The Christ Centred Cosmic Civilisation

Bonus Episode - No Room At The Inn, Or Just A Crowded Guest Room? Ancient tradition or Modern Revision?

• Paul

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What if a single word could reshape the Nativity you think you know? We take a hard look at where Jesus was born by following the trail most people skip: the language Luke used, the way travellers lodged near Jerusalem, and what the earliest Christian witnesses actually said. 

Instead of projecting modern village life back onto Bethlehem, we test the claims with first-century evidence, from the Theodotus inscription’s "kataluma" to the ritual purity demands that made running water and separation from animals a practical necessity. 

We explore archaeological finds that challenge the one-room-house-with-animals-below model: multi-room compounds, external locks, imported pottery, clear glass, and literary evidence for upper storeys that would vanish from the record over time. 

Then we connect Jeremiah’s note about a Bethlehem hostelry on the road toward Egypt to a broader Near Eastern network of caravanserais, making sense of Luke’s “the inn” as a known site rather than a vague spare room.

What emerges is a vivid, credible setting: an institutional lodging at capacity, a move to animal quarters consistent with ancient practice, and a manger close to hand—remembered in early eastern sources as a cave. 

The theological thread becomes sharper, not softer: the Messiah arrives in a public, accessible place, where shepherds and strangers can reach him without barriers. 

If you care about biblical accuracy, historical context, and the meaning behind the manger, this conversation will sharpen your view and deepen your wonder.

Enjoyed the deep dive? Follow the show, share this episode with a friend who loves Christmas history, and leave a review telling us where you land: cave or house?

The theme music is "Wager with Angels" by Nathan Moore

SPEAKER_01:

