Syra­cuse, NY — The Bible con­tains few verses about the time Jesus and his fam­ily spent in Egypt—fleeing King Herod’s mur­der­ous vow to kill all baby boys, to the family’s weary jour­ney through the Sinai Desert and even­tual return to Pales­tine (Mat. 2:14).

But what really hap­pened dur­ing Jesus’ five years in Egypt? Can evi­dence sep­a­rate fact from speculation?What sto­ries of Jesus in Egypt exist?

Jesus: The Lost Years, a doc­u­men­tary film based on the book Jesus in Egypt by New York Times best­selling author Paul Perry, seeks the answers, and unveils fas­ci­nat­ing insights to “the great­est story never told.” Intrigued that only three years of Jesus’ life are pre­sented in the Bible, the plight of the Holy Fam­ily in Egypt became Perry’s obsession—he inter­viewed hun­dreds of peo­ple from numer­ous reli­gions, from doc­u­ment spe­cial­ists, priests and bish­ops to Egypt’s Cop­tic Pope—and began study­ing ancient texts to piece together the unknown. “There are no sto­ries in the Bible about what Jesus did in the five years he was in Egypt, but I knew that such sto­ries existed in the form of oral tra­di­tion and sto­ries writ­ten out­side of the Bible,” says Perry.

Perry teamed with inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed His­tor­i­cal Researcher John de Bry and film­maker Mar­lin Dar­rah to tra­verse the sands of Egypt, fol­low­ing the Holy Family’s actual route, stretch­ing nearly 1,000 miles, across the burn­ing sands of the Sinai Desert to a dizzy­ing path down the Nile. It was on the Holy Fam­ily Trail, a route out­lined by Egypt­ian Cop­tic Ortho­dox Chris­tians and offi­cially cer­ti­fied as authen­tic in 2000, where Perry heard of med­ical mir­a­cles, visions and a pow­er­ful faith. “Jesus left a trail of mir­a­cles that were fol­lowed like bread crumbs by King Herod’s sol­diers in hot pur­suit,” Perry says.

Press­ing Ques­tions Encoun­tered in Jesus: The Lost Years

  • How did Egypt change Jesus’ life and influ­ence his teachings?
  • Can the ancient oral sto­ries become a part of history?Why or why not?
  • Did Jesus per­form mir­a­cles in Egypt?
  • Where did Jesus go while in Egypt?Who did he meet?What did he see?

“This extra­or­di­nary film shows sites and tells sto­ries about Jesus which are vir­tu­ally unknown out­side of Egypt,” says Exec­u­tive Pro­ducer Nor­man A. Miles, who formed Bent Pyra­mid Pro­duc­tions to cre­ate the doc­u­men­tary. “It reveals the secret child­hood of Jesus.”
Jesus: The Lost Years com­bines adven­ture, spir­i­tu­al­ity and a modern-day pil­grim­age into the ancient and often baf­fling land of Egypt. Shot in HD and filmed deep in the recesses of ancient church cat­a­combs, the teem­ing back streets of Cairo, in shrines thronged by wor­shipers and desert wastes haunted by saints, Perry turns up shards of the past and recounts recent sto­ries passed down through count­less gen­er­a­tions, to reveal a very dif­fer­ent side of Jesus.