New Test. Stud. , pp. –.

© Cambridge University Press, 

doi:10.1017/S0028688509990282

The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary

in Bethlehem: Κατάλυμα in Luke 2.7*
S T E P H E N C. CA R L S O N
Duke University, 209 Gray Bldg., Durham, NC 27708, USA.
email: [email protected]

The identity of the κατάλυμα in Luke . has been debated among Western
scholars for over five hundred years. Proposals have ranged from an inn to a
guest room. This article argues that the term κατάλυμα has a generic sense
of ‘place to stay’ and that the final clause of Luke . should be rendered
‘because they had no space in their place to stay’. Moreover, three clues in the
context—Joseph’s compliance with the census order, the betrothal of Mary,
and the manger—suggest that the accommodations presupposed by Luke are a
marital chamber too small for giving birth.
Keywords: Lukan infancy account, Luke ., κατάλυμα, marital chamber, betrothal,
census

. Introduction

The inn and the stable have long been familiar elements of Christmas
pageants and nativity crèches, but the Lukan infancy account is hardly explicit
about the accommodations for Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem. Nevertheless, tra-
ditional interpretations of the story can be tenacious even in the light of scholarship
showing that they are unsupported by the text. In , the great and outspoken
philologist at the University of Salamanca, Francisco Sánchez de las Brozas,
known as ‘El Brocense’, discovered this the hard way when his students reported
him to the Spanish Inquisition. He had criticized the depictions of the nativity in

* I would like to thank Mark Goodacre, Maria Doerfler, and Jason Staples for their helpful com-
ments on an earlier draft of this article. Any remaining errors are my responsibility.
 El Brocense’s proceedings before the Spanish Inquisition were published by Antonio Tovar
and Miguel de la Pinta Llorente, eds., Procesos Inquisitoriales contra Francisco Sánchez de
las Brozas (Documentos para la historia del humanismo español ; Madrid: Instituto
Antonio de Nebrija, ) and earlier by Martin Fernandez Navarrete, Miguel Salvá, and
Pedro Sainz de Baranda, eds., Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España
 (vol. ; Madrid: La Viuda de Calero, ).
 The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem 

church paintings, and one of his criticisms was that Jesus was not born in the stable
nor were his parents rejected by an innkeeper as commonly thought, but that Mary
gave birth in a private home belonging to friends or relatives. Summoned before
the Inquisitors later in September, El Brocense defended his positions in writing,
and, as a result, the files of the Spanish Inquisition contain one of the earliest his-
torical-critical exegeses of the Lukan birth narrative.
El Brocense’s defense of his position is still cogent five centuries later, and
many of his arguments enjoy support from contemporary scholars. For
example, he recognized that neither the Greek term κατάλυμα in Luke . nor
even its Vulgate rendering diversorium necessarily means an ‘inn’ as evident
from the use of the same term in Luke . referring to an upper room.
Moreover, there would have been no need for an inn, El Brocense argued,
because Joseph had to return to his own town according to the decree, so he
must have had family—if not his own house—in Bethlehem where he could
stay. El Brocense also denied that there would have been a throng of census

 According to the declaration of Juan Collado, El Brocense was originally circumspect about
this matter: ‘Dijo: que en la dicha leçión el dicho maestro dijo que lo que se dice en la scriptura
de que nuestro Señor estuvo en el pesebre, que no se avía de entender como comúnmente se
piensa sino de otra manera: e que de la manera que se avía de entender no lo declaró’ (Tovar
and Llorente, Procesos Inquisitoriales, –). El Brocense’s actual position as summarized
above became clearer during the proceedings.
 El Brocense’s exegesis of Luke .– has been published in Tovar and Llorente, Procesos
Inquisitoriales, –, and Fernandez Navarrete et al., Colección, –. Credit for bringing
this to the attention of contemporary scholarship belongs to Dionisio Yubero, ‘Una opinión
original del “Brocense” sobre Luc. ,’, CB  () –.
 The least convincing of his arguments would have to be his appeal to the ‘house’ (οἰκίαν) of
Matt .. Not only would this now be considered an improper harmonization to the Matthean
account by modern standards, but it also falls short by his own standards since he argued in
another context that the Magi did not arrive in Bethlehem for another a year or two: ‘Magos
Christum Dominum adoraturos post annum unum vel duos potiùs venisse’ (Tovar and
Llorente, Procesos Inquisitoriales, ).
 Tovar and Llorente, Procesos Inquisitoriales, : ‘Diversorium autem non hic accipitur pro eo
quod vulgò dicimus meson, sed pro quavis habitatione privata ut lib. [.o Regum c. ], et [D.
Lucæ c. ]: ubi est diversorium ubi pascha cum discipulis meis manducem? Græcè
κατάλυμα’. (The Biblical citations are corrected from Fernandez Navarrete et al.,
Colección, , and appear to refer to  Kings . and Luke . more precisely.) The
instance of κατάλυμα in Luke . where it does not mean ‘inn’, is routinely noted by
scholars.
 Tovar and Llorente, Procesos Inquisitoriales, : ‘Venit igitur Joseph aut in domum suam (erat
enim civis Beleemita de domo David) aut certè in domum alicujus propinqui, si propria
domus erat inquilinis locata’. Less persuasively, El Brocense goes on to cite Theophylact’s
view that Bethlehem was also Mary’s hometown. That Joseph could count on the hospitality
of his relatives has often been pointed out in the literature. See, for example, Bruce J. Malina
and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis:
Fortress, d ed. ) : ‘If close family was not available, mention of Joseph’s lineage would
 STEPHEN C. CARLSON

registrants descending upon Bethlehem because subjects did not need to register
on a specific day. As for the placement of the baby in a manger, El Brocense
pointed out that this was hardly unusual because farmhouses often kept
animals in the same part of the house where the people slept. Unfortunately,
these arguments did not sway the Inquisitors, and El Brocense was reprimanded.
Five hundred years after El Brocense argued that the Lukan account did not
refer to an ‘inn’, this idea that Joseph and Mary were turned away from the
inn retains its hold upon scholars of Luke’s infancy narrative. Part of the
reason for this tenacity is that the ‘inn’ continues to be a staple among leading

