Finding Room

How many of you have read the Christmas story and thought that innkeeper must have been a royal bum? I must admit that the thought has crossed my mind on more than one occasion. How could any decent person put a pregnant woman close to birth in a stable to spend the night? What an absolute jerk! You were thinking it but didn't say it. It might surprise you then to learn that there was likely no innkeeper at this place. It fact this place was likely not much of an inn at all.

Let's take a closer look at the Christmas story as Luke records it in his gospel.
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to his own town to register. 4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn. Luke 2:1-7

There are two Greek words for the English inn. The first is pandoceion, which means a place where travelers may lodge. Luke uses this word to describe the place the Good Samaritan took the man who had been robbed. The second word is kataluma, which means to stop or end a journey. This is what Luke describes in chapter 2.

The kataluma was unlikely a place with guest rooms but rather was a crude shelter built to serve as a type of overnight rest area. The building would have had two sections, one for the people and the other for the animals. There are two choices for Mary and Joseph regarding the inn. Either there was no room where the people slept and they were forced to sleep with the animals or there was no room at all and they slept outside of the structure. In any case it was no place to give birth to a baby.