No Room at the Inn?

I found myself retelling my experience of visiting Bethlehem in May yesterday. The primary point of interest -the argument by our intructor that the translastion "there was no room at the inn" is ridiculous. In the Middle East hospitality is an extremely high cultural value and that much more so within a family. Given Joseph is travelling to his ancestoral home it is inconcievable that they would not have family in Bethlehem and equally inconcievable that family would not have hosted them. However, given the census it is very possible that there was a lot of family in town and that this may have made accomadations cramped. A typical Judean house at the time was a four room house: the family's sleeping quarters, the kitchen, the storage/work/animal room and the front room - where guests were entertained. Therefore, our instructor argued that it is far better to understand the meaning as there was no space in the guest room (of the family house) and so Mary and Joseph stayed/gave birth in the storage/animal room (which was empty since the flocks were in the fields). This room would have contained a stone manger (as pictured below) for when the animal were there and being stone was not the type of item that moved much. So you can now spend the rest of Christmas break redesigning your nativity set...