Well, welcome to a bonus episode of the Christ-centered cosmic civilization. And this is really about where was Jesus born? How was he born? What were the circumstances in Bethlehem? And we're covering it because it's something that has come up quite a bit in discussions. And there is a revisionist view and there's a traditional view. And we want to chew it over. And I have to say, throughout my life, I've kind of moved around a bit on this, sometimes think feeling, oh well, that that kind of revision view was interesting. And I was kind of, oh, that kind of might be true. And then as I've done remote more research, I'm less persuaded by the revision review and more persuaded by the traditional view. But we'll get into it. And uh the traditional view, and this is sometimes in the literature I've read recently, this is attributed to like a modern Western view. Because if you want to make an idea seem unacceptable, you only have to call it a modern Western view, and then you're being given clues to be told obviously wrong. But actually, it's not a modern Western view, but this is the view you do get it in sort of 19th and 20th century Western carols and Christmas cards and so on. But you actually mostly get it in the very early church documents describing the circumstances of the birth of Jesus. You'll know if you're following the Christ centered cosmic civilization. At the moment, in our main episodes every Thursday, we're going through these ancient accounts from the Magi. And in those, the Magi come and invariably, in those ancient accounts, particularly from the East, from Asia, Jesus is in a cave. And that's the really absolutely uniform testimony from really records that seem to go back to, say, the second century. So the idea then is that Mary and Joseph have gone to Bethlehem, they're seeking accommodation in the like hostelries or places that are set up for pilgrims or merchants and or military, even, but there's there's accommodation available of one form or another. Possibly accommodation that was even existing back in the time of Jeremiah, which we'll think about. But because people are going to Bethlehem probably for the census, these are these kind of motels, hostels, commercial setups, or even government-run accommodation, whatever it is, they there's no room available in those. And so they are accommodated in with animals, and hence Jesus is put in a manger. And that that animal accommodation is sometimes understood as a kind of stable, like a wooden structure adjacent to the hotel, motel, whatever. Or in the much the ancient view, it's more like a cave, and the animals were accommodated in caves in that ancient time, and so that the holy family are in a cave, and Jesus is born into a cave environment. So that's the kind of traditional view, and you'll see versions of that on Christmas cards and referred to in carols. And then, of course, implicit in that idea is that I is the thing that John touches on, that he came to his own, but his own didn't receive him. But, and then that that is a kind of constant problem that Jesus has, that he come, he is presented or offered, but there's no room for him. It's like, no, you're not welcome here, there's no room here, and that that Jesus goes outside and he dies, of course, outside the city, and that way that he ends up being pushed outside or driven outside or forced to be outside the welcome home environment and the normal human society, but that in that place he is actually accessible for everybody, and the shepherds, the animals, the major. It's like anyone can reach him precisely because he isn't in a private home, a private space, or an enclosed environment, but rather he is outside that and accessible for everybody, free for everybody. That that you get that in sermons all all the time. There's a great one I was reading from the 19th century that's all about this free-for-all nature of Jesus, which is manifested in his birth in a cave. Well, that's a traditional view, and then with that comes particular translation agenda or decisions. So it you get that in the ESV translation of Luke chapter 2, verse 7, and in the King James Version and so on. So those that are quite literal, I suppose, just tend to take it as Jesus, there was no room for him in the inn. The inn, the hotel, the caravanserae, or whatever. The idea being, you know, that kind of commercial accommodation is booked out, no vacancies sign. But there's another possibility. Oh, and then with that comes, because in Matthew 2.11, the Magi come to what you could take Oikos there as a building, like a house, and then the idea is, and we'll think about this other possibility in a minute, that Jesus is inside a private home, and you and that has come to be understood as a single room, a private house. So then in that sense, if we do if we took that view, it would be the Magi come to a building that's the house. But if we take that more traditional view, where the holy family's in a cave, and then Matthew 2.11 really is oikos as family, and you'll see, like oykos as family or house, there's lots of examples of both of those in the Bible, whether it means a building, but more often I think it means household or family. So then it's the Majay coming to the holy family, and then there's no in Matthew 2.11, then there's no uh hint at whether they're in inside a private home or in a cave, for example. It's just saying the Majay come to the family. So that's the traditional view. The Maeji come to visit the family at the cave, and that they uh there were no vacancies in the inn, in the hotel, motel, whatever we want to talk of, uh how we describe that. But now I want to come now to, and we've got PJ with us here from the Global Church History Project, who's done a lot of research on this, and I have to confess, he's kind of changed my view. I was kind of ambivalent about this and thought, oh, I don't know, yeah, whatever. Does it matter? And then he directed me to early church sources and particularly archaeology, but we'll come to him later. I want to first of all make clear the alternative revisionist view, and that view is that Jesus was born in a private home. And we're gonna split this up. Well, first of all, I'll tell you the view, and then we'll think about the alternatives from a linguistic point of view, then a sort of socio-historical point of view, and then we'll pull it together. So the private home theory is it's argued really by there was a guy called Kenneth Bailey, I think he was a kind of theologian who visited the Middle East and met, I think, Egyptians, Arabs, or Palestinians, and all sorts of people, and modern day people, and their testimony about their lifestyle impacted him, and then from that he put he began to develop this idea of imaginatively reconstructing what he felt would have been the situation of Jesus in the first century, and so in that in that idea, catalumma, which is the word that is translated in by the ESV and the King James Version, the argument is that should be translated as guest room in a private house. So it's guest room, and the idea it's a private dwelling, and it and that therefore Mary and Joseph, the idea is that Mary and Joseph were not social outcasts, they were not rejected from the social environment of Bethlehem or something. It wasn't that there were no vacancies in the motel or inn, it was rather that they that they had family, an extended family, and that there was an ancestral home in Bethlehem. Now, the Bible doesn't actually say any of this, but the idea is this is what is implied in it. So you have to kind of go with this. But the implic the idea is that there was an ancestral home, or they had extended family who had private home in Bethlehem, or I've even heard it suggested that simply because that they were descended from people in Bethlehem, they could have turned up to any private home in Bethlehem and kind of expected family hospitality there, but that there was no room in any of the private homes, or in the one specific one that was the extended family of Joseph or something like that. And then and what is meant by that is there was no room in the guest room. So the idea then is that the the private houses were essentially one room, uh and and that was an upstairs room that had a guest room, so there was like a room, a main living room where everybody lived in all the immediate family lived in that and ate in that, and it's all like an all-in-one living space, but that they did have a guest room, possibly on the roof or uh uh or it connected to that, and so the I and then downstairs in this like single room dwelling, the animals were kept in this single in this private dwelling. So the idea then is Mary and Joseph have turned up to this extended family accommodation in Bethlehem that isn't the the guest room is already occupied by other people, and therefore it's not that they are directed outside to a cave or a stable, but rather they are directed to go downstairs to share the space that the animals are in downstairs, and then Jesus is then put in the manger, so that then the idea is Jesus is not outside of normal human society in an isolated space accessible to everybody in that way, but rather Jesus is born into a welcomed family space in with all the busyness of normal life, and and the idea then is that that locates Jesus um right at the heart of family life and noise and chaos and all like normal life rather than outside of normal life. So the idea is that it's better to preach the Christmas story as not Jesus is at the there was no room for Jesus, make sure there's you you know, have you got room for him? That's the traditional way of preaching that, and rather the idea is the challenge from the revisionist view is Jesus was born at the heart of family life with all the mess and noise and uh busyness of family life, and therefore he is available to you in all the busyness of family life now. Have Jesus, you know, allow Jesus to be born in the middle of your home. So it's two kind of ways of preaching it, but the question is which one is actually historically the most plausible? And so we've could some of us have come to regard as part of the Christmas tradition, hearing the revisionist view that Jesus was actually born in the guest quarters of a single roomed private home in Bethlehem kind of thing, and that's become, you know, a lot of us have thought about that. But this other idea, that the traditional one, is it is that plausible? Like, why has that traditional view been held for so long? I mean, sometimes you might say, Oh, well, you know, the ancients and the people right down to the 19th century, they they they they weren't really studying carefully enough, or they didn't understand the language or the archaeology or things like that. And those ancient eastern church fathers didn't understand ancient eastern culture, even though they lived in it. Nevertheless, they we we now do understand that better now, and that an American visiting the Middle East in the 20th century is more able to understand Middle Eastern culture than the Christians who've lived there for hundreds and hundreds of years. It it could be, it could be that Kenneth Bailey is able to do that, or was able to do that, but it might not be true. It might be that the traditional view is more plausible. So we're gonna ask PJ to summarize for us some of the reasons why the traditional view and the idea that Mary and Joseph were turned away from a professional hostel, a caravanserae, whatever that is. We'll ask him to do that. And like, is it possible, like the a lot of the discussion seems to be what is a catalumma? That's the word Luke uses. Now he uses it elsewhere, doesn't he? And isn't it the other, isn't the other way let's first of all ask you to do this, because the argument as I've understood it is that the way Luke uses it, because Jesus later is looking to have the Pass his Passover meal in a room in Jerusalem, and the argument I've heard is Luke uses this word that can only mean a private guest room in a one-roomed house or something. But is that true? And what is what does Cataluma mean? Like, just if we look at the actual usages of it in the Bible, in the Septuagint, New Testament, Old Testament, and wider literature. I'll hand over to PJ.

