Where was Jesus Born?

"Christ the Savior is Born"

President Russell M. Nelson

BYU Speeches - December 2002

See the full talk HERE

Verse 7: “And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”

Let’s pause to ponder this verse. We need to be aware of the culture of that time and region, and we need to learn one word from the original Greek text. In the Greek New Testament, the root from which inn was translated is kataluma. We don’t have an equivalent word in the English language. The Greek prefix kata-(or cata-) means “a bringing down.” We see it in English words such as catabolism, catastrophe, and cataclysm. When the prefix kata- was joined with the suffix -luma, it meant literally “a breaking down of a journey.” A kataluma was a guest chamber in a lodging place.

In those days an inn was not like a Holiday Inn or a Bethlehem Marriott. A lodging place in that part of Asia had to provide accommodations for traveling caravans, including the people and their animals. Caravans stayed at what was then known (and is still known) as a caravansary, or a khan. You may look in your own dictionary and find caravansary and khan, each defined as a rest house in some Asian countries.

Such a facility is typically rectangular in shape. It has a central courtyard for the animals that is surrounded by walled cubicles where the people rest. These quarters allowed guests to be elevated slightly above their animals with open doorways so that owners could watch over their animals.

The Joseph Smith Translation of Luke 2:7 indicates that there was no room for them in the “inns,” suggesting that all of the katalumas or cubicles of the caravansary were occupied. In the Greek New Testament the word kataluma appears in only two other passages, translated in each instance not as “inn” but as a “guestchamber,” which fits the concept that we have discussed.

As a youngster, whenever I heard those words “no room in the inn,” I assumed that No Vacancy signs were posted at local motels or that the innkeepers were inhospitable or even hostile. Such an assumption is probably way off the mark. People of that part of the world were no doubt then as they are now—most hospitable. Particularly would this have been true at a season when the normal population of Jerusalem and neighboring Bethlehem would be swollen with large numbers of relatives.

At a caravansary, animals were secured for the night in the center courtyard. In that courtyard there would have been donkeys and dogs, sheep, and possibly camels and oxen, along with all of the animals’ discharges and odors. Because the guest chambers surrounding the courtyard were filled, Joseph possibly made the decision to care for Mary’s delivery in the center courtyard of a caravansary—among the animals. There, in that lowly circumstance, the Lamb of God was born.

"Jesus the Christ"

James E. Talmage

Footnotes to Chapter 8

2. Jesus Born Amidst Poor Surroundings.—Undoubtedly the accommodations for physical comfort amidst which Jesus was born were few and poor. But the environment, considered in the light of the customs of the country and time, was far from the state of abject deprivation which modern and western ways would make it appear. "Camping out" was no unusual exigency among travelers in Palestine at the time of our Lord's birth; nor is it considered such today. It is, however, beyond question that Jesus was born into a comparatively poor family, amidst humble surroundings associated with the inconveniences incident to travel. Cunningham Geikie, Life and Words of Christ, chap. 9, pp. 112, 113, says: "It was to Bethlehem that Joseph and Mary were coming, the town of Ruth and Boaz, and the early home of their own great forefather David. As they approached it from Jerusalem they would pass, at the last mile, a spot sacred to Jewish memory, where the light of Jacob's life went out, when his first love, Rachel, died, and was buried, as her tomb still shows, 'in the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem.' . . . Traveling in the East has always been very different from Western ideas. As in all thinly-settled countries, private hospitality, in early times, supplied the want of inns, but it was the peculiarity of the East that this friendly custom continued through a long series of ages. On the great roads through barren or uninhabited parts, the need of shelter led, very early, to the erection of rude and simple buildings, of varying size, known as khans, which offered the wayfarer the protection of walls and a roof, and water, but little more. The smaller structures consisted of sometimes only a single empty room, on the floor of which the traveler might spread his carpet for sleep; the larger ones, always built in a hollow square, enclosing a court for the beasts, with water in it for them and their masters. From immemorial antiquity it has been a favorite mode of benevolence to raise such places of shelter, as we see so far back as the times of David, when Chimham built a great khan near Bethlehem, on the caravan road to Egypt."