have resulted in immediate village recognition that he belonged and space in a home would
have been made available’. Also Santi Grassi, Luca (Commenti biblici; Rome: Borla, ) :
‘Con tutta probabilità i genitori di Gesù erano ospiti nella casa natale di Giuseppe o presso
parenti’; and M. Miguens, ‘“In una mangiatoia, perchè non c’era posto…”’, Bibbia e Oriente
 () –.
 Tovar and Llorente, Procesos Inquisitoriales, : ‘Nec tamen necesse erat eodem die omnes
adesse: satis enim fuit intra præscriptum aliquem diem profiterentur’. In fact, those subjected
to the census had an entire year to register. See S. R. Llewelyn, ‘§ “And everyone went to his
own town to register”’, New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity: A Review of the Greek
Inscriptions and Papyri published in – (vol. ; Macquarie University: The Ancient
History Documentary Research Centre, ) ; and Marcel Hombert and Claire Préaux,
Recherches sur le Recensement dans l’Égypte Romain (Papyrologica Lugduno-Batava; Leiden:
Brill, ) –, .
 Tovar and Llorente, Procesos Inquisitoriales, –: ‘Itaque dicit Evangelista: quia non erat eis
locus in diversorio, id est, quia in illa domo nec erant cunæ, nec alius commodior locus ubi
collocatur puer, in præsepio posuerunt eum. Solet enim fieri multis in regionibus (quod
sæpè videmus et in nostris) ut in eadem parte domus et domini et boves et jumenta commor-
entur’. Nowadays scholars bolster the observation by pointing to Near Eastern homes: e.g.,
Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels
(Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, ) –; and Gustaf Dalman, Sacred Sites and
Ways: Studies in the Topography of the Gospels (trans. Paul P. Levertoff; New York:
Macmillan, ; Germ. ed. ) –.
 Aubrey F. G. Bell, Francisco Sanchez El Brocense (Hispanic Notes and Monographs ; Oxford:
Oxford University, ) –, makes the case that El Brocense was reprimanded instead of
being imprisoned because he was under the protection of Pedro de Portocarrero, who later
became Grand Inquisitor in . Five days after the latter’s death on September , ,
the Inquisition again moved against El Brocense, who died the following December under
house arrest at the age of .
 The most thorough recent studies include Bailey, Jesus, extending the observations of Kenneth
E. Bailey, ‘The Manger and the Inn: The Cultural Background of Luke .’, NETR  () –
; and Pierre Benoit, ‘“Non erat eis locus in diversorio” (Lc ,)’, Mélanges bibliques en
hommage au R. P. Béda Rigaux (ed. Albert Descamps and R. P. André de Halleux;
Gembloux: Duculot, ) –.
 A case in point is L. Paul Trudinger, ‘“No Room in the Inn”: A Note on Luke .’, ExpT 
() –, who argues that the innkeeper was actually ‘compassionate’ and ‘sensitive’
for turning away the family from a place infested with ‘thieves and cut-throats’. Trudinger
 The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem 

translations of Luke. For example, the New Revised Standard Version renders the
description of the accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Luke .– as follows:

⁶ Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἐκεῖ ἐπλήσθησαν αἱ ἡμέραι τοῦ τεκεῖν

αὐτήν, ⁷ καὶ ἔτεκεν τὸν υἱὸν αὐτῆς τὸν πρωτότοκον, καὶ ἐσπαργάνωσεν
αὐτὸν καὶ ἀνέκλινεν αὐτὸν ἐν φάτνῃ, διότι οὐκ ἦν αὐτοῖς τόπος ἐν τῷ
καταλύματι.

⁶ While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child.⁷ And she
gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid
him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn. (NRSV)

This familiar translation rests on a series of questionable exegetical decisions.

First, it renders καταλύματι as ‘inn’, even though many scholars recognize that
this translation is unsatisfactory and favor something more general such as
‘guest room’. Second, its rendering of the definite article τῷ before
καταλύματι as ‘the’ reinforces the overly specific translation of the noun—not
only does the v.  refer to an ‘inn’, but to ‘the inn’, as if the inn was well known
or the only one in town. Finally, this translation construes the dative αὐτοῖς,
not as a dative of possession with the verb ἦν in accordance with leading gram-
mars of the NT, but with τόπος as a dative of advantage: no ‘place for them’
in the inn. The English thus portends that Joseph and Mary never had a room
in the inn at all, leading readers to reflect upon the cruel inhospitality of the

did not extrapolate his thesis, however, to the story of the Good Samaritan, who arranged for
the beaten traveler to be put up in an inn (Luke .–).
 So Frederick Danker, ‘κατάλυμα’, BDAG () : ‘The sense of inn is possible in Lk .,
but in . Lk uses πανδοχεῖον, the more specific term for inn. κ[ατάλυμα] is therefore
best understood here as lodging…or guest-room, as in .; Mark ., where the contexts
also permit the sense dining-room’ (citations omitted). Also favoring ‘guest-room’ include
Rinaldo Fabris, I Vangeli: Luca (Assisi: Cittadella, ) : ‘stanza degli ospiti’; Bailey,
Jesus, –; Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (NICNT; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, )
; Ben Witherington III, ‘Birth of Jesus’, Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (Downer’s
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, ) –; and Matthew Byrne, ‘No Room for the Inn’, Search .
() –.
 So L. Legrand, ‘The Christmas Story in Lk .–’, ITS  () – at : ‘the use of the
article (the kataluma) implies that the text does not speak of any inn but of a well defined
place’.
 F. Blass, A. Debrunner, and Robert W. Funk [hereinafter ‘BDF’], A Greek Grammar of the New
Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago, )  §
(); A. T. Robertson, A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical
Research (New York: Hodder & Stoughton, th ed. ) .
 E.g., Benoit, ‘Non erat’, .
 STEPHEN C. CARLSON

