I love Christmas. And I love a beautiful nativity scene as much as anyone. But did you know that a lot of what we think we know about the Christmas story is not, in fact, biblical?
Some of these misconceptions are based on Christmas carols. Take "Away in Manger" — it tells us the little Lord Jesus, no crying He made. But since He was a human baby, and that's how human babies communicate, it's a fairly safe bet that He cried. (After all, He later wept as an adult. His humanity takes nothing away from His deity.)
But the biggest misconception centers around that nativity scene, and the entire "no room at the inn" narrative. This is why it's so important to understand the culture of Bible times and places.
So let's put on our first century Jewish lenses and look at the story as recorded in Luke 2:4-7.
A last minute trip?
Joseph knew he was responsible for his pregnant wife, and he knew Who his pregnant wife was carrying.
Therefore it’s unlikely that they would have undertaken a 70-mile walking trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem in the final days of her pregnancy. And of course the Scripture does not say they did — rather, it notes that "while they were there" in Bethlehem, the time came for her to give birth.
The entire reason they were forced to travel to Bethlehem at all was because the Roman census required Jews to travel to their family ancestral home to register, and Joseph's family was from Bethlehem. All over Israel, Jews traveled back to their "hometowns" and stayed with family members.
This is by far the most likely scenario for Joseph and Mary, as well. Hospitality was a core cultural imperative in first century Palestine (as it still is in much of the Middle East), and it is unthinkable that all of Joseph’s kin would have rejected him and doomed him and his young wife to a drafty stable.
So if they were staying with family, what's all this about no room at the inn? Turns out there were no mean innkeepers turning away pregnant ladies, as Dr. Tim Chaffey explains:
...the Bible makes no mention of any innkeeper who told them that the inn was full for the night. The reason we imagine this scenario is because the translators of most English versions have chosen the word “inn” to translate the Greek word καταλυμα (kataluma), which gives modern readers the wrong impression. Jesus used this same Greek word in Luke 22:11 to refer to a “guest room.” — Born in a Barn (Stable)?, Answers in Genesis website
Dr. Chaffey goes on to point out that there IS a Greek word for "hotel" or "inn" — in fact, Luke uses it himself when he wrote about the Good Samaritan in Luke 10:34. So surely if Luke meant "inn" instead of "guest room" in chapter 2, he would have used the word for "inn"!
So Jesus wasn't born in a barn?
Homes in this part of the world, at that time, often had an upper room that served as a guest room — important in a culture that, as we already noted, put hospitality above most other virtues. Due to crowds arriving for the census, it's quite possible that Joseph's family already had guests in those quarters, which would have explained why Joseph and Mary might have had to stay in the lower level of the home, which (strange as it may sound to us) was often connected or adjacent to animal areas.
And this is why Mary used a manger as a cradle for baby Jesus. It was a safe, warm, soft-with-straw place to lay the Infant. In the evening the animals were brought into the space, so our nativity scenes showing the baby in a manger with animals all around could well be quite accurate.
But given what we know about the culture, it is also likely that the young couple were in the midst of family as well. When we more clearly understand the historical and cultural context, it doesn’t diminish the narrative — it enhances it. Theology in Five explains:
A birth within a family home fits the larger theological pattern of the incarnation. God does not enter the world through the halls of power. He arrives in the midst of a normal household, surrounded by people who represent the everyday life of Israel. The manger emphasizes humility, but the home emphasizes nearness. The incarnation is not a story of God approaching humanity from a distance. It is a story of God dwelling among His people in the most ordinary and human way possible.
This brief, fascinating article offers more historical/cultural context and is well worth a read.
So I invite you to read Luke 2:4-7 in the Legacy Bible version (my favorite translation), which uses more accurate first century cultural language to tell the tale.
And to all my readers I wish you a joyous and blessed Christmas as we savor the reality of God coming to make a way for us, and to make us His own.
If you’ve enjoyed She Speaks Truth this year, please consider putting a little something in my Christmas stocking (in the spirit of the season, of course)!
It is likely that there was "no room in the inn" because Joseph and Mary were not welcome to stay with either family due to Mary's (and perhaps Joseph's) perceived premarital indiscretion.