Rev Dr PRB:

Well, I think we do appreciate any attempt to just understand the Bible, only looking at the Bible and not looking at any archaeology or literature or anything about the word cataluma and just saying, oh, there's a supper room here, and then we think that must define it. But uh it is kind of important with language to understand what this word actually means in its context, and we do look at oh, and when we looked at the like Mark 14, 14 and everything, and the Last Supper where Jesus says, Go and talk to the landowner, the how the house owner, or the event organizer, or however we take uh the sort of the the word for uh it's like oika uh uh oika despotes, yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, like the the how the master of the house, which sometimes means an event organiser or even a bartender, but uh so it's the but it's the property owner, yeah. And then the idea is where is the catalomba that the teacher needs to eat the m that's a it could be I mean that to when I read that just naturally, I'm expecting that to mean that Jesus has rented a room in a hotel, like a conference space or something.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah. I I agree that it is totally within the it's so it is a particular meaning they're reading onto this other passage, even if we enjoy the fact they're trying to work from the Bible. Yeah, I do like that.

SPEAKER_01:

I do like that, but that is ambiguous to me. It doesn't nig it when I read it just naturally, it doesn't require that he's asking where is the guest room in a private house. It reads to me like he's he's made arrangements, he's rented a space commercially.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah. Yeah. So that is the thing when we look at the word cataluma, mostly, and you get this in the sort of Lidl dictionary and so on, and they bring their citations, mostly sort of means an assigned quarters or assigned, you know. So that can be different things. You can pay for a place and then you get assigned a room, like in a hotel, but you can also barracks is a common word that we see associated with it that you see it in a lot of military context and that sort of thing, but it that that's in broader literature. There's a much more sort of pertinent, a much more immediate if we want to root it in its first century Israelite context. There's a an inscription called the Theodotus inscription, and it literally gives us a definition of cataluma, which is very helpful. So basically, there's this guy called Theodotus, he's an Archaea synagogue, you know, he's he's the leader of synagogue. He his dad is and his granddad was. So he's come from this illustrious line, and he's quite wealthy, but he's using his wealth to fund a catalomer, and he explains what that is. He says it's a multi-room complex, it's got many dormitories, it's got guest rooms in it, and he uses a different word than cataluma for the guest room, you know, notably, and it's also got running water systems, which is very important here, just for understanding exactly what was required. And he says the reason he does all this is for needy travellers. So, what was required for needy travellers included running water, and a key reason for that in The first century Israelite context is ritual purity. That you've got the temple, and all of worship is built around this temple, and you have to be ritually pure to enter into it. We see with Paul when he's done all his missionary stuff, he's been careful not to break ritual purity laws so we can just go straight into the temple. This is a big concern where they don't let people in. So if you're a pilgrim coming from afar, you need to stay in somewhere where you can remain ritually pure. And the Pharisees are sort of often in charge, sometimes it's the Sadducees, they're battling it out, but there's a popular consensus agreeing with the Pharisees, and we see in like Mark's gospel, they wash their hands even after buying anything from the market, so it could just be corn, like let alone any animal products or something that might be more defiling. You've got to ritually wash. So I think the idea that you would have pilgrims coming to the temple who would then be in a shared space with animals and manure and all that goes with that.

