A few years back I heard a dear friend teach on the physical location of where Jesus was born. He described how recent archaeological discoveries in Bethlehem have caused biblical scholars to rethink the part in Luke 2 that reads – “and there was no room for them in the inn”. I remember thinking at the time, “whoa, this is new and if true, requires me to adjust my thinking about that night in a major way”. Mainly, that Jesus was born in a home of Joseph’s extended family.
Well, a few years have gone by and I have thought about that every Christmas.
Yesterday, I came across someone else who is teaching the same thing…
Here is some of that teaching –
When it came time for Mary to deliver the baby, the Greek of Luke’s text says, “she wrapped him in cloth and laid him in a corn crib, as there was no room in the guest room.” Yes, you heard me right. Luke does not say there was no room in the inn. Luke has a different Greek word for inn (pandeion), which he trots out in the parable of the Good Samaritan. The word he uses here (kataluma) is the very word he uses to describe the room in which Jesus shared the Last Supper with his disciples — the guest room of a house.
Archeology shows that houses in Bethlehem and its vicinity often had caves as the back of the house where they kept their prized ox or beast of burden, lest it be stolen. The guest room was in the front of the house, the animal shelter in the back, and Joseph and Mary had come too late to get the guest room, so the relatives did the best they could by putting them in the back of the house.
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RECOVERING NARCISSIST 