Our Visit to Sakha and Samannud, February 7th. , 2004

In my last report on our pilgrimage to Upper Egypt with visits to Gabel el-Teir, Deir Abu Hinnis, Mallawi and al-Ashmonein, which we took just last week, I briefly discussed the relationship between Scripture, Tradition and Reason. In this report I feel that I have to go into this subject more deeply, as what we saw and were told about Sakha and Samannud leaves me somewhat incredulous and a skeptic. Yet I do not wish to be a stumbling block to, or to insult the intelligence of, those who do believe these stories. More importantly, if I cast doubt on their validity, how can I be consistent in saying that the supra-natural events of Our Lord’s life and other Biblical events are historically true, as I sincerely believe them to be?

Sakha and Samannud are in the Nile delta, closer to Alexandria than to Cairo. Both churches have ancient foundations, possibly monastic, but both were substantially rebuilt in the 19th century to accommodate the larger number of Copts who migrated from Upper Egypt to work in the local cotton fields, preserving only the altars, icons, iconostases, and the pillars, which are more ancient. By Coptic tradition both are on the route of the Holy Family through Egypt and to both of them is attached a legend that is part of their history. Both also have their local martyrs and saints, and their relics are preserved in their churches. Both attract their pilgrims from great distances to celebrate the coming of the Holy Family to Egypt and to venerate the martyrs and saints.

Tradition states that when the Holy Family arrived in Sakha they were thirsty, but found no water. The child Jesus touched a stone with his foot, and water sprang forth, so that they could drink, and his foot left an imprint on the stone. A pool of water also appeared. As this happened, he, according to tradition, said, “this water will have the power of healing for those who have faith.” They stayed in Sakha only one week before being pursued from there by Herod’s soldiers. But the place acquired the name Bikha Isous, or footprint of Jesus. Later tradition says that a monastery was founded at the site of the pool, known as Dayr al-Maghtis, or the monastery of the pool. People went there for baptism, and legend has it that Saint Dimyana was baptized there. At some point later the stone disappeared, nobody knows exactly how. Some have suggested that it occurred around the time of the Arab invasion, some considerably later, possibly the 15th century, when the monastery itself disappeared from the map, leaving no identifiable trace. Historians do not really know whether this present church is founded upon the monastery of the pool, as there is no archeological or manuscript evidence that Sakha, Bikha Isous and Dayr al-Maghtis, or the monastery of the pool are necessarily the same.

Had the story ended there, there would just have been the legend of the imprinted foot, as there is the legend of the imprinted hand at Gabel el-Teir, in Upper Egypt, which has no shrine, because the rock with the hand on it was either stolen by the Crusaders, or is lying in the vaults of the British Museum. However, in April 1984 some workers, installing a sewage line to the house right outside the church gate, discovered at a depth of about 1.5 meters a block of what appears to be limestone, about 80 cm. long, with a brownish dent, which people immediately assumed to be the footprint of a two to three year-old child. On the reverse side is the word ‘Allah’ in Arabic, and a stroke which may be either an alif, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, or the numeral 1. The worker who discovered it, a devout Copt, immediately said that this must be the foot print of Jesus. From the stone came a sweet odor, (some say that the sewage had a pleasant odor) and the workers jumped into the hole to drink the water at the bottom. One had an eye infection, and after bathing it in the water, the eye was healed. However, by Coptic tradition, the word of a lay person could not make it the lost stone, so it had to be shown to the priest. He wisely decided to get the opinion of his higher authority. At that time both the bishop, Bishop Bishoy, and the pope, His Holiness Pope Shenouda III, were confined to their monastery of Amba Bishoy at Wadi Natroun, by order of the late President Sadat, who confined both Muslim and Christian leaders in house or monastic arrest. The stone was therefore taken to Wadi Natroun, where the pope prayed over it, and celebrated three liturgies on it, before declaring it to be the long lost stone. Since then it has been venerated, kept within a locked glass case, and on June 1st each year, when the church celebrates the coming of the Holy Family, the stone is anointed with oil and ceremonially paraded around the church by Bishop Bishoy. The priest, for our benefit, unlocked the case and took out the stone so that we could touch it, and so receive baraka, or blessing, just as the faithful receive baraka from touching the relics of the saints.

