No Room in the Inn?

Here are some architectural reflections on the so-called inn in Bethlehem that was all booked up Christmas Eve, forcing Mary and Joseph to set up Jesus’ delivery room out in the barn.

I’ve preached over 100 Advent and Christmas sermons.  I’m pretty adept at studying the original meaning of the Biblical text.   I’m right up there on my “hermeneutic of suspicion.”  (Biblical criticism combined with feminism; don’t assume the conventional interpretation is correct, in fact, assume it is incorrect.)  

So why has it never occurred to me to question the phrase “no room in the inn?”   As in “Mary brought forth her first born son and wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

What if it wasn’t an “inn” with various “rooms” sadly overbooked?  Had I ever looked up the original Greek, compared the use of that word in other parts of the New Testament?

Apparently not.  Because almost by accident this week I found a pretty convincing article that upends all of my, and most people’s assumptions about the overbooked Bethlehem Motel 6.  All it took was some basic word study and some analysis of Near Eastern family patterns and domestic architecture and birthing practices to make it pretty clear we have the nativity architecture all wrong.

In all our crèche scenes this time of year, in paintings and churchyards and on my sideboard, we see the usual suspects, Mary, Joseph, some shepherds, the magi, all hanging out in the barn, surrounded by animals.  The implication is that the full and happy and noisy inn is just out of sight.  The innkeeper was kind to find this young struggling couple a place to huddle but it’s out here in the dark.

Mary is the only woman (maybe a shepherd girl these days.)  Jesus always looks pretty cold, naked in the feeding trough with the scratchy hay. 

(“Manger” is such a nicer word than feeding trough, sort of romantic, from the French “manger,” to eat.  I confess that until writing this piece I had fallen into a sloppy misconception that manger was a nice sort of romantic word for stable.  “Look at my old family manger scene with Mary and Joseph.” No, only the baby would fit in the roughhewn wooden feeding trough, usually intended for cattle and sheep. No crib for a bed.)

Authors Mario Seiglie and Tom Robinson begin by reminding us how the King James Version of the Bible has dominated the language and imagery of the Christmas story, and  that a little suspicion is in order.  The KJV uses lots of old fashioned words (swaddling), has lots of mistakes and sometimes portrays first century Palestine as the English countryside.  

Then they do some word study.  In all other places, the KJV translates the Greek word “kataluma” as “guest room.” Only here it is “inn.”  When they do refer to an “inn” it’s a completely different Greek word.   And the problem of overbooking?  Translations vary – some say “no room,” others “no space or place,” ie it was not necessarily a single room, but “space” for the family.

The authors studied what travel was like in those days, as well as housing and birthing patterns.  Turns out there probably weren’t little charming roadside inns with individual rooms in Palestine.   And even if there were, not in backwaters like Bethlehem, far from any Roman roads.  Since they went to this town because Joseph was from the house and lineage of David, which was centered in Bethlehem, why weren’t they saying with family, as middle eastern hospitality required?  And even if they had been forced to stay in someone’s barn, would this be how the birth happened, with no other women, kinswomen present?

OK, so read the article if you want more convincing.  Basically they point out that domestic architecture of the time had an entrance area or first floor where the animals were kept, to warm the house and keep the animals safe from being stolen.  And a “guest room” (extra sleeping space) upstairs or in the back.  But since it was census time, there were lots of relatives in town, and that extra room in the back was full, there was no space in it.   (“There was no space in the guest room.”)   Folks did not sleep in separate rooms, but together in one room.  So Mary and Joseph stayed down in the first floor with the warm animals and the feeding trough; there was room there for the family. 

(And in this larger warm room there would have been space for the other women who would certainly have helped with the birth of this child of a local family.)

So, does this revised nativity architecture change our ideas about the incarnation?  From “no room in the inn” to “let’s make room in the entrance/stable room?”

-Mary and Joseph were not solo lone out of town travelers.  Joseph was part of a big and honored family in this town.  We tend to picture them as special, heroic, but they were just folks in a crowd.  (That reminds me of Jesus’ humanity and ordinariness.)

-They were probably poor, could not have afforded a private room even if it had been available.  But they had family in town, that’s probably where they stayed.  (This reminds me of his solidarity with all poor, and that often the poor have tight family connections.)

-They were welcomed in, not shunned or ignored. We tend to make them victims of overcrowding or low status or just general Christian victimization themes – why do they hate us?  Mary most likely had birthing coaches and midwives and kinswomen to clean up. (The theological point is the welcome, not the overbooked inn.  There’s always room.  And coaches.)

-Their society was so much more communal and community oriented than ours.  Not to romanticize that, just acknowledge that there was less privacy, more support. (See above.)

“So Mary brought forth (how about “gave birth to”) her first born child, wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in the feeding trough, because they were in the warm stable entrance where there was room, not in the guest room in the back, which was full.”

So rebuild your crèche scenes.  And add in lots more women.

Copyright © 2015 Deborah Streeter