Mary and Jesus as refugees by Janie Hampton

'Rest on the Flight into Egypt' by Bonifazio de Pitati (1487– 1553) 

Once Christmas Day is over, we tend to forget about the small family in a stable in Bethlehem, and what they did next. I’ve been wondering about Mary, and how she coped as a new young mother, in a strange town, with no home or family. We only know what the gospels of Luke and Matthew chose to write about the birth and first weeks of Jesus' life. Matthew tells us that Mary was a virgin, but Joseph her ‘espoused’ learned that she was pregnant, and not by him. An angel told him not to worry, because ‘that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost.’ So he agreed to marry her, and Jesus was born in Bethlehem. That’s all he has to say about the Nativity.

The Flight into Egypt by Battista Dossi and Dosso Dossi, c.1530, with two donkeys!

Luke gives much more detail. Joseph and Mary had to travel to Bethlehem for a Roman taxation census. While in Bethlehem, Mary ‘brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room in the inn.’ Shepherds and wise men came to worship him, and when Jesus was eight days old he was circumcised according to Jewish law. Meanwhile Mary stayed indoors for 40 days until ‘the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished.’ Then they went to Jerusalem on their way north, where they offered a sacrifice of two turtledoves. After that Jesus ‘grew and waxed strong in spirit’ back at home in Nazareth.
Both accounts were written over 60 years after the events, and by men, so there is no mention of the things women might be interested in. How long was the labour? Did it start while they were travelling the 80 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem? The journey would have taken them at least four days on foot. As a carpenter, Joseph could well have owned a donkey for carrying his tools and timber. Christmas cards often depict Mary on a donkey out of sympathy for her predicament as a full-term primigravida, though she might have walked all the way.
As Joseph came originally from Bethlehem, he probably had relatives living there. Joseph’s mother, sister or an aunt may have accompanied Mary through her labour, cut the umbilical cord and disposed of the placenta. Jesus was then ‘laid in a manger’ - a net or wooden box containing hay for cattle – a prickly place for a baby! A manger (from the French word ‘to eat’) can be attached to a wall, a practical way of keeping a new-born baby safe from dogs and draughts while Mary was sleeping.
Bethlehem is at a high altitude and it could have been very cold, so Mary would have kept her new baby close to her body most of the time. We don’t know if they stayed in the stable for the 40 days Mary had to wait for her purification, a time of post-partum bleeding, or lochia. Hopefully, Joseph’s female relatives provided Mary with the necessary cloths which she then washed, and hung up to dry?
Matthew next tells of wise men from the East who visited the new baby, and warned his parents to return home by a different route, as King Herod wanted to kill the baby. Sometime after they returned to Nazareth, Joseph was warned in a dream to take the child to safety in Egypt. They left immediately by night, becoming refugees.
Matthew’s account does not say when they had to flee to Egypt, but King Herod had ordered all boys under two years old to be slaughtered – indicating Jesus must have been about 20 months.

As the many depictions have imagined the holy refugees,
Jesus was probably still being breastfed.

They probably took the Via Maris – a well-trodden trade route along the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, that ran from Damascus to Memphis in Egypt. The journey from Nazareth to Abu Serghis, on the far side of the River Nile where tradition has it they settled, is about 500 miles. Google Map estimates this takes 150 hours to walk. So if the family kept up a pace of 8 hours a day, that would have taken them three weeks without breaks. Jesus would have been carried much of the way, breastfed every few hours; and Mary may well have had a menstrual period en route. Imagine her discomfort while walking or sitting on a donkey, with just cloth rags. There are many mediaeval and renaissance paintings of Mary breastfeeding Jesus. She is shown with a bounteous supply of milk and fullsome breasts, and Jesus is a well-fed chubby boy.

Giotto Bondone was one of many major artists who depicted the Flight from Egypt.

‘The Rest on the Flight into Egypt’ became a common depiction in the life of Christ after the 14th century. As interest in landscape painting increased, the subject became even more popular and the figures were often shown in European scenery.  The paintings are lovely but the conditions would have been much harsher in AD 2, with the risk of bandits as well as desert conditions of starvation, heat and cold. Until recently few historians have thought about how women dealt with menstruation in ordinary life, let alone as refugees, or women in the Bible. What was it really like? To recapture this experience, we can look at female refugees fleeing from war now. The testimony of the two women in this film, made in a refugee camp in Malawi two months ago, gives us an insight. Alphonsine and Pendeza are both Christians, but almost certainly unaware that their unintended journeys across Africa were similar to Mary’s 2000 years ago. I hope that they, like she was, are able to return to their homes one day soon.