SPEAKER_01:

It's not totally believable.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah, I don't think so. And it wasn't just in Israel, like we can put it in its Near Eastern, a broader Near Eastern context. We find caravanserized sanctuaries all throughout the Levant and beyond, but especially the Levant, it's quite interesting to see. And these places for other cultures, for Phoenicians, for Assyrians, and others, they provide running water for ritual purity, but there's obviously different for a Baelite, there might be different ritual purity things, and they've got facilities for that. But you sequester the animals, you've got running water for ritual purities and all of that. That is considered necessary for travellers moving to and from Jerusalem, especially, or for any ritual purpose. So I think the idea that the expected norm was to stay with animals, or you know, in a single room area where we've just got animals running around, and apparently no running water, because the models they've got for this are very simple houses, which we've also found that archaeologically doesn't match up with what the archaeology is at all. We've looked at dozens of houses we've looked at, but uh we'll come to the archaeology more in a moment.

SPEAKER_01:

I'd like to just stick with the catalomer meaning, and there's a couple of points that we could just examine here that proponents some would argue this point about Mark 14, 14 and Luke 22, 11, is a private guest room, the upper room where Jesus held it. And this idea then that the guests are in a shared space with animals. So that was does that mean that the pass they're arguing that they ate the Passover and there are animals milling around at the Passover, which again is not the best possible preparation for ritual cleanliness.

Rev Dr PRB:

And we heard it pointed out recently, a vicar uh uh uh told us that what one thing that really goes against that theory of you've just got animals milling around single-room dwellings all the time, is because in the law of Moses, you're supposed to bring in a Passover lamb when you're preparing for Passover and only then. And so that's like a that's the exception that proves the rule. It's that you've got this one time where you have animals within your dwelling. So it can't at all be the case within an Israelite community that you've just always got these animals because then when you bring the lamb in, you can't bring the lamb in, it's already in, is and there's no difference.

SPEAKER_01:

That's a very powerful point. But also, I noticed that Jerome, who lived in the Middle East, didn't he, and that's one of his big things, he's often writing to people like Augustine and saying, Well, hang on, like make sure you understand this in its like linguistic historical context. When he translates the word in his Vulgate, he just translates it as divisorium, meaning a lodging, meaning a hotel. He just goes with that. So he does that, he understands it that way. But what about this argument? Oh, the the other thing that I found well, we'll come to that in a minute. Let's first of all do Luke apparently what has one time he has this other word, and it's in the parable of the Good Samaritan, and it's panda pandachion, which means the like a commercial inn or something, or something like that. And the some Good Samaritan uh uh entrusts the injured person to such a place, and that does look, you know, straightforwardly some sort of commer like place where strangers could be looked after. So he's like the argument I've heard then is if Luke is trying to indicate like a hotel, he would have used that word that he uses once in Luke 1034, and that is the word you would use for a lodging place, whereas catalumma is only ever used of a private dwelling.

Rev Dr PRB:

So, yeah, the problem with that, it's never used of a private dwelling. So yeah. So catalumma is never used of a private dwelling. The only potential one, Polybius Histor mentions Hasdrubal was killed in his own quarters, and some people argue, oh, that's like a private dwelling. But he's a general who's part of an occupying force who's stationed in an area, so it's probably just the quarters of his barracks, really, yeah. So it's within the total normal, a public accommodation, a publicly assigned accommodation and that sort of thing, whether charitable or military or diplomatic, you know, it's that same meaning. So it's that what they've oft what they often do when they argue Cataluma's so broad, it could be could mean a private dwelling. They look at all those different meanings. Oh, it could be a barracks, it could be a charitable thing, it could be. But it's like, well, those are all roughly the same thing. They're the same.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, they're like an institutional accommodation, yeah. Run by a charity, run by a businessman, run by an army. But what unites them all is it's like a public institutional accommodation that has multi-rooms facilities that will support a multi-room dwelling where you've got people renting or soldiers or whatever it is, all of that does kind of fall under the same range, but none of that is like a private one-room dwelling. Yeah.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah. So I think with that particular word meaning a paid accommodation, that there would be space within first century Greek as spoken by Jews at the time, especially, but I think even broader, for having specifying paid accommodation against charitable or assigned or other forms of accommodation, without that meaning a private place. So, like, you've got shelter given to travellers for free, gets called a catalom in the Theodotus inscription, but then one you pay for yourself, that can have a totally different word because it's essentially a different sort of operation.

