Vision of Theophilus

This is an apocryphal story dealing with the flight of the holy family into Egypt and the life which they led in that country. The story is cast in the mould of a vision and entitled The Vision of Theophilus. This does not imply that every historical detail in the story was invented by the author, whose only task seems indeed to take the material for his narrative from local tradition and to put it in the form in which we find it before us. He made use also of some apocryphal books and of some works on ecclesiastical history with which the Egyptian scholars of his time were familiar.