Discovering Love: Bethlehem manger

For hundreds of years, religious art has portrayed the manger, an animal feeding trough, as a wooden structure, a piece of furniture in a stable. They showed the stable as a ramshackle building or a cave. But the place where Mary laid her newborn baby may have been the ground floor of a two-story house, and the manger would probably have been a hollowed-out dip in the ground where animal feed was served. The New Testament uses the word katalouma, or family guest quarters, as opposed to the word for a hotel accommodation, pandocheion, where the Good Samaritan took the beat-up traveler to recuperate.

Excavation team at Tall al-Umayri, Jordan, in 2002, perched on the
ancient walls of a four-room house.

When I worked as a volunteer on an archaeological site near Amman, Jordan in 2002, one of the buildings our team had excavated and rebuilt over several seasons was a house. The occupants of the house would have slept on the upper floor. Below them, there was storage for food, and a hearth for cooking. The other part of the ground floor was a stable that opened out to a yard with a fence to keep a few sheep or goats safely inside the enclosure.

When Joseph and Mary entered the town of Bethlehem to take part in the census, Joseph would probably have gone to ask cousins who could house them for the nights and days they had to be there to register--and for Mary to give birth in the township Joseph's clan had lived in for a thousand years. But other cousins had arrived earlier, and the homes were bursting at the seams. It's likely that one of Joseph's relatives told him he could camp in the guest quarters also used as an animals' dwelling under a house. The Middle Eastern hospitality ethic would never have turned away a stranger or a family member. They'd have offered housing and food. Mary would have had women to help her give birth.

Was the house located within the walls of the town of Bethlehem, or was it a farm nearby? If the latter, it would be more accessible to the shepherds who had been told to look for the newborn baby.

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger.

Shepherds were the bluest of blue collar workers in the Middle East. The humble. The lowly. The people least likely to be invited to the nursery of the Messiah that had been promised for two thousand years. They were not required to crawl into a palace in the presence of King Herod or the Emperor Augustus. They were told to look in or near the small town of Bethlehem for a newborn baby in the feeding trough of the animals they herded and watched over: sheep and goats. That would have been a relief, after seeing a large group of bright, other-worldly beings! Seeing a helpless baby in a manger would have been an immediate slice of "peace on earth" to the shepherds.

Run, Shepherds, run where Bethl’em blest appears,

We bring the best of news, be not dismayed:

A Saviour there is born, more old than years

Amidst Heaven’s rolling heights this earth who stayed;

In a poor cottage inned, a Virgin Maid,

A weakling did Him bear, who all upbears,

There is He poorly swaddled, in a manger laid

To whom too narrow swaddlings are our spheres:

Run, Shepherds, run, and solemnize His birth.

This is that night−no, day, grown great with bliss,

In which the power of Satan broken is;

In Heaven be glory, peace unto the Earth,