James Cowan

“No amount of any occasional incredulity that I displayed throughout the trip could erase the fact that the Holy Family’s journey across the ancient land of Egypt and up the Nile was, by its very nature, a sacred event. It has no linearity, no timeliness, and no reality other than as the fulfillment of prophecy. But this is enough, surely. More than history, more than hagiography, the Holy Family’s travails are the stuff of humankind’s need for certainty in the face of those ever-shifting values that plague our daily lives. Fear of soldiers, fear of robbers, fear of a mad king bent upon massacre, these are but symbols of the abyss that we, too, find ourselves in and long to escape.”
― James Cowan, Fleeing Herod: A Journey through Coptic Egypt with the Holy Family

“The Bible, unfortunately, gives us only the barest outline of the flight into Egypt.”
― James Cowan, Fleeing Herod: A Journey through Coptic Egypt with the Holy Family