion in 1964.
 
Doesn’t really matter who wrote it; it’s wrong. There was no “exile in Egypt”. Egypt was not a different country; all of that part of the world was part of the Roman Empire. And there was a humongous colony of Hellenic Jews in Alexandria, upwards of 100,000 by some estimates.

D
 
Congratulations on being the second person to answer correctly! Lol
 
DaveBj said:
Doesn’t really matter who wrote it; it’s wrong. There was no “exile in Egypt”. Egypt was not a different country; all of that part of the world was part of the Roman Empire.
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There’s a good argument to be made that being far away from their normal culture and tribe was tantamount to exile for a Jewish couple with a newborn baby who had just fled a pogrom in the night, leaving all of their family and most of their meager possessions behind.

And yes, they were “in exile” as they were cut off from their tribe. They could not go home and see their families (it’s dubious whether they could even communicate with them much), they could not go to the Temple in Jerusalem to worship as they were used to doing. The fact that it was part of the Roman Empire was pretty immaterial to them other than perhaps allowing them to pass more safely over the border than if it had been some other ruler’s territory.

If I were 18 years old and had lived my whole life on Long Island and all of a sudden had to flee with my baby and almost nothing else in the night to the desert of New Mexico and figure out how to get along there, the fact that both places are in the USA wouldn’t be much of a comfort.
 
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Which was all they had to finance a pretty long journey, and probably tide them over until Joseph found work, which may not have been all that easy.

Fr. Donald Calloway wrote extensively on this, having done much research, in his new book, Consecration to St. Joseph. It really drove home to me that the Flight into Egypt was a major and very difficult journey. So I’m not too keen on somebody blowing it off like the Holy Family just took a nice little travel relocation down to another Jewish community. If you feel it wasn’t difficult at all for them, then we’ll just have to agree to disagree. And as for the Holy Family being refugees, I’m not inclined to disagree with our venerable, hopefully soon to be beatified, Pope Pius XII.
 
dscath said:
You’re just being argumentative for sport.
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In this thread I have been stressing two points: 1) they were not penniless, and 2) they were not moving into a completely foreign culture. That’s all. If some folks want to argue against Biblical and historical facts, that’s on them.

D
 
DaveBj said:
In this thread I have been stressing two points: 1) they were not penniless, and 2) they were not moving into a completely foreign culture. That’s all. If some folks want to argue against Biblical and historical facts, that’s on them.
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It’s not relevant to the thread…the thread is “Who wrote this”, not what was the economic status and nationality of the Holy Family.

Maybe start a new thread.
 
DaveBj said:
There was no “exile in Egypt”. Egypt was not a different country; all of that part of the world was part of the Roman Empire.
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Well, yes and no. It depends what you mean by “country”. Judea and Egypt were both in the Roman Empire, but they had separate governments. One was ruled directly from Rome while the other was under indirect rule. Egypt was governed by a Roman prefect, though we don’t know for certain the name of the prefect at the time. It may have been Gaius Turranius, it may have been Publius Octavius, or it may have been somebody else whose records have not survived. Judea, under indirect rule – usually the preferred method in the Roman Empire – was a kingdom. The king, at that time, was Herod the Great. By crossing the border from Judea into Egypt, the Holy Family escaped Herod’s clutches. He couldn’t legally send his troops after them into Egyptian territory.
 
Tis_Bearself said:
And yes, they were “in exile” as they were cut off from their tribe.
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It was more than that. They placed themselves beyond the reach of Herod’s troops. Please see my reply to @DaveBj in the post immediately above this one.
 
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