At the back of the church was a large round stone, about four feet high, three feet diameter, with a shallow concave hollow in the top, eighteen inch’s diameter. This, we were told, was part of the holy pool in which Saint Dimyana had been baptized, linking the church with the monastery of the pool. Saint Dimyana had been one of the martyrs murdered in the Diocletian persecutions between 284 and 305. The beginning of the persecution is the year from which the Coptic Church dates its calendar. Her relics are not in the church in Sakha, but in the monastery which she founded at Dimyana. However, three ancient coffins were found when doing alterations to the structure of the church from 1965 to 1970. One of these was concluded to be of Bishop Zakharius, bishop of Sakha in the 8th century, considered a saint in the Coptic Church, to whom is attributed ‘the homilies of Anba Zakharius’, a medieval document that links the Holy Family with Bikha Isous. His supposed relics are kept in the same case as the stone. The relics in one of the other graves were declared to be those of Severus. He was a controversial figure who lived in the late 5th and early 6th centuries; a one time patriarch of Antioch, who became heatedly engaged in the Monophysite - Nestorian debate. He instructed his monks to kill Nestorians in Alexandria. He was Monophysite, which I shall not try to elaborate, because I do not understand it, other than it generated a lot of heat at that time, and had earlier led to the schism between the Coptic Church and the remainder of the church at the Council of Calcedon in 451. Interestingly, there has been reconciliation between the Coptic Church and all the Western churches over this issue, but not with the Byzantine Church, which still claims to be the true church in Egypt. His remains are also now preserved in the church. But nothing indicated that the bones found were indeed those of Bishop Zakharius or Severus. The priest says a cross had been found on their remains, but that would indicate that they could be of any clergy.

Samannud is a much older town than Sakha. The last Pharaoh, 30th dynasty, built a temple there, which we visited after the church, but nothing is left but rubble, a pile of huge granite and basalt building blocks, roughly six feet by five feet by four, all transported from Aswan. In Ptolemaic times it was famous for the building statues of various deities. The Holy Family is believed to have stayed there for about two weeks, and were warmly welcomed. The child Jesus, by Coptic tradition, at the request of his mother blessed the city. There was a well there from which they drank, and a large trough in which Mary baked her bread. The well, from which the more audacious of our group also drank, and the trough are still in the courtyard of the church, and the faithful drink the water and touch them for baraka.

Samannud suffered heavily during the Diocletian persecution, and one document says that 8000, mostly children, died for refusing to bow before the Roman idols. One of these was the 12 year-old boy, Abanub, whose relics and icon are preserved in the church. The priest removed them from the case and held them for us to touch, so that we might receive baraka. Miracles of healing are attributed to Abanub, especially of sick children. He is also esteemed as an example to them, and people have said that on occasions he has jumped out of his icon to play with them. The church is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and to Saint Abanub, who is commemorated on July 31st, the anniversary of his martyrdom. Many of the faithful make a pilgrimage on that date, and many are healed through intercession to him.

Many of these healings are documented by physicians, and are apparently genuine. It is not them for which I would reserve judgment, but rather the claims of what the Holy Family is supposed to have done on their travels through Egypt. What evidence is there that the well and trough are genuine? Rocks do not usually show footprints unless they are soft when the foot is implanted in it, like cement. And anyway, it needed a vivid imagination to see a child’s footprint on the rock, which I do not have. Maybe, others saw a footprint, but I did not. The story of the child Abanub jumping out of his icon makes me really wonder what kind of person would really believe it. Dr. Cornelis Hulsman, our tour leader, had previously discussed the skepticism of Western observers with the priest of Samannud, who replied:

It is possible to believe almost anything as long as it is not against the Bible and dogmas of the church. The Coptic Orthodox faith is not intellectual. It is more feeling; believing with your heart. That is not related to someone’s education. Many educated Copts believe with their heart. And if a prayer is not fulfilled? The answer is clear. God did not want it to be fulfilled. If someone asks a priest to explain a dream, the priest would answer that he doesn’t know, but he would also add to wait a few days and see what happens, because God may prepare you for something, and this dream was meant as a step in that preparation.