SPEAKER_01:

So you you would say Panda Kion would fit with the idea of something that's entirely commercial situation where someone's just paid to look after someone, say, in the Good Samaritan story. But Cataluma, you're saying, never refers to a private dwelling, but all the usages are in fact some kind of institutional provision of accommodation to pilgrims, to strangers on travel, to poor people by a charity, to soldiers. Always it's that kind of environment where you would turn up and say, you know, I'm a soldier to be quartered, or it's a traveller, a pilgrim on the way to Jerusalem needing to be looked after, or whatever it is. But in every case, Catalum is an institutional provision of accommodation, you're saying. From what I've seen, that that is the case, and I'd be happy for people to disapprove, you know, but I I've looked at a lot of, you know, from polybius and you know it's it's clear that you've looked at a lot of the a lot of usages of it, and it's whatever let's say this, it's overwhelmingly we you would stand by this. Yeah, it's overwhelmingly used for institutional accommodation of some kind, not for private dwellings. But I what about this argument? There was an argument, and I think it's Kenneth Bailey, and some people have found this persuasive, that an inner Jesus refers to say he says, on the Sabbath, you would take your donkey out and give it water. So the the argument is the implication is you're taking the donkey out of your private dwelling. So the houses are kept, the the animals are kept inside a private dwelling. And so Jesus is saying, take your donkey out of your house to give it water. The impl implication is of your house. And Kenneth Bailey thought it was very powerful that in the 9th century, an Arabic translator adds the words from your house, because the Arabic translator in the 9th century, the argument from Kenneth Bailey is, would have been living in exactly the same way in night in a 9th century Arabic situation as people in Bethlehem were in the first century, and therefore when he adds the words from your house, he's correctly interpreting it. Is that plausible?

Rev Dr PRB:

So I think the the context of that translator, while closer than 20th or 19th century travellers, is still totally detached from the context. I think once you've got the destruction of the temple, all the need for ritual purity and so on just disappears, basically. So anything after that point essentially becomes irrelevant. But then between that and the first century, you've got things like the Talmud, is a late antique sort of collection of sayings and stuff attributed to earlier persons. In that, multi-room dwellings, yeah, and still some sense of ritual purity, and having animals stored elsewhere, having stables. So, in that particular passage with Jesus, he's just saying you leave it out of lead the donkey out of somewhere to get it water. And he's saying that the hypocrisy of that is it's the Sabbath, because it's like you're doing a bit of work on the Sabbath, but you do it to save your animal, to save his life.

SPEAKER_01:

So if he's in a stable and there's no water there, or a cave, just some some accommodation for the animal, yeah.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah, I mean a cave serving as a stable, you know, yeah. Just lead it out of there, you you lead it out of there to get it some water, then you put it back. You know, if if that's your situation, and maybe if you're much wealthier, you have that all sort of integrated, but he's saying there's people who do that, and therefore they're hypocrites, because they wouldn't save a human being on the Sabbath. So that's all he's saying, and he's doesn't in the text imply house, and it's only implied in that translation in an entirely different context. And between that translation and the first century, we've got all this stuff that talks about multi-room.

SPEAKER_01:

Uh like yeah, we'll come to that in a second, but it's the point being this this Arabic translator is from the 9th century, it's possibly 800 years distant and possibly in a to you know and in a totally different cultural environment, historical environment. If in between them, they've had the destruction of the temple, which has changed things entirely in terms of ritual purity. There's also been the rise of Islam, which has totally changed the environment and impoverished a lot of people. So there might have been people actually genuinely living in single rooms, like afterwards, because Islam always brings impoverishment, it never brings wealth. So that that's happened, and it's so it's it'd be like me commenting on the accommodation of English crusaders on their way, saying, ah, well, the people setting off from southern Wales to go on crusade in, say, the twelve like the 1200s or something. And whenever I tr whenever I travel, I like to travel in this way, and then it's like, well, dude, that's like 800 years ago. There's phenomenal differences in culture and situation. How couldn't you what is the relevance of your testimony to something 800 years ago?

