The flight into Egypt and the subsequent return of Jesus' family to the Holy Lands seem to serve two purposes. One, it explains why Jesus in his day was associated with Nazareth, not Bethlehem from which many in the day believed the Jewish messiah would come. Two, it recapitulates Jewish history, especially the Egyptian Captivity, in a way which was surely meaningful to many Hebrews at the time. For a fuller explanation of this complex question, see Robin Lane Fox, The Unauthorized Version: Truth and Fiction in the Bible (Vintage 1993) 27-38.

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