An Anglican priest, certainly in North America, would be somewhat shocked if he were asked to interpret a dream!

In correspondence with Dr. Hulsman since the trip he wrote that Bishop Thomas of al-Qussia made the comment once that Copts have added through the centuries “salt and pepper” to their stories, to make the traditions more attractive for listeners.

Father Philoxenos of the monastery of Dayr al-Muharraq expressed it this way when challenged with the skepticism of Western scholars.

Not every fact of history is recorded in historical documents...We first depend on the Bible, then we have the doctrines of the apostles, and the third source is the tradition. These are the three sources of faith of the Coptic Orthodox Church.

You see, Coptic people are a very religious people. We have a strong belief in the Bible, in the church, the sayings of the church, and the history of the church. We can’t deny that there are many stories that are exaggerated. We don’t deny this. But we have faith in our church fathers and in what they say. This is a very strong source for the people of Egypt.

The first source we depend on is faith. If historical evidence adds something that confirms it, it is fine, it is acceptable. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t matter because I already have the faith in my heart.

...We are not talking about a research or a Ph.D. on the Holy Family. We are talking about faith, blessings, miracles, about something spiritual...But this is not accepted in the Western world. They ask for documents, proof, and if you don’t have proof it can’t be true. That is a different way of thinking.

It is a very different way of thinking indeed. It demonstrates that according to the analogy of the three-legged stool, Scripture, tradition and reason, upon which the Western Church is based, the Copts are sitting on a two-legged stool, Scripture and tradition only. Further, since their tradition has to be bound by Scripture, they really sit upon a one-legged stool, like Luther, on Scripture alone. A modern Western theologian might charge them with bibliolatry, since their dogma interprets the Bible literally; but have we in the West not allowed our reason to dominate the Scriptures in our reinterpretation, or reinterpretations, of them? We may reserve judgment upon some of the stories we are told about the Holy Family in Egypt, but are we so enlightened that we can no longer believe in the Virgin birth or the historical resurrection of Jesus? We are also in danger of sitting on a one legged stool, since today we are jettisoning both Scripture, by our liberal interpretations of the Bible, and the tradition of the church, by the ordination of both women and homosexuals, and by the church’s blessing of same sex unions. Ours, based chiefly on reason, is by far a more wobbly stool than theirs, and we, not they, are more liable to fall.

I find myself to be a skeptic of some of the tradition that a Copt would hold dearly in his or her heart, but not of the Biblical record handed down to us. My own thinking there is much more akin to the Coptic. The faith delivered to the saints is a revealed faith, not a reasoned one, but it is not an unreasonable one. It is based upon the witness of the apostles and New Testament writers, and I do not believe that their testimony has been ‘salt and peppered’ to make it more palatable to their followers. Our duty is to proclaim this faith, not to try to rationalize it, so that every man, woman and child, through his or her trust in the atoning blood of Jesus at Calvary, might know the love of God and have peace with him. If I am dogmatic about this, it is only because of the blood of the martyrs, like Saints Dimyana and Abanub, of whom the Coptic church of Egypt has many more than any other church in the world. Who would shed his blood or give his life for the rational, perfectly logical but watered-down, faith that is preached from our pulpits in the West? If we are in any way teachable, and I fear that today we are not, this is the one lesson that we could learn from the Copts. And we in turn could teach them not to be quite so gullible.