innkeeper who rejected them in their time of need so that Jesus had to be born in
a dirty stable.
Other translations are hardly better at rendering the Greek and some are even
worse. The NIV, for example, follows the AV in translating the final clause of v.  as
‘because there was no room for them in the inn’. This rendition of τόπος with the
English ‘room’, which can refer to a chamber as well as a space, strengthens the
mistranslation of κατάλυμα as ‘inn’. The updated NIV, called Today’s New
International Version (TNIV), rewrites the clause as ‘because there was no
guest room available for them’, merging τόπος and κατάλυμα into a single
noun phrase, ‘guest room’. By this device, the TNIV manages to avoid the familiar
‘inn’ when translating κατάλυμα, but, by preserving the interpretation of αὐτοῖς
as a dative of advantage, it maintains the same theological reading of the Lukan
infancy account undergirding that of the traditional ‘inn’—the entry of Jesus
into the world was accompanied by human inhospitality and rejection.
A common exegetical pitfall plaguing the interpretation of κατάλυμα in Luke
. is that interpreters begin by being too specific as to its meaning. One example
is Raymond Brown. His analysis of the meaning of κατάλυμα does not begin
with ascertaining its sense but with surveying various of its proposed referents,
which he lists as: ‘A private home’, ‘A room in an unidentified place’, and ‘The
inn, or more specifically, the well-known traveler’s inn at or near Bethlehem’.
The first two possibilities are presented with an English indefinite article while
the third has the definite article, so it should not be surprising that Brown
rejects the first two options due to the Greek article in the phrase ἐν τῷ
καταλύματι: ‘The definite article before katalyma remains an obstacle to translat-
ing it “a room” ’. While the ‘inn’ option has Brown’s sympathies, he is troubled
by Luke’s use of a more specific term for inn in the parable of the Good Samaritan

 Noted, e.g., by Bailey, Jesus, .

 Raymond E. Brown, The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy Narratives in the
Gospels of Matthew and Luke (ABRL; New York: Doubleday, new upd. ed. ; st ed. )
.
 Brown, Birth, .
 Brown, Birth, , also arguing for the first option: ‘Yet Luke’s use of the definite article seems
to preclude his referring to a totally unidentified home’.
 Specifically, Brown, Birth, , dispels modern misconceptions about such an inn and appeals
to a khan near to Bethlehem mentioned  years earlier in Jer .. Other recent scholars
supporting the ‘inn’ interpretation include: Robert J. Miller, Born Divine: The Births of Jesus
and Other Sons of God (Santa Rosa, CA: Polebridge, ) , : ‘travelers’ shelter’;
Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based
on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, d ed. ) .; Michael D.
Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm (JSNTSS ; Sheffield: Sheffield University, ) : ‘a
single public hostelry for travellers’; and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke
(I–IX) (AB ; New York: Doubleday, ) : ‘a public caravansary or khan, where
groups of travelers would spend the night under one roof’.
 The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem 

at ., πανδοχεῖον. Ultimately, Brown gives up and decides that is impossible

to ascertain what Luke meant, opting for a more ambiguous term ‘lodgings’.
Had Brown begun with κατάλυμα’s sense instead of its possible referents, on
the other hand, it would have been possible to settle on the scope of meaning
for κατάλυμα and its appropriate English translation, and only then to determine
what kind of accommodation κατάλυμα refers to in the particular context of Luke
.–.

. The Sense of Κατάλυμα

To ascertain the sense of κατάλυμα it is important to consider its deri-

vation, the word’s usage in Hellenistic Greek texts, how it was used in the
Septuagint (LXX) to render the Hebrew, its NT usage, and ancient translations of
it into Syriac, Coptic, and Latin at Luke .. All of this evidence bears out the con-
clusion that κατάλυμα was a generic term with the sense of ‘place to stay’ or
‘accommodations’. Due to its broad sense, the term has referred to various
kinds of accommodations, whose particular identification can only be determined
by examining the specific context in which the term was used.
The derivation of κατάλυμα suggests that the word has a broad, generic
meaning. This noun is a verbal substantive formed by adding the −μα,
−ματος suffix to the stem of the verb καταλῦσαι, ‘to untie’ or ‘to unloose’,
which, when used for unpacking one’s belongings, means ‘to lodge’. This
suffix denotes the result of the verb’s action, so one would expect κατάλυμα
to mean ‘the result of unpacking’ or ‘the result of lodging’, yet by its earliest attes-
tation in the third century BCE, it has already acquired the sense of ‘the place of
lodging’. As a result, the usage of κατάλυμα, not just its derivation, is important
for determining the scope of its meaning.
The earliest attested uses in the Hellenistic era also substantiate a generic sense
for κατάλυμα. The term appears twice in Polybius’s History. At .. Hasdrubal,

 Brown, Birth, .

 Brown, Birth, . Benoit, ‘Non erat’, , whom Brown cites, also suggests that it is perhaps
wrong (due to our excessive historicizing and psychologizing of this text) for us to want to
specify too much what Luke wanted to put there: ‘A côté de cela, le κατάλυμα a peu de
poids, et on a peut-être tort de vouloir trop préciser ce qu’il a voulu y mettre’.
 For a discussion of the distinction between sense and reference, see, e.g., Grant R. Osborne, The
Hermeneutical Spiral: A Comprehensive Introduction to Biblical Interpretation (Downers
Grove, IL: InterVarsity, ) ; and Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An
Introduction to Lexical Semantics (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, rev. ed. ) –.
 See, e.g., Danker et al., ‘καταλύω’, BDAG () –. This sense development is hardly
unique; in Biblical Aramaic, for example, the verb ‫ׁשרא‬, ‘to loosen’, also means ‘to abide’, as
does the Syriac verb .
 Herbert Weir Smyth, Greek Grammar (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, ) – § ;
BDF, – § ().
 STEPHEN C. CARLSON