Rev Dr PRB:

And like one sort of example uh in much closer where people misinterpret it, but in The Lord of the Rings, uh, the Fellowship of the Ring, it's mentioned that they have a truck. Oh wow, a truck. And so people are like, why not just drive the truck to Mordor? Because it it meant something like a cart or something, a bit like a small cart at the time. It meant something totally different, and so, like, just within a hundred years, we've got this word that we now use. So we would use it in a safe in the same sentence. It's like, I'm going to uh yeah, I'm going to London, gonna take my truck. Yeah, both persons could say it and mean something entirely different. So that's within a hundred years. Within you're changing language, there's no temple anymore. There is totally different, totally different people groups have settled into the area with totally different cultures and ideas about what's clean and unclean. Yeah. There's no way they know exactly what the meaning of this is.

SPEAKER_01:

It's just a warning to us, isn't it? Kenneth Bailey does argue that oral traditions are very stable and things mean exactly the same for huge amounts of time. That I'm not sure is plausible, or at least as plausible as he thought it was. And it just means that it's it like sure, an Arabic translator in the in in the ninth century thought something meant something. And you go, oh, that's kind of maybe interesting, but it's not really evidence, it's just a kind of oh, there's a guy who took a particular perspective. But it we would we can't weigh that very heavily. Still less can we weigh heavily when Kenneth Bailey references people he met in Palestine in the 20th century, and he literally at times says, This is how they live now in the 20th century, and I imagine that's how they lived in the first century. Again, it I find that to be honest, it was reading that that shifted me away from believing him. I was kind of open to being persuaded by the revisionist view, but when I read Kenneth Bailey, I thought, oh my, oh my days, like that's quite poor. That's not good enough to project back from far later sources. There must be more to it than that. But as we've looked into it, we find nah, it's like it's not likely. But maybe you could give us a little bit more now about the that that social historical context. Because the argument for the Kenneth Bailey idea is that Joseph goes back to his ancestral home and they were definitely the like extended family. So, in a way, he sometimes people say what the traditionalists have done is invented a fictional account that isn't directly like, for example, the word stable isn't ever used in the New Testament. So they'll say, Oh, you the traditionalists have imported a concept in that isn't directly stated, it's only implied. And that's a fair point. I I think you know, you we must be careful that to do that and just think what does it actually say and all that. But wanna again uh he has a kind of fictional account where he has Joseph coming and he's got extended family, and that they would have certain kinds of hospitality obligations, and then he knocks on the door and he's like, Hey, I'm giving oh, and then Kenneth Bailey has this idea that he would recite his genealogy to them, and that would be the ticket to be welcomed into the ancestral home, and then having done that, there's a certain amount of embarrassment because they're like, Oh, well, you have a right to the family accommodation, and it's not available right now. You're gonna have to share in the animals. Now, again, it's possible, it's possible, but it isn't actually in the text of the Bible, all this idea of the ancestral home and him coming and reciting his genealogy and all that kind of thing. But that's the idea. Also connected to that, though, is the idea of the Palestinian, as he calls it, house design, a single room dwelling with raised family living space and the lower area where animals were brought in at night for warmth and security. So there's that. And then Stephen Carlson has kind of got more on that. So let's ask PJ to reflect on that idea. Like, what about the social and archaeological evidence or the historical evidence we have? Is it, did everybody live in these single room accommodations where there's an upstairs for the people and a downstairs for the animals and the role? What does archaeology actually tell us about that? Because I've heard it said that on the basis of the archaeological reconstruction of a house at Nazareth, we can now extrapolate this to the first century, and basically, this is how everybody lived.

Rev Dr PRB:

So a key thing with that is the context between Judea and Galilee are totally different. They share the temple, they share that you know, they they share the scriptures, and most people in Galilee are believers, but you have the Galilee of the Gentiles and everything, so even then, not so much. So there's a bit of a problem when you're trying to apply anything found in Nazareth to Bethlehem, just off the bat, you think that actually doesn't seem appropriate at all. And we do see different architectural styles, different resources used, uh, different uh social hierarchies as we dig these things up. It seems really, in many ways, Galilee is culturally, economically, and and more linked to Syria and Judea to Egypt, which makes sense. These are essentially the economic centres, and they get drawn into that. It would make sense. If you just saw it on a map, you would probably assume this. So that that's a huge problem off the bat. But even then, archaeology loads has been done on Capernaum in Galilee to show what was life like up there, which shows multiple rooms.

