Out Of Egypt I have Called My Son: The Jesus-Horus Debate

On the west bank of the Nile River, south of Luxor, lies the ancient city of Edfu. There stands a great temple dedicated to the god Horus, always pictured with the head of a falcon. The temple was completed in about 57 BC, after a 180-year period of construction. “And so was fulfilled what the Lord had said through the prophet: “Out of Egypt have I called my son.”(Matthew 2:17).

Flight Into Egypt by Edwin Long, (1883) (Public Domain)

If, as the Gospel According to Matthew in the New Testament claims, the holy family fled to Egypt to escape the slaughter of innocents wrought by King Herod in an effort to kill the baby the Magi claimed was born ‘King of the Jews’, chances are they might have seen this great edifice, finished only a few decades before the birth of Jesus. Whether Joseph and Mary ever saw the temple or not, it is certain that those who compiled the New Testament must have known about the texts it contained. They were famous throughout the Roman empire, which constituted the bulk of the western world. Every educated person would have at least heard about them.