the Carthaginian general and Hannibal’s brother-in-law who had governed Spain
for eight years, was murdered at night in his own quarters (ἐν τοῖς ἑαυτοῦ
καταλύμασι). The sense of the word is hardly specific; it can perhaps refer to
the rooms where the general slept in his palace. The other instance occurs at
Hist. .. where Polybius states that the Roman ambassadors sent to Illyria
were not properly furnished with room and board (μήτε κατάλυμα δοθῆναι
σφίσι μήτε παροχήν) by their Dalmatian hosts. In the Letter of Aristeas , the
term is used when the king orders that the finest quarters (καταλύματα…τὰ
κάλλιστα) near the citadel be assigned to the seventy translators of the Hebrew
scriptures. As another example, Diodorus Siculus used the term to describe the
reward of public accommodations (δημόσιον…κατάλυμα) that the Romans gave
to Timasitheus for rescuing their ambassadors from pirates (Bibliotheca historica
..). Furthermore, κατάλυμα also occurs several times among the Greek
papyri recovered in Egypt. According to a detailed study of housing terms in the
papyri by Geneviève Husson, κατάλυμα and its cognates καταλυμάτιον and
κατάλυσις were employed for the quarters supplied for kings, generals, soldiers,
artisans, and pilgrims. She concludes that all these usages have a common,
underlying sense: ‘the dwelling where one stays or remains for some time’.
The diversity of referents for κατάλυμα in the LXX corroborates a broad sense
for the word. Indeed, κατάλυμα translates seven different Hebrew words. In
Exod ., it renders ‫ מלון‬in reference to a place where Moses and his family
spent the night on his way into Egypt (cf. also Jer .). Κατάλυμα twice trans-
lates ‫נוה‬, a ‘shepherd’s abode’, at Exod . and Jer . LXX (.) in a meta-
phor for God’s dwelling in the promised land. Its reference to a nomad’s dwelling
is evident at  Kgdms .,  Chron ., and Sir ., where it is used in paralle-
lism with σκηνή (‘tent’). In Jer . LXX (.), it is used in the simile that ‘he has
left his lair like a lion’ (‫)עזב ככפיר סכו‬. In Ezek . it was added by the translator as
a general term for Oholibah’s dwelling place during Israel’s sojourn in Egypt.
Three times in the LXX (but corresponding only once to a particular Hebrew
word) it refers to the accommodations of both room and board given to priests
at a temple ( Kgdms .; . ‫ ;לׁשכתה‬ Chron .). Finally, the author of 
Macc . bewails the fact that Jerusalem has become a place for Gentiles to
stay (κατάλυμα τοῖς ἔθνεσιν).

 Geneviève Husson, Oikia: Le vocabulaire de la maison privée en Égypte d’après les papyrus
grecs (Papyrologie ; Paris: Sorbonne, ) –. The usage in the Roman period is much
less clear, however; it occasionally refers to some kind of agricultural building.
 Husson, Oikia, : ‘c’est le logis où l’on descend, où l’on séjourne pendant quelque temps’.
 Studies of the Septuagintal usage of κατάλυμα include: Salvador Muñoz Iglesias, Los
Evangelios de la Infancia III: Nacimiento e infancia de Juan y de Jesús en Lucas – (vol. ;
Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos, ) ; Anna Passioni dell’Acqua, ‘Ricerche
sulla versione dei LXX e i papiri’, Aegyptus  () –, at –; Benoit, ‘Non erat’,
–.
 The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem 

The NT usage of κατάλυμα apart from Luke . coheres with its having a
broad meaning. At both Luke . and its parallel at Mark ., Jesus instructs
his disciples to ask a man carrying a jar in Jerusalem about accommodations for
eating the Passover: ποῦ ἐστιν τὸ κατάλυμα. Translations usually render this
instance of κατάλυμα rather specifically as ‘guest room’, but the generality of
κατάλυμα is evident from the further specification in both Luke and Mark that
the place to stay is a ‘large, furnished upper room’ (ἀνάγαιον μέγα
ἐστρωμένον). We know that κατάλυμα refers to a ‘guest room’ in this context,
not because the sense of the word is so specific, rather because the context
makes its reference specific. Moreover, when Luke wanted to be specific about
an inn, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, the author used a precise
term, πανδοχεῖον (Luke .).
The earliest translations of Luke . into Syriac, Coptic, and Latin bear witness to
a generic meaning for κατάλυμα. Among the Syriac translations, the Peshitta for
instance renders ἐν τῷ καταλύματι broadly with the clause ,
‘where they were dwelling’. As another example, the ultra-literal Harklensis trans-
lation follows its Greek Vorlage in the use of a prepositional phrase: ,
‘in the house of dwelling’. As for the Old Syriac, the translator of the Sinaitic may
have felt the generic κατάλυμα to be superfluous and omitted it, rendering the
final clause of v.  simply as , ‘because they had no

place’. Like the Syriac translations, the Coptic translations also render
κατάλυμα with a generic phrase, in this case, as ‘place of dwelling’: maNqoile
(Sahidic) and maNouox (Bohairic). At first blush, the Vulgate and most of the Old
Latin translations of ἐν τῷ καταλύματι as in diversorio may seem to support a stric-
ter understanding for the phrase as ‘in the inn’, but in Classical times, the noun diver-
sorium (or devorsorium) still had a wider sense of a ‘lodging-place’. As El Brocense
had pointed out, Cicero wrote in a letter to Gallus: ‘Nor more willingly would I buy a
place to stay (diversorium) at Tarricina, so I would not ever be bothersome to my
host’ (Book ). In this context, the meaning of ‘inn’ for diversorium is difficult to
sustain. Another Old Latin translation, found in Codex Palatinus (e), renders
κατάλυμα with the word stabulum, which meant a ‘standing-place, abode,

 The Matthean parallel at . is even less specific: πρὸς σὲ ποιῶ τὸ πάσχα (‘with you [or, at
your house] I will do the Passover’).
 This is what caused Brown, Birth, , to back off from translating κατάλυμα as ‘inn’.
Goulder, Luke, , on the other hand, merely sees πανδοχεῖον as synonymous.
 Surveyed by, for example, Benoit, ‘Non erat’,  n. .
 The Curetonian manuscript, containing the other Old Syriac version, unfortunately no longer
preserves Luke ..
 Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, ‘deversorius’, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon,
) .
 Tovar and Llorente, Procesos, .
 STEPHEN C. CARLSON

habitation, dwelling’ as well as a ‘stable’ or ‘cheap hostel’. Accordingly, ancient

translators of the Greek text agree that κατάλυμα is a generic term.
This wide-ranging survey of the evidence for the sense of κατάλυμα demon-
strates that this term had a wide meaning of a ‘place to stay’, ‘lodging’, or ‘accom-
modations’. Because translations should preserve—to the extent feasible—a
scope of meaning commensurate to that of the source text, a faithful translation
of κατάλυμα in Luke . ought to be as general as its Greek original. Thus, trans-
lations specifying that Joseph and Mary’s place to stay in Bethlehem was an ‘inn’
or even a ‘guest room’ ought to be avoided because they are too specific. A trans-
lation faithful to the sense of κατάλυμα should be satisfied with merely stating
that it was a ‘place to stay’ or ‘accommodations’.

. The Meaning of διότι οὐκ ἦν αὐτοῖς τόπος ἐν τῷ καταλύματι in

Luke .

