Sermon Tone Analysis

Lets consider the events leading up to the night Jesus was born my friends, the Bible tells us that during those days, several things is talking place.

Let me share these verses with you, … verses 1-15

Luke 2

We’ve grown up hearing the account that the “inn” in Bethlehem was full, with no “room” available, so Joseph and Mary ended up in a stable, with Jesus Christ born and laid in a manger there.

This image has been used to promote the typical Christmas nativity scene for generations.

Yet a careful analysis of the biblical text reveals quite a different story!

Not an inn but a guest room

The New Testament was originally written in Greek, and the Greek word translated “inn” here is kataluma.

It means a place of rest, usually a guest room.

In fact, the same writer Luke uses this very word later where it clearly refers to a guest room and not an inn.

Notice , where Jesus said to His disciples, “Then you shall say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says to you, “ ‘Where is the guest room [ kataluma ] where I may eat the Passover with My disciples?”’”

(emphasis added throughout).

Furthermore, Luke elsewhere in his Gospel uses a different Greek word when he writes about an actual inn— not the word kataluma.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, Jesus mentions that the injured man in the story was taken to an inn—and here Luke translates using the Greek word pandokheion, the normal word for an inn.

We read this in , where the kind Samaritan set the injured man “on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him.”

Interestingly, the Arabic and Syriac versions of the New Testament, which reflect more of a Middle Eastern context, have never translated kataluma as meaning an inn, but instead as a guest room.

As Kenneth Bailey, a Middle Eastern and New Testament scholar points out, “This translation [of the word as ‘inn’] is a product of our Western heritage” (“The Manger and the Inn: The Cultural Background of ,” Bible and Spade, Fall 2007, p. 103).

In addition, Young’s Literal Translation uses the term “guest-chamber” instead of an inn.

It says: “And she brought forth her son—the first-born, and wrapped him up, and laid him down in the manger, because there was not for them a place in the guest-chamber .”

Note also the word here translated “place” or “room.”

In the context of “inn,” most assume this is referring to an individual room (“no room in the inn”), yet even inns of that time did not often have individual rooms.

The reference is simply to space.

What Luke is telling us is that there was not enough room, or enough space, for them in the guest room.

The linguistic evidence shows that Luke used the term kataluma to mean not an inn, but the guest room— indeed, “the” guest room (the definite article is used) of a particular house.

Historical factors

The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, after pointing out that the word kataluma is used elsewhere in the Gospels for the guest chamber of a private home, comments: “Was the ‘inn’ at Bethlehem, where Joseph and Mary sought a night’s lodging, an upper guest room in a private home or some kind of public place for travelers?

The question cannot be answered with certainty.

It is thought by some that it may have been a guest chamber provided by the community.

We know that visitors to the annual feasts in Jerusalem were entertained in the guest rooms of private homes” (1982, Vol. 2, “Inn,” p. 826).

Another factor that powerfully argues against this term meaning an inn is that these places were not appropriate to giving birth to a child.

Inns at that time were far from anything like typical motels or hotels we might think of today.

“Generally speaking, inns had a bad reputation … This ill repute of public inns, together with the Semitic spirit of hospitality, led the Jews and the early Christians to recommend the keeping of an open house for the benefit of strangers” (ibid.).

Besides, for commercial reasons inns were usually found along the major roads.

Yet Bethlehem was a small town in the upper mountains of Judea, and no major Roman road is known to have passed through it.

Since it seems to have been an insignificant village at the time, it’s doubtful that an inn even existed there then.

This gives yet more reason to realize that what Luke really wrote is that there was no room in the guest chamber.

Certainly, due to the Roman census being taken at the time and the huge number of people traveling to their birthplaces, available space in the guest quarters was scarce.

So the question then becomes: Does that mean Joseph and Mary aimed to stay in someone’s home but, since the guest room was full, were turned out into the night to a stable?

When Mary was in labor?

That might seem worse than being turned away from an inn.

Of course, both scenarios seem rather terrible—certainly downright inhospitable, which is far out of line from the way things were at that time.

A culture of hospitality and honoring kinship

In Christ’s day, hospitality to visitors among the Jews was essential, based on biblical example and law.

In , God told the Israelites to “love the stranger.”

And stated, “If a stranger dwells with you in your land, you shall not mistreat him.”

Denial of hospitality was shown throughout Scripture to be an outrage.

Hospitality toward visitors is still important throughout the Middle East.

Moreover, since Bethlehem was Joseph’s ancestral home, he probably had relatives there.

And being a descendant of King David, whose hometown this was, he would have been highly respected upon his arrival.

Think of a descendant of George Washington coming to his hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, after a long lapse of time.

The townspeople would’ve shown him respect.

