Mary and Joseph
traveling to Bethlehem.
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I originally found this story online many years ago, but it wasn't much more than a rough draft of someone's thoughts. I grabbed it and saved it to a file of projects I thought I would one day add to it. Through the years I edited it a bit at a time, but eventually it languished in the file as I forgot all about it. Well, one day I was looking through my files for something and stumbled upon it. Feeling creative, I decided to pull it out, dust it off, and do some editing.
To be honest, I'm clueless as to what the original story looked like, or how much I have added to it through the years. However, I finally put some serious time into it, and this is the final project. I offer this as an embellished story, for everyone to ponder. Maybe it's close, maybe its way off base. Either way I pray you are blessed with what the Holy Spirit moved me to do. Merry Christmas and GOD bless.
The Holy Land has a relatively warm climate -- they grow bananas and oranges in Israel, including in Galilee (I've seen them myself). Of course, they can have cold rainy days, or very rarely, snowy ones, in December, too. So it could be too cold to have sheep in the fields in December, but not certainly.
The "bleak midwinter" with water "hard as stone" of the Christmas carol is talking about English weather, not Judean weather.
We have a pastor friend who regularly reminds us there is no Biblical basis for believing Marry rode a donkey. In all probability, she walked.
Thanks for the historical setting for this, the timeline of events and places.
I suppose it would be reasonable that Joseph and Mary would lodge with Zachariah and Elizabeth. I never knew their journey would take them through Jerusalem, but that makes sense.
I wonder, too, if Mary and Joseph were familiar enough with Messianic prophecy to know that the baby would be born while they were in Bethlehem. That would certainly take a lot of angst about delivering during the trip away.
They probably stayed there a few days since they would have stopped by Jerusalem on the way home to have Jesus circumcised as required by the Law. They would not have had enough time to go back to Nazareth and then back to Jerusalem again.
Thank you for this post.
Interesting thoughts on the journey thanks for posting.
The author is incorrect about the above.
It was likely December. Israel is a subtropical climate. The sheep would have been in the fields outside Jerusalem during the RAINY season (starts at the end of November). That because the flocks follow the grass and the grass starts with the rainy season. Winter is when the grass grows. Israeli pastures are summer dormant.