Any reconsideration of the lodging of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem,

moreover, cannot stop at ascertaining the meaning of κατάλυμα according to
Luke. The exegesis of the other words in the immediate context—especially the
definite article τῷ before the noun and the dative pronoun αὐτοῖς—have
depended on the understanding that κατάλυμα meant ‘inn’. Because meaning
is so often dependent on context, it is wrong to assume that their meanings
would hold when one of the terms in the context, κατάλυμα, has been clarified.
Thus, the reconsideration of Joseph and Mary’s accommodations in Bethlehem
must also entail a revisiting of the exegesis of κατάλυμα’s context.
Once κατάλυμα in Luke . is understood broadly as a ‘place to stay’, the role
of the definite article before it becomes much clearer in the phrase ἐν τῷ
καταλύματι. The article is anaphoric, pointing back to the accommodations of
Joseph and Mary presupposed in v. : Ἐγένετο δὲ ἐν τῷ εἶναι αὐτοὺς ἐκεῖ
ἐπλήσθησαν αἱ ἡμέραι τοῦ τεκεῖν αὐτήν, ‘It happened that, while they were
there, the days for her to give birth were fulfilled’. Joseph and Mary had to stay
somewhere until her full term became due, and the κατάλυμα in v.  points to
the place where they were staying in Bethlehem. As a result, it is not necessary
to consider the specialized usage of the definite article that their κατάλυμα
was somehow unique (as if the only inn in town) or that the κατάλυμα must
have been sufficiently well known. The problem facing Joseph and Mary in

 Lewis and Short, ‘stabulum’, –.

 Bailey, Jesus, , states that the literal meaning of κατάλυμα is a ‘place to stay’, and then
argues that it refers to a guest room. He does not, however, offer a specific translation of ..
 So Elmer A. McNamara, ‘“Because There Was No Room for Them in the Inn”’, The
Ecclesiastical Review  () – at –: ‘That some such inn was meant by
St. Luke, is attested to by his use of the definite article with the noun, i.e., there was no
 The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem 

the story was not that they were denied a particular or well-known place to stay
when they first arrived, but that their place to stay was not such that it could
accommodate the birth and neonatal care of the baby Jesus.
The usage of the Greek article is somewhat different from the definite article in
English, and translations should reflect that difference. Greek tends to tolerate the
definite article more often than English when the anaphora is indirect and the
noun was merely implied in the context, as is the case here. Joseph and Mary’s
being in Bethlehem implies that they must have had some place to stay.
English, on the other hand, has different strategies for dealing with indirect ana-
phora. For example, when the context indicates that the object referred to by the
noun is possessed by or belongs to a person in the context, English often employs
a possessive pronoun for Greek’s definite article. For instance, the statement of
Luke . in the story of the great catch of fish, οἱ δὲ ἀλιεῖς…ἔπλυνον τὰ δίκτυα, is
translated into English as ‘the fishermen…were washing their nets’ (NRSV). The
definite article τά before δίκτυα ‘nets’ implicitly refers to the nets that fishermen
use, that is, ‘their nets’. Similarly the article before κατάλυμα in Luke . refers
back to the accommodations that Joseph and Mary had at the beginning of v. ,
so it is appropriate to render the Greek definite article with an English possessive
pronoun ‘their’. Thus, the preposition phrase at the end of . ought to be ren-
dered as ‘in their accommodations’ or ‘in their place to stay’.
Some commentators have disputed the interpretation of Luke . as referring
to the place where Joseph and Mary were already staying, arguing that the dative
pronoun αὐτοῖς refers to the parents, not the newborn. Had Luke wanted to
imply that there was no place for the baby Jesus, the argument goes, he would
have used the singular αὐτῷ instead or he would at least have specified ‘no
other place’. The flaw in this argument is not the premise that αὐτοῖς refers
to the parents (which it reasonably does), but the assumption that αὐτοῖς is a
dative of advantage construed with τόπος as ‘a place for them’. What makes
this assumption dubious is that the use of a personal dative with the linking

room for them in the inn. He supposes the inn was well known, probably because it was public
and very likely the only one since Bethlehem was a small town’.
 See generally, Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics: An Exegetical Syntax of
the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, ) –; Robertson, Grammar,
; Smyth, Greek Grammar,  at § : ‘The article often takes the place of an unemphatic
possessive pronoun when there is no doubt as to the possessor’.
 E.g., François Bovon, Luke : A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke .–. (trans. Christine M.
Thomas; Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, ) ; and Brown, Birth, .
 Bovon, Luke, : ‘It contradicts the text to say that the parents found no room only for the child
and accordingly laid it in a manger; it says there was no room for them, not him’ (italics orig-
inal). See also Henry J. Cadbury, ‘Lexical Notes on Luke-Acts: III. Luke’s Interest in Lodging’,
JBL  () – at .
 STEPHEN C. CARLSON

verb εἶναι (here, as the imperfect ἦν) usually signifies a dative of possession, not a
dative of advantage. Further supporting this conclusion is the word order with
αὐτοῖς following the verb ἦν, not the noun τόπος. Leading Greek grammars of
the NT even cite this very verse as an example of the dative of possession.
Accordingly, οὐκ ἦν αὐτοῖς τόπος should not be translated as ‘there was not a
place for them’ but rather as ‘they did not have a place’.
Putting these exegetical conclusions together, the entire clause should be ren-
dered as ‘because they did not have space in their accommodations’ or ‘because
they did not have room in their place to stay’. This clause means that Jesus had
to be born and laid in a manger because the place where Joseph and Mary were
staying did not have space for him. Luke’s point is not so much any inhospitality
extended to Joseph and Mary but rather that their place to stay was too small to
accommodate even a newborn.

. The Referent for Κατάλυμα in Luke .