Canon Farrar (Life of Christ, chap. 1) accepts the traditional belief that the shelter within which Jesus was born was that of one of the numerous limestone caves which abound in the region, and which are still used by travelers as resting places. He says: "In Palestine it not infrequently happens that the entire khan, or at any rate the portion of it in which the animals are housed, is one of those innumerable caves which abound in the limestone rocks of its central hills. Such seems to have been in the case at the little town of Bethlehem-Ephratah, in the land of Judah. Justin Martyr, the Apologist, who, from his birth at Shechem, was familiar with Palestine, and who lived less than a century after the time of our Lord, places the scene of the nativity in a cave. This is, indeed, the ancient and constant tradition both of the Eastern and the Western Churches, and it is one of the few to which, though unrecorded in the Gospel history, we may attach a reasonable probability."

"The Light of the World"

Gerald N. Lund

Often in the art and literature surrounding the Christmas story, the unnamed innkeeper of the scriptural account is viewed as selfish and uncaring, an insensitive oaf unmoved by the plight of a woman heavy with child. This may make for interesting art and literature, but it is not justified by the scriptural record. In the first place, the “inns” of the ancient Middle East were not quaint and homey little buildings with thatched roofs and latticed windows from which warm lamplight beckoned the weary traveler. The inns of the Holy Land were typically large, fortress-like buildings, built around a spacious open square. Called khans or caravanserai, they provided stopping places for the caravans of the ancient world. 

Just as modern hotels and motels must provide parking for automobiles, so did a caravanserai have to provide a place where the donkeys, camels, and other animals could be safely cared for. Inside the khan, which was usually of two-story construction, all the “rooms” faced the courtyard. They were typically arched, open antechambers facing out onto the square. Here the traveler could build a small fire or sleep within clear view of his animals and goods. “In these hostelries, bazaars and markets were held, animals killed and meat sold, also wine and cider; so that they were a much more public place of resort than might at first be imagined.”

Even if there had been room at the inn, a caravanserai was hardly the ideal place for a woman in labor. Perhaps the innkeeper, moved with compassion at Mary’s plight and knowing of her need and desire for privacy, offered them his stable. Perhaps Joseph found the place on his own. The scriptures do not say. But one thing is very probable and contradicts another popular misconception: the birth likely did not take place in a wooden shed with pitched roof as is so commonly depicted in nativity scenes around the world. 

In Bethlehem today stands the Church of the Nativity. Beneath the church is a large grotto or cave. In southern Judea, including the area around Bethlehem, limestone caves are common. Such caves provided natural shelter for the flocks and herds of ancient Israel. They were warm, protected from inclement weather, and could easily be blocked to keep the animals safe for the night. The tradition that this grotto was the stable of Luke’s account is very old and accepted by many scholars. President Harold B. Lee, then of the Quorum of the Twelve, visited this grotto in 1958 and confirmed that in his mind it was “a hallowed spot, . . . a sacred place.”

So, there in the sheltered warmth of a cave, beneath the limestone hills of Bethlehem, He who was to become the Good Shepherd—not of the sheep that grazed the hills of Israel, but of the human flock—was born and cradled in a manger.

"The Mortal Messiah"

Bruce R. McConkie

Volume 1 - Jesus is Born in a Stable

No room in the inns! Hospitality was universal, freely extended, and everywhere to be found. People in all walks of life took strangers into their homes, fed them, washed their feet, and cared for their beasts of burden. It was a way of life. No one can fault the Jewish practice of caring for travelers, whether they were kinfolk or strangers. Had Joseph and Mary come days earlier, they might have found lodgment in the home of a relative, a friend, or a hospitable stranger, any one of whom would have summoned a midwife and prepared a cradle for the Coming One. Had they even arrived earlier in the day, there would have been a place in the rooms or inns rather than in the court, where those beasts were tethered among whom the Coming One came.