SPEAKER_01:

Um So the the typical dwelling isn't a single room with humans on a kind of raised platform and animals underneath, but actually they lived in multi room accommodation.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah. Right. So there's this thing when you see the you're just an archaeologist and you dig things up, you see different walls and different configurations, and you've got to fill in the gaps. You've got to figure out what's going on. On, and if you're assuming subsistence dwelling level of economy, you might assume then, similar to other subsistent places who live in, like huts and things made of like reeds and that sort of thing, you're thinking, well, they're a bit above reeds because they're using basalt walls, but it's like it's roughly that. That's probably that's what you assume. But then they look much more thoroughly now, and they've found clear glass, for example, showing that's really expensive at the time, clear glass. Like now we can produce it relatively easily. I mean, still not nothing, but you know, uh, if you get like good crystal, but this it yeah, so they've got this just cutlery and crockery and all of that, pure clear glass in Caponium, and then other things they find coins from quite far away showing they're trading with other people. So part of the subsistence model is the idea each village produces everything they need, and they're all just dependent on the people next door, and they don't trade to and from anywhere else, but that's just not true. We can see the pottery, and we can see it's been stamped with where it was made, with there's a particular place that mass produces pottery, and that's what they mainly export, so that then they the economy of Israel overall and the particular kingdoms, Galilee and so on, are quite diverse. But individual places might be specialized, there might be essentially a pottery factory in one place, and so it's basically like a modern market economy. But one person I read that said it's like that, but sort of donkey paced, so it's like you don't instantly stock trade, like uh you know, if you get one of your stock trading apps, you can trade in Nigeria, even if you're in the UK, like instantly, so you can't do that in first century Israel, but you can there's a lot of trading going on between very distant places. We see like Lydia in in the New Testament does this trades very far away, but this is village life as well. That's what Capernaum shows and other finds, and then there's the way locks are configured, so that there are locks in these complexes to the outside world, and then the doors close within the complex, but they don't necessarily lock, but then they do lock out other parts of the complexes, so this isn't one big complex where extended families all lived in tiny hovels next to each other. Some are happy to you can walk anywhere within this segment of the complex, and some aren't happy for that, so they lock each other out. Meaning it looks like there's three or four houses that are made up of multiple rooms. But when they just first saw it, they thought, everyone's so poor here, they must have.

SPEAKER_01:

So it might have been like they might have originally thought, oh, there's 25 families here, and each one's living in a single room, like in the Kenneth Bailey in that theory. But now, where more archaeology has shown no, it may be like four or five families, but each one has like multi-room household, and we can see that because there's a like a front door with a with a front door lock on it, and then there's other doors that are the doors you would have internal to your home, like we would have, where you don't lock all your internal doors, but you have a serious lock on the external door, and that just looking at that reveals now. This isn't just lots of individual dwellings, but a smaller number of multi-room dwellings.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah, so that is hugely important, and yeah, and then then also there's a guy called Julian of Ascalon who wrote treaty treatises on construction, on how to build houses in he's in the fourth century, I think, fourth or fifth century Israel, and he's writing how they built houses then. So while that doesn't necessarily reflect the first century, it's more it's closer than it's a lot closer than the 9th century guy, yeah. So if he does something and then they don't later, that means a technology was lost and it was possessed in Israel. And quite interestingly, he mentions how they built upper stories up to four stories made of wood on top of so you could have your basalt base, and then you build with wood and plaster and things four stories up in a house, but archaeologically, so the wood all ruts rots away, and then you're just left with this basalt base, and then you're like, oh, so there's just this one room, or maybe you know, maybe three or four rooms up to five, maybe. But he's like, No, we he he tells us what he had seen, you know, and built. So, and this was a definitive treatise. It was this was how to build houses at the time that he did. It would so it has to be reliable. He has to be describing what people actually did, and what they actually did was build multiple houses up, so you don't have just one single room in a semi-bungalow sort of thing situation, you can have many floors, and so we can't always tell where there is because it's rotted away. But there's an argument from silence which doesn't apply because there isn't silence. We've got the archaeology, maybe silent, but there's an eyewitness who says, No, you can have four stories. He only goes up to that because he goes for common common people, but maybe very rich, you maybe had practical skyscrapers in Byzantium or something, who knows? But like you he could reliably, with local carpentry and everything, expect to build four stories on top of this base alt base. So that's the kind of reality of people describing what they're seeing in ancient Israel that has to be kept in mind. So that technology was lost after Islam, and then in some places in these areas is still lost, but that doesn't reflect the first century at all.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Okay, now let's just because we've run on a bit, let's just pull together this idea that it is an inn, but Luke defines it as the in. The inn. Not just an inn or a dwelling or something. So is that important to think of it as the inn, as if it's something that there's only one of at Bethlehem?

