We find the Christmas story, the story of Jesus’ birth, in Luke 2:1-20. It is a story of Christ’s most humble beginnings. The traditional interpretation is that a census was called for so everyone throughout Judea had return to their city of origin. Joseph and a very pregnant Mary travel through treacherous desert terrain to Bethlehem with Mary riding on a donkey. As they arrive at night, Mary is in the pains of labor, so Joseph tries to get a room at an inn, but they are turned away into the cold by a heartless innkeeper because his inn is full. Desperate, the only shelter they can find is in a barn, which was either a small wooden structure or perhaps a cave. There Mary gives birth to Jesus. She wraps him in cloths and places him in the most crib-like apparatus present, a manger filled with yellow straw. Around this time, a host of angels appears to shepherds in a nearby field guarding their flocks. They are told to go into the city and there they will find a baby wrapped in cloths lying in a manger and that this baby is the promised Messiah. The shepherds go into Bethlehem and find precisely what the angel told them.
I think I’ve done the story justice. I’ve seen a few deviations in movies and stories, but I think this captures it.
I did a quick read of Luke 2:1-20 and I did find a few surprises–and this mind you is without taking into account any cultural information. One surprise was that it doesn’t say Mary had the baby the night they arrived. It only says, “while they were there.” Another is it doesn’t say they stayed in a barn or cave. It only says, “there was no room at the inn” and “she laid the baby in a manger.”
Although the Bible doesn’t say how long the journey took or how treacherous it was, but one can look at a map and find two main routes that go from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Both routes are just over 90 miles! So the journey would have taken five or more days and definitely would have been arduous.
Did Mary give birth to Jesus in a barn or cave containing a bunch of animals? The critical word here is the word that is translated “inn”. Did inns exist back in this time and would a small town like Bethlehem have some? It turns out that multi-room buildings built for the sole purpose of sheltering out of town individuals actually did exist–what we would call hotels and motels. Naturally they were much smaller than their modern day equivalents, but they were also much rarer, as Kenneth E Bailey discusses in his book, “Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes”. In fact most of the material presented in this article comes from Chapter 1 of this book, which is another great book about culture around the time of Jesus.
The Greek word for these ancient hotels is πανδοχεῖον, pronounced pando-chay-on, and literally means “receives all”. It’s only used once in the Bible, but not in Luke Chapter 2, but in Luke 10:34 in the story of the Good Samaritan.
Wait a minute! How is it that the word for hotel or inn is not in Luke 2 where the word “inn” is used? The answer is because it’s a different Greek word which should not be translated as “inn”. The Greek word in question is κατάλυμα (pronounced kata-luma). I checked several popular translations and 6 use “inn” (NASB, ESV, NIV, ASV, AMP, and KJV.), but 3 newer NIV variants correctly use “guest room” (NIV WS, TNIV, NIrV). This same Greek word is used two other times and in both of those places (Mark 14:14 and Luke 22:11) it is translated “guest room” in all the 9 translations given before. Both of these verses are when Jesus is telling his disciples what to say when securing a room for Passover.
To make matters a bit worse, most translations translate the other word in this verse, τόπος (top-os), as “room”, which isn’t wrong but adds to the confusion. Topos means room as in “a space”, not room as in “a room in a house or hotel”.
Therefore the verse is not saying the hotel of Bethlehem had no rooms available, but rather that there was no space left in the guest room of the house in which they were staying.
Kenneth E Bailey gives a very good description of homes back in Jesus’ time in his book (also in chapter 1). As a plus, Kenneth also explains a passage from the Old Testament that has always bothered me. The passage is the story of Jephthah from Judges 11. In verse 31, Jephthah exclaims, “whatever comes out of the door of my house to meet me when I return in triumph from the Ammonites will be the Lord’s, and I will sacrifice it as a burnt offering.” His daughter (his only child in fact) ends up coming out first so he has keep his word and sacrifice her. But why would he make such stupid vow to the Lord? I mean who did he think was going to come out first, his wife whom he didn’t like or something? No, what he was expecting was one of his animals to come out of the house. That’s kind of weird, right? For modern times one might expect their dog to come running out, but I wouldn’t want to kill my beloved pet either! Back in these times, which is earlier than 1000 BC, people kept their farm animals in their houses. Therefore it makes a ton more sense that Jephthah was expecting one of his animals to come out.
Here is a drawing I made based on a drawing in Kenneth’s book of a common Palestine village house with a guest room (katalyma). The main room was subdivided into two sections, one lower by several feet from the other. Two or three animals were kept here in the lower section over night. They were kept in the house for protection from predators and from theft, but also because they were natural heaters. They would dig two small sink-shaped depressions in the upper section just on the lip of the edge and fill them with hay. This way the farm animals could put their heads over the edge and eat the hay. For many houses, that was it–just the one room; but for those who weren’t as poor, they might have a second room adjoining the main room or above the main room on the roof (see Luke 22:11 and Acts 10:9). This second room was just for guests.
Since the town would have been full with out-of-town guests due to the census, Mary and Joseph were allowed to stay in the main room instead of the guest room because the guest room was already occupied. This is what the Bible meant by “there was no room in the guest room (katalyma)”. And because they were in the main room, the mangers were there and doubled as crib due to the fact that they were depressions in the fllor and filled with hay. My opinion is the Bible explicitly says they put Jesus in the manger because the angel of the Lord had given the shepherds this as a sign. Who knows, maybe the shepherds went to a couple of houses in Bethlehem and found women with newborns but not in mangers until they came across Mary and Joseph?
Does this take away from Jesus’ birth? I don’t think so. Perhaps it isn’t as humble as giving birth alone on a manure-covered floor of a barn or cave, but we should not force the Bible to make that point if it isn’t there. The fact is Jesus was born of a virgin in Bethlehem, wrapped in cloths and placed in a manger, fulfilling the ancient prophecies as well as the ones given that night.