As Bailey explains: “[My] thirty-year experience with villagers in the Middle East is that the intensity of honor shown to the passing guest is still very much in force, especially when it is a returning son of the village who is seeking shelter.

We have observed cases where a complete village has turned out in a great celebration to greet a young man who has suddenly arrived unannounced in the village, which his grandfather had left many years before” (p.

103).

It should also be pointed out that childbirth was a major event at that time.

In a small village like Bethlehem, many neighboring women would have come to help in the birth.

Bailey states: “In the case of a birth, the men will sit apart with the neighbors, but the room will be full of women assisting the midwife.

A private home would have bedding, facilities for heating water and all that is required for any peasant birth” (p.

102).

What this all means is that it would have been unthinkable and an unimaginable insult and affront to societal decency for Joseph, a returning village son, and his laboring wife to need to seek shelter in an unsavory inn to have a baby of Davidic descent—and then, even worse, to be sent out to have the birth in a stable.

This simply cannot be what happened.

Nor can it be that they were sent out into the night from a private home.

So what actually happened?

Reading the text carefully

Regrettably, the birth of Christ is later overlaid with so much tradition and legend about Christmas that it’s hard to let the biblical text speak for itself.

The common assumption is that Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem and, being hastened by her labor pains, rushed to an inn only to find it full with no vacancies, so they ended up in a stable where she gave birth.

However, a careful reading of the text shows us they had already been in Bethlehem for some days when she went into labor.

Notice carefully : “Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth into Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child.

So it was, that while they were there, the days were completed for her to be delivered.”

Consequently, they must have already been lodging somewhere in Bethlehem when her birth pangs began—and this was surely not a stable for a period of days.

Could not Joseph have found a more suitable lodging place for his pregnant wife in that amount of time?

Of course.

In fact, we should realize that not far from here dwelt Mary’s cousin Elizabeth, whom Mary had lived with for a while during her pregnancy ().

If they were seeking a place to stay for days, why didn’t they go to Elizabeth’s house?

The answer is simple.

They found a house in which to stay in Bethlehem—probably that of Joseph’s relatives.

And being in these accommodations already, it makes no sense for them to suddenly be out seeking a room in an inn or anywhere else at the time of Mary’s labor.

Yet we might still be asking: So why were they sent out to a stable?

The answer is, they weren’t.

Birth in a house, not a stable

The Archaeological Study Bible offers some helpful background: “The ‘manger’ was the feeding trough of the animals.

This is the only indication that Jesus was born in a stable.

Very early tradition suggests that his birthplace was a cave, perhaps being used as a stable.

“ Justin Martyr in the second century A.D. stated that Jesus’ birth took place in a cave close to the village.

Over this traditional manger site the emperor Constantine (A.D. 330) and his mother, Helena, constructed the Church of the Nativity” (2005, p. 1669).

Note that it is only the manger, an animal food or water trough, that gives any indication of a stable.

And indeed a manger might well have been found in a stable.

But it’s important to realize that they were also to be found within first-century homes!

A typical Judean house of that day consisted of an area near the door, often with a dirt floor, where the family’s animals were kept at night—so they wouldn’t be stolen or preyed upon and so their body heat could help warm the home on cool nights.

The family lived and slept in a raised part of the same room set back from the door.

There was also usually a guest room either upstairs on a second floor or adjoining the family common room on the lower floor.

Typically the lower area near the door had a manger for food and/or water for the animals.

Eric F.F. Bishop, an expert in Middle East culture, noted that the birth of Christ probably took place in “one of the Bethlehem houses with the lower section provided for the animals, with mangers ‘hollowed in stone,’ the dais [or raised area] being reserved for the family.

Such a manger being immovable, filled with crushed straw, would do duty for a cradle.

An infant might even be left in safety, especially if swaddled, when the mother was absent on temporary business” ( Jesus of Palestine, 1955, p. 42).

Yet another authority on Middle Eastern life, Gustaf Dalmann, stated: “In the East today the dwelling-place of man and beast is often in one and the same room.

It is quite the usual thing among the peasants for the family to live, eat, and sleep on a kind of raised terrace … in the one room of the house, while the cattle, particularly donkeys and oxen, have their place below on the actual floor … near the door; this part sometimes is continued along under the terrace as a kind of low vault.

On this floor the mangers are fixed, either to the floor, or to the wall, or at the edge of the terrace” ( Sacred Sites and Ways, 1935, p. 41).

This scene of an ox or donkey in the house at night might go against our Western sensibilities.

Yet, as Bailey comments: “It is we in the West who have decided that life with these great gentle beasts is culturally unacceptable.

The raised terrace on which the family ate, slept and lived was unsoiled by the animals, which were taken out each day and during which time the lower level was cleaned.

Their presence was in no way offensive” (p.