Rev Dr PRB:

So a key part of why they want to say Cataluma can can just mean practically anything you want it to mean. Well, the reason people argue that is because then all it is is describing when they earlier it mentions they had to find somewhere to stay, and then it's just you know where they were staying. If all it means is where you're staying, then they bring that up. But as we've shown, that's not true, it refers to a specific kind of institution.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah, so but there is one of them at Bethlehem, and it may even be referred to earlier in the Bible.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah, and and that is worth mentioning because you also get the Cataluma in the Theodosus inscription. So that you'd have in a site a caravanserai sort of uh situation, a professional hostel, uh, would be known in an area. And Herodotus before that, to use another source, he mentioned the Persians built this in specific places. Each would have a caravanserai all along the royal road going to Egypt. So that's important because uh there is going to Egypt from Jerusalem, a caravanserai mentioned at Bethlehem in the book of Jeremiah, is it?

SPEAKER_01:

And Jeremiah 41, 17 refers to the like a specific institutional kind of lodging place, yeah.

Rev Dr PRB:

For needy travellers, for example. For needy travellers.

SPEAKER_01:

Where the Theodotus inscription tells us a catalomma is or catalumata catalumata are and and the septuagint has other examples of the word used, specific like Moses stays at a catalomer in in their the Septuagint when he's on his way back to Egypt. But it's probably the same one, yeah. He so that Bethlehem Inn was running at Moses' time, Jeremiah's time, and then the holy family stays at it.

Rev Dr PRB:

Oh my god, that is so great that it's got like this huge ancient history to it. And as you're thinking of that, then that throughout the Bible, the idea that there is a hostelry in Bethlehem on the road to Egypt, whenever that phrase gets mentioned, you're thinking that's important, it's building on that. So when Luke mentions at Bethlehem the inn, you're thinking, and it's that word cataluma that gets used with Moses and everything, he's obviously drawing on that passage, like to just view it in isolation or only with one other verse and then ignore all the others, is totally wrong. Clearly, the uh cataluma on the road to Egypt is a sort of something you're meant to have in mind biblically. Yeah, that's it.

SPEAKER_01:

And it certainly is the one in Jeremiah, which is at Bethlehem.

Rev Dr PRB:

Yeah. So And then the Persi that the Persians kept caravanteris going, because people might say, oh, the Babylonians destroyed things, you know, and that's true, but if this is such a strategic location that it keeps popping up, Bethlehem, as a Caravanterai location, the Persians would obviously rebuild that. And so that's the sort of thing. They this is what they're sort of known for. Herodotus mentions it. So he's a Greek, I think, but he he loves what the Persians have done with this infrastructure.

SPEAKER_01:

Okay, so where we've got to is that the traditional view is the holy family come to Jerusal come to Bethlehem in order to register. It's the family home and their ancestries there, and that there is an institutional lodging place there, which Jeremiah refers to, and the word Cataluma means means that, uh like an institutional lodging place. And this inscription, the what's it, the Theodotus inscription actually defines Cataluma as such a place with uh get quarters for people to stay at and so on, and therefore, when there is no room in that institutional lodging place, the holy family end up with accommodated with the animals, which is what the Bible doesn't define that as either a wooden structure or a cave or anything, but the very earliest memories of it, universally so in the Eastern Church, is that it we he was born in a cave and with the animals in a cave. So that's a traditional view. There is an alternative view that actually a catalomer can can conceivably refer to a private dwelling, a single-roomed private dwelling, and there's an upstairs for humans and a downstairs for animals, and Jesus is born there with the animals, but in a shared family space rather than outside the village in in a cave. And then people derive different sermons from that. I I have to say, I've come increasingly, I mean I'm increasingly not persuaded by Kenneth Bailey's revisionism. What I do like is the desire that people have to say, well, what does the Bible actually say? And let's go back to that and stick really, really closely to the text of the Bible. I like that, but I think what PJ's helped us see is that even when we do that, it still supports the traditional view of the birth of Jesus. PJ, if people wanted to, you you've written a lot about this with extensive footnotes. How could a person access that if they really want to go deeper?

Rev Dr PRB:

So on patreon.com slash global church history, we've got this free, an article on there, and it will be updated as we hear people's arguments to uh uh for and against this, you know. So keep you know keep refreshing it, uh see see what we've uh we've written them. But already we've got a pretty good one, and we're working on second drafts and so on. Uh so it's on there, you should be everyone should be able to access it. So that's patreon.com slash global church history.

SPEAKER_01:

And if you go to the global church history Facebook uh fit page, you'll find lots of these resources. But this one is an article called How We Know Jesus Was Born in a Stable After Being Turned Away from an Inn. And there's extensive material there with lots of footnotes and archaeological reports and all kinds of things. So if you want to explore that and assess it for yourself and contribute to the discussion, I'm not the expert on it, but uh there's other people that have really kind of got into this one way or the other. Have a think about it. And that's it. We hope this was just a special episode of the Christ Centered Cosmic Civilization, just to have a think through this.

Contributor

Rev Dr Paul Blackham

Host