Kenneth Bailey, a lecturer and expert in the Middle East, wrote an excellent book a few years ago encouraging the reader to view the Gospel stories of Jesus through Middle Eastern eyes. Not an easy book to plunge into as bedtime reading, but well worth wrestling with. A key point he makes is that we often read what we want to read in the Bible, through a lens coated with modern thoughts, and expectations of the text. So we are prone to misreading the Bible, getting some of the facts wrong, and then compounding our thinking every time we read the same story, until it becomes fact for us. The question he basically poses is this: ‘What happens when something is so familiar from the Bible that we are no longer reading the biblical text, but the inherited story, an interpretation of the actual writing to suit what is in our heads?’
The director’s cut
It’s a bit like going to your local cineplex and watching a film drawn from a book you know well. The director of the film decides to change the plot, or miss a bit of the story out, or change a character to make the action more exciting. You know that the director has changed the story, but someone just coming to the story via the film thinks that it is correct. Eventually everyone thinks that Lord of the Rings is accurate in the film. As any Tolkien reader knows, this isn’t the case.
This is maybe not so serious regarding Tolkien, but a bit more so when considering the Bible. It is a question of exegesis, which is about digging into the words of the Bible, and finding the original meaning. It is about learning to read the text carefully and to ask the right questions of it. What did it actually mean then, rather than what I would like it to mean now?
The nativity
Let’s explore the first part of the story of Jesus’ birth in Luke 2:1-7. This is possibly our most familiar Christian story, and aside from the story of the crucifixion, is the most repeated story in the Christian Church. So, is our understanding accurate, and are we reading it correctly? Deeply ingrained in the popular mind is ‘the late-night-arrival-imminent-birth myth’ (as Bailey calls it), and the actual birth in the back stable of an ‘inn’.
Sometimes things in the Bible are so familiar that we no longer read the biblical text, but regurgitate the inherited story
The text says none of this. It does say that due to a census, family leaders had to return to the town of their origin to register themselves. He might not have been born there, but Joseph was from the royal line of David, and so returned to Bethlehem (locally known as ‘the City of David’ – Luke 2:4, even though that was officially Jerusalem) with pregnant Mary. People from Bethlehem were rightly proud of their lineage to King David. The text indicates that Joseph and Mary were already in the city of David the time came for the baby to be born, and maybe had been for a little while (Luke 2:6). None of this frantic banging on doors late at night that we sometimes see in films. In fact, given the understanding in the Middle East then (as now) of honour and community, can we really believe that this young couple would have been left to themselves at this dangerous time? Remember that Mary has family locally – in the hills of Judea lived her cousin Elizabeth who had recently given birth to John (Luke 1:39).
Undoubtedly there was a door open for the couple either in Bethlehem by virtue of Joseph’s lineage, or very close by due to Mary’s family. They are already resident in Bethlehem as the birth approaches, so where do we now get this idea of a stable and an inn, a gruff innkeeper and ‘No Vacancy’ signs? Because of inherited misunderstandings repeated down through the ages. Most Middle Eastern houses contained a living or sleeping quarter for the family in an upper section, and in a lower section an area where the precious family livestock of maybe a cow, working donkey and a few sheep were secured inside at night. The animal feeding mangers might be cut out of the stone of this simple dwelling, often built into the hill, maybe as part of existing caves. A slightly more wealthy family might also have a guest room (katalyma in Greek) for visitors at the other end of the house, in the ‘upper room’ of the house. The text says that Jesus was placed in the manger because there was no ‘space’ (topos in Greek) in the ‘guest room’. We don’t know why there was no space in the guest room, but undoubtedly Bethlehem had many visitors at this time. So, no late night rush to Bethlehem, no inn, no innkeeper, no shut door.
What can we learn from this reflection? Simply, what does the text actually say. Now, what are we going to do with the nativity story this year?
