08 April 2024
I've long complained that we have loaded down the Gospel narrative with a massive weight of nonsense mythology. Because we want to entertain children with fantasies, we make the Christmas story far more than what it actually was. Bailey takes an ax to junk.
Working from Luke 2:1-20, he reminds us how the added nonsense gets glued onto our memories of the story until we cease completely to question any of it. The story becomes "sacred" and we actually get in trouble with church folks for daring to suggest there's anything amiss.
There is no reason to imagine that Jesus was born just hours after His parents arrived in Bethlehem. Joseph was royal family and had kin folks there. Mary's relatives were just a short distance away, as well (Cousin Elizabeth lived in the hill country of Judea, where Bethlehem stood). There was no way they didn't have a chance to find a decent shelter before the baby was born. Anything less than a well-attended birth with their traditional midwifery and care would have been a shame on the whole town. The text in Luke notes that they had been there some time before the birth.
It was common since at least the Restoration period for someone to pull together materials from some famous figure and posthumously publish a book in their names. Some of these projects were poorly done, filled with stuff the namesake would not agree to, and on rare occasions, the whole thing would be fiction. We have some cases of that happening with New Testament figures. Spurious literature showed up in the centuries following the major figures, and we often wonder how the church folks embraced this nonsense.
One of these books was The Protevangelium of James, dated as early as 200 AD. The actual author knew nothing of the geography of the Holy Land, nor any genuine details of the life of Jesus. This fictional work is the earliest mention that Jesus was born the night His parents arrived anywhere close to Bethlehem, and even mentions that she rode a donkey on this trip while nearing delivery. The whole thing is loaded with fanciful details and gratuitous miracles.
Luke's account was obviously taken from interviews with eyewitnesses and he adds very sensible notes in the account so Greek readers could make sense of unfamiliar Jewish references. About the only place you'll see a feeding trough (manger) is inside the front entrance of a peasant home. The entrance on the ground level was where the valuable few domestic animals were quartered. They provided extra body heat and were safe there overnight. The rest of the house was on a higher floor level. Even wealthy people were unlikely to have a barn or stable with large numbers of livestock. Most people lived in a simple place where everyone in the household lived, ate and slept in one room. They usually had a small separate chamber reserved for guests, often built on the flat rooftop, or maybe the back of the house.
So, the manger would be at the foot of this bigger room, cut into the floor just a couple of feet higher than the animal pit by the door. For sheep, the manger would be built closer to the floor. In the Old Testament you read mentions of someone killing and dressing the fattened calf that was already there in the house. And Jephthah's vow to sacrifice the first thing out his door? He expected it would be one of his animals; it never occurred to him it would be his daughter.
In Jesus' time, a single lamp would give light to the entire house because it was this one-room style. And even on the Sabbath, a homeowner would need to untie his animals and bring them out of the house to water and to clear the entrance. Jesus "untied" a human woman who was bent over on the Sabbath (Luke 13). One particular Syriac translation of Luke's Gospel states it clearly in their language that Jesus was referring to bringing animals out of the house in the morning. Thus, any Middle Eastern Christian would have understood that Jesus was placed in one of these handy mangers near the entrance of some house.
The Greek language had a good word for what we might call a "motel" (pandocheion). However, Luke's Gospel uses the term katalyma, which is commonly translated into English as "inn". That's misleading. It usually referred to that guest room most homes had. It was the same word Luke chose to translate Jesus' instructions for His disciples to find the Upper Room for His Last Seder. Wherever it was Joseph and Mary were staying, someone had already taken the guest room. No surprise there, given how many relatives from out of town had to come register there for the poll tax.
Finally, we come to the shepherds who came to worship the baby. In those days, shepherds were highly marginalized as outcasts, generally regarded as unclean thanks to the ever expanding rabbinical legalisms. Who would welcome them to a king's home? Well, the angels told them that this baby could be found lying in a feed trough, of all things. Obviously He was not in the homes of the high and mighty; the Messiah was one of them.
So, given the hour of His birth announced to the shepherds, we can deduce that Joseph and his relatives were standing outside the door of the house with the animals, and all the women were inside with birthing. It would be unusual to find men and animals crowding outside the door of a peasant home at that hour. The shepherds knew this. Had He not been born in decent accommodations, the shepherds would have offered their own homes before returning to the flocks. And the Magi, coming much later, found Him in a house, not a stable. We really need to rewrite our mythology and all those Christmas pageants.
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