Understanding the sense of κατάλυμα in Luke . does not end the analy-
sis. It may still be possible to deduce with some specificity what kind of accommo-
dations the narrative presupposes for Joseph and Mary. Notwithstanding the
generality of the term κατάλυμα, the context surrounding Luke . provides
three clues as to its nature: Joseph’s compliance with the census order in vv. –
, the betrothal of Mary in v. , and the manger in v. .
The first clue is that Joseph’s residence in the Lukan account is located in
Bethlehem. Chapter  begins with a decree from Caesar Augustus for all the
empire to get registered (v. ), and the text continues with a note that ‘everyone
was going to get registered, each to his own town’ (ἕκαστος εἰς τὴν ἑαυτοῦ
πόλιν, v. ). Then, ‘Joseph too goes up (ἀνέβη δὲ καὶ Ἰωσὴφ, v. ) from
Galilee out of a city Nazareth into Judea into David’s city, which is called
Bethlehem, (because he was of the house and lineage of David) to get registered
(ἀπογράψασθαι, v. )’. Joseph’s compliance with the edict to get registered in his
own town by going up to Bethlehem establishes that his own town, according to
Luke ., is Bethlehem. This conclusion accords with our understanding that
Roman censuses registered people by their residence and by where they own
their fields.

 BDF, Grammar,  § (); Robertson, Grammar, . Cf. Wallace, Greek Grammar, –;
Smyth, Greek Grammar,  § . See also Heinz Schürmann, Das Lukasevangelium
(HTKNT ; Freiburg: Herder, d ed. ; repr. ) . n. .
 On the use of τόπος to mean ‘room’ or ‘space’ in Luke, see ., ‘And the slave said, Lord,
what you have ordered has happened, and there still is room (καὶ ἔτι τόπος ἐστίν)’.
 Much has been written about the practice of the Roman census; leading treatments include:
Llewelyn, New Documents, –; P. Benoit, ‘Quirinius [Recensement de]’, Dictionnaire de la
Bible Supplément (vol. ; Paris: Letouzey & Ané, ) –; Emil Schürer, The History of
 The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem 

It has been contended, however, that Bethlehem was not actually Joseph’s
residence but merely his ancestral town. Under this position, Joseph’s actual
home town would have been Nazareth, and the census would then have to
require Joseph to go, not to his own town, but to his ancestral town. To be
sure, the text does note that Joseph was a descendent of David (v. b), making
Bethlehem also his ancestral town, but, as Raymond Brown acknowledges: ‘In
Roman censuses there is no clear evidence of a practice of going to an ancestral
city to be enrolled; the oft-cited examples from Egypt are not the same as what
Luke describes’. Given the lack of evidence that an ancestral census had ever
been practiced in the Roman Empire, the position that Luke must have intended
an ancestral census is an extraordinary claim that requires extraordinary exegeti-
cal evidence. The comment that Bethlehem was Joseph’s ancestral town, without
more, is insufficient to countermand the plain reading of vv. –. Nevertheless,
Brown opposes the position that Bethlehem was Joseph’s town for the following
reasons in his exegesis of v. b:

Still another suggestion is that he was returning to his home in Bethlehem (‘his
own city’ of vs. ) after having gone to Nazareth to claim Mary as his bride who
lived there. These suggestions run against the reference to Nazareth as ‘their
own city’ in . and against the indication in . that Joseph had no place
to stay in Bethlehem…

Of these two additional reasons why Luke must have been referring to an extra-
ordinary census by ancestry, the second one depends on a misunderstanding of
κατάλυμα in v.  as explained above. That verse does not say that Joseph had
no place to stay in Bethlehem. To the contrary, it states that Joseph did have a
place to stay (the κατάλυμα after all), though it was inadequate to accommodate
the newborn Jesus.

the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ ( B.C.–A.D. ) (ed. Geza Vermes and Fergus
Millar; Edinburgh: T&T Clark, English rev. ed. ) .–; Horst Braunert, ‘Der
römische Provinzialzensus und der Schätzungbericht des Lukas-Evangeliums’, Historia 
(): –; and Hombert and Préaux, Recherches, –.
 E.g., Brown, Birth, . Also, Green, Luke, ; and Darrell L. Bock, Luke .–. (BECNT A;
Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, ) –.
 Brown, Birth, . Brown, Birth, , also warns: ‘It is dangerous to assume that he described a
process of registration that would have been patently opposed to everything that he and his
readers knew’.
 It is sometimes argued that the Romans might have accommodated their census practice in
Palestine to Jewish customs (e.g. Hermann Olshausen, Biblical Commentary on the New
Testament [vol. ; trans. A. C. Kendrick; New York: Sheldon, ; orig. German ed. ]
). Even aside from the lack of any affirmative evidence for this particular accommodation,
Schürer et al., History, , point out that it would have been unworkable.
 Brown, Birth, .
 STEPHEN C. CARLSON

As for Luke ., Brown’s rendering of εἰς πόλιν ἑαυτῶν as ‘their own city’
may well be an example of exegetical inertia. ‘Their own city’ is the wording of
the AV, and it had been perfectly fine for the inferior text it translated: εἰς τὴν
πόλιν ἑαυτῶν with the article before πόλιν. Yet earlier and superior manu-
scripts lack the article, as does the Nestle-Aland critical text, and Brown’s argu-
ment does not take the absence of that article into full account. Without the
article, the phrase εἰς πόλιν ἑαυτῶν is better rendered as ‘into a city of their
own’. As A. T. Robertson had observed with respect to Luke . and ., the
sense of the possessive when the governing noun is anarthrous is ‘not quite the
same’ as when the governing noun takes the article. More particularly,
the anarthrous constructions in Luke . (εἰς κῆπον ἑαυτοῦ, ‘a garden of
his own’) and . (δέκα δούλους ἑαυτοῦ, ‘ten slaves of his own’) do not
limit the men in the respective parables to having only one garden or to
possessing just ten slaves. By the same token, Luke . does not restrict
Nazareth as the only town of Joseph and Mary; indeed, the narrative had
already identified two such towns: Nazareth as Mary’s town (Luke ., ) and
Bethlehem as Joseph’s town (.–). This summary statement, therefore, does
not establish that Nazareth was ‘their own’ town earlier in the narrative when
Jesus was born—only that it was so by the time they went back.
Thus, the clue that Luke considered Bethlehem to be Joseph’s own town for
census purposes tells us that the κατάλυμα presupposed in the narrative is unli-
kely to have been a commercial inn. In accordance with contemporary norms of
hospitality, Luke’s audience would have expected Joseph’s relatives in his own
town to have provided a place to stay for him and Mary if he had no house of
his own. Indeed, the temporary and tiny nature of his accommodations bolsters
the supposition that Joseph’s place to stay was not a house of his very own. But
this is not the only indication in the narrative that Bethlehem was Joseph’s
home, there is another—often overlooked—hint: Mary was still betrothed to
Joseph in Luke ..
The second clue about the nature of Joseph and Mary’s accommodations in
Bethlehem is the detail that Joseph went up to Bethlehem ‘with Mary, his