'From Rags to Cups - Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi. ' 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR9S3GU_6pM&feature=youtu.be 

Illustrated Bibles of my childhood, as depicted by Scott Orr circa 1930. 

All quotes are from the King James Bible, published in English in 1611.

www.janiehampton.co.uk

The Family Bible - Katherine Langrish

Here is the first page of the family Bible which belonged to my grandmother Helena Beatrice Davies (known as 'Bee') who was born in 1888 in India, and who was married – as we see – on Monday April 4^th, 1904, at Christ Church, Mhow, Central India, to Frank Langrish. 

  

 Here they both are. He was in the Royal Horse Artillery. 

 

And here is she.  I wonder if the Bible may have been a wedding present?

And the Register goes on in the same handwriting – which I think is probably Frank’s – to record the birth of their daughter Beatrice Kate (known as Kitty) and my own father George.  And then you come across a photograph of my grandfather in later years, and then you flick through some coloured plates, and then you reach Genesis 1,1:

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.  And the earth was without form, and void: and darkness lay upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

An old family Bible has more about it even than the ringing cadences of the Authorized Version, however. It was once the most important book in the house. Other books were never placed on top of it.  It chronicled lives.

In ours, if you turn to Leviticus, Chapter 15 (something about the uncleanness of women), this small dark photograph has been tucked between the pages.  It's a couple of inches high, an illustration of a kitten being chased up a tree by three dogs.  Maybe it was Kitty’s?

In Hebrews, 7, there’s a loose photograph of a pretty little girl of about six, who must be Kitty herself. She was killed in India on January 4th 1916, aged 11, in a carriage accident, on the birthday she shared with my grandmother.  My grandfather was with the army in Mesopotamia.  

At the very end of the Bible, slipped between the flypaper and the back cover, there’s a photograph of my father aged about seven or eight, possibly the year his sister died. On the back is written: 'Our George.' I don't think my father would have cared to appear in a blog, so I'm not going to post his picture...

 

In Joshua, 9, in which the Gibeonites make peace with Joshua, there’s a sprig of pressed purple heather, crumbling slightly.

In Nehemiah, 13, where Nehemiah demands, “Why is the house of God forsaken?’ there’s a small newspaper clipping of a poem: ‘It Makes A Difference’: 

 

‘When someone says something kind,’ it begins, ‘doesn’t it lift your heart? Doesn’t it help you go on when you thought you couldn’t start?  Doesn’t it put new life into your body and mind? Oh doesn’t it make a difference when someone says something kind?’ 

My grandmother, everyone agrees, could and would talk to anyone and everyone, and would often have put this advice into practice. 

By Psalm 43, there’s another small newspaper clipping: ‘A very pleasant evening was spent at ‘J’ Headquarters on Thursday last, when Mr W C  Morse, on behalf of the Wardens, presented a wristwatch to Mr F J Langrish, who had been compelled to resign the position of Head Warden for health reasons. A bunch of flowers was also presented to Mrs Langrish. …Mr Langrish thanked the wardens for their kindness to him and his wife that evening, and he very much regretted that he had to accept his doctor’s advice, but any success he had achieved in the Group was only made possible with the co-operation of the wardens, who were at all times very willing to do their utmost to help him.’  

It's hard to date this, but it's likely to be some time during or just after WWII.

In  John, 14, there’s a prayer by Patience Strong (whose purple-covered Year Books my grandmother collected each Christmas) and in John, 17, there’s a Christmas Card.

In Corinthians, 13 (‘For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then face to face’) , there’s another Patience Strong poem, 'A Quiet Corner In Glory', copied out by hand perhaps by some friend, and preserved:

‘We cannot see what lies outside our little patch of light. We cannot grasp the things beyond our hearing and our sight. We cannot discern the shining souls of those we call the dead, walking on the road with us, a few short steps ahead. One must go and one be left.  Ask not, ‘Why should it be?’ We cannot hope to understand so deep a mystery…’

Not great poetry.  But it clearly gave comfort.

In Job, 40, in which the Lord answers Job and says, ‘He that reproveth God, let him answer for it,’ there’s a piece cut from the bottom of a handwritten letter which someone has written to my grandmother:   

This side says:

‘…but I just go out and call on someone, or go to a picture, or just for a walk, and as you say, Frank is nearer you there, it’s the companionship you will always miss, like me you were so very happy, still Bee dear, we all have to meet that, one or the other has to go first…’

On the other side, there’s a PS which was clearly the reason she clipped the piece out of the letter:

‘PS: And now there are no more moments of earthly bliss to spend, no more of all that was so dear, no more dreams around the bend, I often think, how can I live without you, and you enjoy Heaven without me, but there is but no answer to it all.  God is with you and me. LC.’

All photos copyright Katherine Langrish