The heart of Christmas
A new take on an old story
The entrance (the Door of Humility) into the Church Of The Nativity, Bethlehem, situated over the cave in which Jesus was believed to have been born.
In this article, Dr Garth Gilmour - a trained biblical archaeologist and a fluent Hebrew speaker - takes a closer look into the nativity story from the Gospel of Luke to uncover the original elements of the story.
In this season we love to tell again the Christmas story, remembering the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem all those years ago. But the story has grown with the telling, and we cannot always determine what is original, and what has been added.
There are two versions of the nativity story in the Gospels, in Matthew and Luke, which nicely complement one another. Matthew focuses on the visit of the magi, the flight to Egypt and the slaughter of the innocents. But it is Luke’s version that I want to look at here, and especially his description of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem. The heart of the story, one might say.
A Closer Look
We have a picture of Joseph leading a donkey with the heavily pregnant Mary across the rocky hillsides to Bethlehem, where they arrive just as Mary goes into labour. Joseph desperately looks for a place to stay. The inn is so full that he and Mary are forced to take refuge in a cave, where she gives birth and lays her newborn in the manger, with the animals looking on.
The text, though, tells us something quite different.
We don’t know at what stage in the pregnancy they travelled, but Luke tells us they were only betrothed; the marriage was not yet complete. In Jewish tradition a marriage had two parts: it was initiated by the betrothal and later it was finalised by a home-taking, when the groom took his bride to live in his family home. There is, of course, a sense of this in Luke’s account, as Joseph takes his betrothed to his family in Bethlehem.
So now we have the newly betrothed couple travelling from Nazareth to Bethlehem so that Joseph can introduce Mary to his family and gain their approval for the match. The question of her growing pregnancy is handled delicately by Luke. Surely it would have been a difficult, even shameful subject, but Luke draws a veil over these delicate family matters, and tells us no more. All we know is that they came to Bethlehem and settled down with Joseph’s family. We should imagine a house full of joy and excitement at the prospect of the marriage, and the meeting of Joseph’s bride for the first time.
Later, when the time came for the babe to be born, the midwife and other women would have taken over and shooed the men out of the house until such time as it was appropriate to return once mother and child were safe. Feasting and celebrating by the whole community would have followed as they welcomed the newborn child.
The Inn versus the Guestroom
What, then, of the inn where there was no room? As is now widely acknowledged, early English translations of the New Testament were less than accurate in dealing with the Greek word katalyma in Luke 2:7. They rendered it as an inn, whereas today our understanding of the language and the context suggests that a guestroom may be a better translation.
This is how the word is used later in Luke’s gospel, when Jesus is looking for a guestroom – a katalyma - where he may celebrate the Passover with his disciples (Luke 22:11).
And of course, there is an undisputed “inn” in chapter 10 of Luke’s gospel, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, where Luke tells us that the injured man was taken to a pandocheion – an inn – to recover.
So it's clear that in the Christmas story Luke did not mean an inn, but a guestroom in a private house.
Animals and People Together
Houses in this period continued a pattern hundreds of years old, with the layout reflecting their multifunctional role. As families grew, so did their houses. Sons who got married brought their brides to live in the family home, often in a spare room or a new extension added to the side of the house or on the roof. These rooms were small, especially if the family was not wealthy, just big enough for the couple to sleep in. If they later moved away after having children, or went to live and work elsewhere, these became spare rooms, used for guests, like the katalyma in our story.
Another aspect of these domestic dwellings was that they didn’t just house people, but animals too. These were kept in a space on the ground floor defined by a row of low pillars joined by stone carved mangers that allowed the animals to be easily fed.
Why would people want to have animals in the house? These were country peasant folk, and their sheep and goats and cattle constituted much of their wealth and livelihood. Winters in the Judean hills are cold, with temperatures frequently dropping below freezing. The most vulnerable animals were brought into the house at the coldest time of year to protect them from the elements. They also heated the rest of the house, and especially the sleeping areas upstairs, with the warmth that rose from their bodies.
It was here too, in the house, that specially selected animals like the fatted calf were kept and fed and protected from the elements until time came for them to be slaughtered and eaten at a special feast.
Why then did Mary lay the babe in a manager? Luke tells us only that it was because there was not enough room in the katalyma; either the guest room they had been given didn’t have enough extra space for a cradle, or the couple had been accommodated in the animal area because the rest of the house was full.
The Heart of the Story
So, what are we left with? A young couple, Joseph and Mary, makes their way from Nazareth in the Galilee to the groom’s family home in Bethlehem in Judea to finalise their marriage and register in a census. They are welcomed by Joseph’s family, but the home is full. When the babe is born, we find them in the space normally used for animals, as the guestroom is too small. The whole community is likely to have been involved, the women caring for mother and child, the men out together waiting, and much rejoicing all round.
Shepherds from the nearby fields join in, telling wonderful stories of angelic visitors. But danger lurks as Herod’s jealousy is stirred by the visit of the magi, and after being warned in a dream the family flees to Egypt. They return only after Herod’s death, and settle instead in Mary’s home town of Nazareth in the Galilee, because Herod’s dangerous son Archelaus has become ruler in Judea after his father’s death.
More mundane perhaps than the much-embellished version so familiar to us, yet no less impressive or vivid, the very ordinariness of the story is what makes the mystery and the majesty accessible and real in ways that the nativity play version can never do. It is inspiring, perhaps, and certainly interesting, to remind ourselves of the original elements of the story, lest they be overwhelmed and lost in the mire of feasting, and tradition, and self-centred excess.
Tour Israel in 2023
History & Splendour in the Holy Land
Our new 12-day tour takes us into the heart of Israel, with a special focus on biblically important archaeology. From the biblical fishing villages on the shores of the Sea of Galilee to the barren splendour of the Negev desert, explore Israel’s significance as the birthplace of much of our western cultural heritage under the guidance of Near-Eastern archaeological expert Dr Garth Gilmour.