 The Greek text used for the AV was an edition of the Textus Receptus, which was based on late
and inferior manuscripts in the Byzantine textual tradition.
 Robertson, Grammar, . Though Robertson did not also list Luke . in conjunction with
. and ., the relevance of Robertson’s examples to . has been noticed by Jay E.
Smith, ‘ Thessalonians .: Breaking the Impasse’, BBR  () – at  n. .
 Another example of exegetical inertia in Brown’s argument is his use of the term ‘returning’.
That rendering is also fine for the Textus Receptus, which read ὑπέστρεψαν, ‘they returned’,
instead of the blander ἐπέστρεψαν, ‘they went back’, in accordance with the best manu-
scripts and the Nestle-Aland critical text of the NT.
 Malina and Rohrbaugh, Social-Science Commentary,  (cited in n.); Green, Luke, :
‘Mary and Joseph, then, would have been the guests of family or friends’.
 The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem 

betrothed’ (., σὺν Μαριὰμ τῇ ἐμνηστευμένῃ αὐτῷ). According to Luke, Mary

was still betrothed on the way to Bethlehem, but by the time she gave birth to
Jesus in v. , she was cohabitating with Joseph. According to Jewish practices in
antiquity, marriages were initiated by a betrothal (‫ )אירוסין‬and finalized by a
‘home-taking’ (‫ )נישואין‬in which the bride is taken to her husband’s house.
Both events were celebrated by a public feast, the former at the bride’s house
and the latter at the groom’s house. Accordingly, in the logic of the narrative, the
point that Mary was still betrothed upon her arrival in Bethlehem (v. ) but later
cohabited with him there (v. ) means that Bethlehem was the site of their
wedding, when Joseph concluded the betrothal period by taking her into his home.
To be sure, a Bethlehem location for the wedding of Joseph and Mary in the
Lukan infancy account is hardly considered in the literature. Some critics
locate the wedding back in Nazareth, contending that a betrothed woman
would not travel with her groom. This contention, however, runs into two diffi-
culties. First, it conflicts with  Macc .–, which shows that grooms were
indeed known to travel along with their betrothed as part of a larger wedding
party. Second, it requires dubious interpretations of the term ἐμνηστευμένῃ,
which ordinarily refers to a pre-marital state of betrothal. For example, some

 There is also much literature on ancient Jewish marriage customs. Some of the most useful
modern treatments include: Michael L. Satlow, Jewish Marriage in Antiquity (Princeton:
Princeton University, ); Tal Ilan, ‘Premarital Cohabitation in Ancient Judea: The
Evidence of the Babatha Archive and the Mishna (Ketubbot .)’, HTR  () –;
and Léonie J. Archer, Her Price is Beyond Rubies: The Jewish Woman in Graeco-Roman
Palestine (JSOTSS ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, ). Roman marriage practices were
generally similar in this respect except that it was easier to break off the engagement. See gen-
erally, Susan Treggiari, Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges from the Time of Cicero to the Time of
Ulpian (Oxford: Clarendon, ).
 The clearest recognition of this aspect of the Lukan infancy account I could find is G. H. Box,
The Virgin Birth of Jesus: A Critical Examination of the Gospel-Narratives of the Nativity, and
Other New Testament and Early Christian Evidence, and the Alleged Influence of Heathen Ideas
(London: Pitman, ) : ‘If Joseph’s home was in Bethlehem, by taking Mary, his
betrothed, with him when he left Nazareth for his home-town, he was performing the
central and public act which proclaimed the marriage’.
 E.g., Bock, Luke, : ‘It does not suggest that Mary is not yet married to Joseph, since this trip
in a betrothal situation would be unlikely’. Marshall, Luke, : ‘it is unlikely that she would
have accompanied Joseph had she been merely betrothed to him’. Josef Schmid, Das
Evangelium nach Lukas (RNT ; Regensburg: Pustet, ) : ‘Wäre Maria in diesem
Zeitpunkt erst (gegen Mt , ) die Verlobte Josephs gewesen, so wäre es ein grober
Verstoß gegen die Sitte gewesen, wenn er mit ihr zusammen nach Bethlehem gereist wäre
und dort mit ihr zusammenwohnt hätte’. Plummer, Luke, : ‘Had she been only his betrothed
(i. ; Mt. i. ), their travelling together would have been impossible’. None of these commen-
tators adduce any evidence for their claims.
 Archer, Price, –; and Satlow, Jewish Marriage, –.
 This may be another case of exegetical inertia. Both the Textus Receptus and the Vulgate read
the apparently contradictory ‘betrothed wife’ in Luke . (τῇ μεμνηστευμένῃ… γυναικί and
 STEPHEN C. CARLSON

commentators propose that the detail of Mary’s being betrothed was merely to
emphasize Mary’s virginity or at least hint that Joseph was not the real
father. Raymond Brown supposes the term is more inconsequential, arguing
that Luke ‘simply reused the term “betrothed” previously employed in .,
without any detailed reflection on the steps in the matrimonial procedure’.
Joseph Fitzmyer even warns us to ‘avoid overliteral readings of this description’.
These proposals, however, operate as devices for disregarding the force of the
term ‘betrothed’—an expedient that should be taken only if it is otherwise virtually
impossible to make sense of the text with that meaning. But, as seen above for
Luke .–, the text does make sense with ‘betrothal’, because Bethlehem as
Joseph’s own town is an ideal location for him to get married. As a result, the
clue that Joseph and Mary finalized their betrothal in Bethlehem means their
accommodations would have to be appropriate for newlyweds. In fact, the narra-
tive presupposes accommodations appropriate for a long-term stay, because
Joseph and Mary then spend at least forty more days there for her purification
after the birth (Luke .; cf. Lev .–). This clue thus makes it unlikely that
Luke was thinking of the newlyweds’ accommodations as an inn designed for
an overnight stay.
The third clue is that Luke . states that Mary ‘gave birth to her firstborn son,
swaddled him, and laid him down in a manger, because they did not have room in
their place to stay’. Childbirth was the riskiest moment in the entire pregnancy
during antiquity, potentially lethal for both the mother and child. Whenever
possible, women about to give birth relied on the help of relatives, friends, and

