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Posted on 12/25/2025 9:40:05 PM PST by SeekAndFind
Every December, we tell the Christmas story again.
Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem. There is no room at the inn. Jesus is born in a stable and laid in a manger while animals look on. Shepherds receive angelic news in the fields and hurry to see the child. Later, wise men follow a star, seeking out a King born beneath it.
It is a story most of us could tell from memory, shaped as much by hymn and pageant as by Scripture itself. The images are familiar and comforting: a holy family alone in the cold, a quiet night, a humble beginning.
It's also not accurate.
Nothing in the first chapters of Gospel of Luke needs to be changed to correct this inaccuracy. No verses are removed. No theology is revised. But without altering a single word of Luke’s account, several long-standing assumptions carried through the misinterpretation or misunderstanding of a few key words can be clarified — assumptions that have quietly reshaped how the story is imagined.
Luke 2:7: "She wrapped him in swaddling clothes and laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn."
Luke’s account hinges on the single word "inn." When he explains why Mary and Joseph struggled to find a place to stay, the Greek term he uses is kataluma. Over time, that word has been commonly translated as inn, importing an entire mental picture — a commercial lodging, a keeper, and a refusal at the door.
But kataluma does not mean an inn in that sense. Luke uses a different word elsewhere when he wants to describe a public lodging place. Kataluma is a guest room, typically within a private home.
That distinction matters.
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
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In a small town like Bethlehem, swollen by a census requiring families to return to ancestral homes, this would have been unremarkable. Extended families would have filled every available sleeping space in the homes of families who still lived in the town. Hospitality would have been offered as best it could be managed. What ran out was not goodwill, but room. Like an exended family today coming home for Christmas, people were placed where the host could find space for them.
Once the birth is returned to a private household rather than a roadside inn, the rest of the story begins to realign. The question is no longer why Mary was sent away, but where, within a crowded home, a birth could reasonably take place.
There was no room in Tuscany, either.
Similar information in Christianity.com
“Mary and Joseph likely did not stay at a traveler’s inn. They probably stayed at a family home since Joseph’s family was from Bethlehem.
Middle Eastern families traditionally provided food and lodging for guests. We see this costume reflected in how often Jesus, the disciples, and Paul were welcomed into acquaintances’ homes during their travels. Also, a poor and pregnant couple like Mary and Joseph would most likely have asked to lodge with relatives and not a costly traveler’s inn upon their arrival in Bethlehem. Considering the Roman census was in full swing with many visitors in town, and Mary and Joseph would have traveled slowly since Mary was pregnant, his relatives might have already given the guest room to other relatives in town for the census. Since there was “no room at the inn,” they likely stayed in a downstairs room that housed animals.”
https://www.christianity.com/wiki/holidays/what-we-know-about-bethlehem-inn.html#google_vignette
So, let me get this straight... there’s an ongoing scholarly debate on whether the “inn” in Bethlehem was a more like a small hostel or more like a house-share from AirBNB? Okay, some folks apparently have a lot of time on their hands.
“This happens because there aren’t perfect words that translate from one language to another.” Also, the way they described things back then were different. Then add the language thing, oye.
The difference hinges on whether there was hospitality versus inhospitality.
That distinction matters
No...it really doesn’t.
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