No room in the inn—not an inn of western or modern make, but a kahn or place of lodgment for strangers, a caravanserai or place where caravans or companies of travelers bedded down for the night. It may have been a large, bare building, built of rough stones, surrounding an open court in which animals could be tied up for the night. A foot or two above this courtyard were the small recesses or "low small rooms with no front wall" where the humans tethered themselves. 

Of these rooms Farrar says: "They are, of course, perfectly public; everything that takes place in them is visible to every person in the kahn. They are also totally devoid of even the most ordinary furniture. The traveller may bring his own carpet if he likes, may sit cross-legged upon it for his meals, and may lie upon it at night. As a rule, too, he must bring his own food, attend to his own cattle, and draw his own water from the neighbouring spring. He would neither expect nor require attendance, and would pay only the merest trifle for the advantage of shelter, safety, and a floor on which to lie. But if he chanced to arrive late, and the leewans [rooms] were all occupied by earlier guests, he would have no choice but to be content with such accommodation as he could find in the court-yard below, and secure for himself and his family such small amount of cleanliness and decency as are compatible with an unoccupied corner on the filthy area, which he would be obliged to share with horses, mules, and camels. The litter, the closeness, the unpleasant smell of the crowded animals, the unwelcome intrusion of the pariah dogs, the necessary society of the very lowest hangers-on of the caravanserai, are adjuncts to such a position which can only be realized by any traveller in the East who happens to have been placed in similar circumstances." (Farrar, p. 4.)

In the area of Bethlehem, sometimes the whole kahn, sometimes only the portion where the animals were kept, was located within a large cave, of which there are many in the area. But unless or until some of the saints—and such a thing is by no means improbable or beyond the realm of expectancy—see in a dream or a vision the inn where Joseph and Mary and Jesus spent that awesome night, we can only speculate as to the details.

Shepherds - Nativity

The following is an excerpt from a Religious Studies Article written by Joseph Fielding McConkie and given at a Sperry Syposium. 

You can read the entire article HERE. 

The Shepherds. On the eve of Christ’s birth in the stable at Bethlehem, there were in the fields not far distant shepherds watching over their flocks. The fact that they were in the fields by night gives us some indication of the season of the year in which Christ was born. It was the custom among the Jews to take their sheep to the fields about the time of Passover and bring them home at the coming of the first rains—thus they would be in the fields from about April to October. Of these shepherds, Elder Bruce R. McConkie has suggested:

These were not ordinary shepherds nor ordinary flocks. The sheep there being herded—nay, not herded, but watched over, cared for with love and devotion—were destined for sacrifice on the great altar in the Lord’s House, in similitude of the eternal sacrifice of Him who that wondrous night lay in a stable, perhaps among sheep of lesser destiny. And the shepherds—for whom the veil was rent: surely they were in spiritual stature like Simeon and Anna and Zacharias and Elisabeth and Joseph and the growing group of believing souls who were coming to know, by revelation, that the Lord’s Christ was now on earth. As there were many widows in Israel, and only to the one in Zarephath was Elijah sent, so there were many shepherds in Palestine, but only to those who watched over the temple flocks did the herald angel come; only they heard the heavenly choir.

That the testimony of one Apostle does not stand alone relative to the character of these shepherds, I cite that of another, Alma, who announced the principle that angels would declare the glad tidings of the Messiah’s birth to “just and holy men” (Alma 13:26).

The special witness that these “just and holy men” bore relative to the birth of Christ was not limited to the night of the Savior’s birth but was for each of them a lifetime calling. Their story was to be told to family, friends, and neighbors. It was to be told in the courts of the temple, and from there it was to find itself told among all the nations of the earth. Luke tells us that after the shepherds had seen the “babe lying in a manger,” they “made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child” (Luke 2:16–17). Such was the commission of the angel who stood before them that holy night declaring “good tidings of great joy,” which were to go “to all people” (Luke 2:10).