desponsata…uxore, respectively), which had prompted many exegetes to weaken the force of
‘betrothed’.
 E.g, Bock, Luke, ; Schmid, Lukas, ; A. R. C. Leaney, A Commentary on the Gospel
According to St. Luke (HNTC; New York: Harper & Brothers, ) ; Cuthbertus Lattey,
‘“Ad Virginem desponsatam viro” (Lc ,)’, VD  () – at ; and M.-J. Lagrange,
Évangile selon Saint Luc (Paris: Lecoffre, th ed. ) .
 Jane Schaberg, The Illegitimacy of Jesus: A Feminist Theological Interpretation of the Infancy
Narratives (San Francisco: Harper & Row, ) .
 Brown, Birth, .
 Fitzmyer, Luke, .
 Times have changed. Now, many couples prefer to honeymoon in hotels.
 See generally, Tal Ilan, Jewish Women in Greco-Roman Palestine: An Inquiry into Image and
Status (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, ) –; S. Levin, ‘Obstetrics in the Bible’, Journal of
Obstetrics and Gynaecology of the British Empire  () –; and Roland de Vaux,
Ancient Israel: Its Life and Institutions (trans. John McHugh; New York: McGraw-Hill, ;
French orig. ) –. For childbirth in Greco-Roman contexts, see also Valerie French,
‘Midwives and Maternity Care in the Roman World’, Rescuing Creusa: New Methodological
Approaches to Women in Antiquity (ed. Marilyn Skinner; Helios NS /; Lubbock: Texas
Tech University, ) –.
 The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem 

midwives in and around town. Yet Mary’s accommodations did not have room
for giving birth, so the birth had to occur elsewhere, in a place that included a
manger. This detail does not mean, as it would to Western Europeans, that
Mary gave birth to Jesus in a stable or barn, because mangers were also found
in the main rooms of first-century Judean village houses. Typically, the main
room was divided into two sections at different elevations separated by about a
meter. The animals were housed in the lower section, the people slept in the
upper section, and mangers were located between them. These village
houses, moreover, could have a small room, either on the roof or on the side,
which accommodated family members and guests. For example, Jonathan
Safrai summarizes his research on the Jewish home and family in antiquity as
follows:

From the literary sources and archaeological excavations one finds that most
houses had at least two storeys, and sometimes even three. Generally a
single owner built a house and its upper chambers; but because of inheritances
and sales divided ownership developed… The upper floors were not always full
storeys; sometimes they consisted of single rooms on a roof or an attic with its
entrance from a ladder inside the house. These attics could be used for a
member of the household or as a guest room… Whether or not original
plans called for upper storeys, it was common to add rooms or small structures
to the roofs of houses and to the courtyards, as it became necessary. The most
frequent reason was the expansion of a family; a newly married son customarily
brought his wife to live in the family house. The father would set aside a room
within the house for the couple or build a marital house (‫ )בית חתנות‬on the roof.
On such an occasion relatives, friends, and neighbours came to assist the father
and celebrate the new arrangement.

Accordingly, the element of Luke’s narrative that the place where Joseph and
Mary were staying had no room to accommodate a newborn or a manger (v. )
suggests to the reader that they had been staying in one of these small rooms
built on top of, or onto the side of, a village family home, and that delivery
itself took place in the larger, main room of the house. Since Bethlehem was
Joseph’s own town as presupposed in the Lukan infancy account, readers of
this account could well picture the small apartment they were staying in as
attached to the village family home of his close relatives, perhaps even the
house he grew up in. Even further, the detail that Joseph brought his betrothed

 Bailey, Jesus, ; and Levin, ‘Obstretics’, . This was still true well into twentieth-century
Palestine; see Hilma Granqvist, Birth and Childhood among the Arabs: Studies in a
Muhammadan Village in Palestine (Helsinki: Söderström, ) –. Even the
Protevangelium of James ., which recounts a miraculous birth for Jesus, includes a midwife.
 Discussed by, for example, Bailey, Jesus, –; and Dalman, Sacred Sites, .
 Jonathan Safrai, ‘Home and Family’, The Jewish People in the First Century (ed. Samuel Safrai
et al.; CRINT /; Assen: Van Gorcum, ) – (footnotes omitted).
 STEPHEN C. CARLSON

to Bethlehem (v. ) indicates that their apartment was a marital chamber built for
the newly married men of the family.

. Conclusion

Luke’s infancy narrative therefore presupposes the following events.

Joseph took his betrothed Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem (.). Bethlehem
was his home town (v. ) and, in accordance with the patrilocal marital
customs of the day, it must also have been the place where they finalized their
matrimonial arrangements by bringing her into his home. As a newly married
man, he no longer would have to sleep in the main room of the village house
with his other relatives, but he and his bride could stay in a marital chamber
attached to the house until they could get a place of their own. They stayed
there for some time until she came to full term (v. ), and she gave birth to
Jesus in the main room of the house rather than in her marital apartment
because it was too small, and she laid the newborn in one of those mangers (v.
) common to the main room of an ancient farmhouse. After staying at least
another forty days in Bethlehem (v. ; cf. Lev .–), Joseph and Mary eventually
moved to Nazareth to make their home together in her family’s town (v. ; cf.
.–).
To be sure, this scenario as presupposed in Luke’s infancy account diverges
greatly from the conventional Christmas story. There is no inn, no innkeeper,
and no stable. But it is grounded in a careful exegesis of the text. The term
κατάλυμα has a broad sense of a ‘place to stay’ and the final clause of Luke .
should be translated as ‘because they had no space in their place to stay’.
Joseph and Mary’s particular accommodations in Bethlehem should be thought
of as a cramped, marital chamber attached to his father’s or other relative’s
village house. As unfamiliar and perhaps troubling this scenario may seem to
us, we have come a long way from El Brocense’s day. Now, nobody expects the
Spanish Inquisition.

 Cf. A. Büchler, ‘The Induction of the Bride and the Bridegroom into the ‫ חופה‬in the First and
Second Centuries in Palestine’, Livre d’hommage à la mémoire du Dr Samuel Poznański
(Warsaw, ) –, who argues that such a marital room built for the bridegroom corre-
sponded to the ‫( חופה‬chuppah) in its first- and second-century guise.