No room at the inn?

Time to bust that myth for good

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. It is unthinkable 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 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.

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 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 this was all happening in a culture that valued family and hospitality in such a way that there were certainly, at the least, some of Joseph's relatives nearby as well.

And eventually shepherds.

And eventually wise men (not kings, and not necessarily three) —- but that came quite a bit later, and not in this exact location.

The real story on that in the next edition of "Christmas Mythbusters" (maybe next year). 🙂

For now, you can 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.

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