The Christmas story seems simple enough: Joseph and a very pregnant Mary find the inn is full on arriving in Bethlehem for the census, so take shelter in the barn out the back, where Mary gives birth, wraps the baby in cloths and puts him in the animal’s feeding trough. Shepherds and wise men arrive in the stable to honour the child, and the scene is immortalised in countless nativity plays, Christmas cards and plastic decorations.

If we believe it, perhaps we chalk the improbability of the whole scenario up to a miraculous God. We rarely stop to question whether all the inhabitants of the town of Bethlehem could really be so heartless as to turn away a young, pregnant woman, or why the shepherds didn’t offer to take the family back to their homes and look after them.

But if we look at the Bible closely, we see that the gospel writers paint a different picture to the one handed down through popular culture. Here’s Luke, after saying Caesar Augustus had ordered a census:

“So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” [Luke 2:4-7, New International Version, 2011]

This version of the Bible used to translate the end of Luke 2:7 as, “because there was no room for them in the inn” until a new edition was released two years ago. Many other translations refer to an inn. In Christmas pageants or children’s sermons, the innkeeper is often portrayed as a callous man, unwilling to help the holy family in their time of need. But as professor of Middle Eastern New Testament studies and long-time resident of the Middle East Kenneth E. Bailey explains, “guest room” is a clearer translation of the original Greek text.

Jesus was born into a culture of generous Middle Eastern hospitality. As Dr Bailey explains in his book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, even though peasant houses normally had only two rooms, one was set aside for guests, while the other was used for the whole family’s activities including sleeping, cooking and eating. These simple houses are assumed elsewhere in the Bible, such as when Jesus teaches the crowds about the nature of Christian witness through the image of a lamp on a stand that “gives light to everyone in the house” – assuming the whole family is in the one room with the lamp [Matthew 5:15, NIV, 2011]. The guest room was either on the ground floor next to the family room or above it on an upper level. Luke refers to such a guest room when the adult Jesus sends his disciples to make preparations for the Passover meal:

“He [Jesus] replied, ‘As you enter the city, a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him to the house that he enters, and say to the owner of the house, ‘The Teacher asks: Where is the guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’ He will show you a large room upstairs, all furnished. Make preparations there.’” [Luke 22:10-12, NIV 2011]

The Greek word Luke uses for the upstairs guest room is katalyma, the same word as he uses in the birth narrative. There was no space in the katalyma when Jesus was born, meaning that the guest room of a particular private home was already occupied, not that Bethlehem’s commercial inn was already full.

In addition, we know the word Luke would have used had he wanted to say that an inn in Bethlehem was full. Luke writes about an inn elsewhere when he records the parable of the good Samaritan, describing how the Samaritan looked after a man who had been attacked by robbers:

“He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him.” [Luke 10:34, NIV 2011]

Here he uses the Greek word pandocheion to mean commercial inn, as opposed to the katalyma where there was no space for Joseph, Mary and Jesus.

This does not mean we should replace the callous innkeeper of our imagination with a callous homeowner, turning the family away, but deigning to offer them space in the barn. The strong culture of hospitality makes it unlikely the occupants of Bethlehem would turn Joseph and the expectant Mary away. Further, Joseph was a descendant of the great king David, who presided over a particularly peaceful and prosperous period of Israel’s history, and could have expected a warm welcome on arriving in the city of his royal ancestor. Notice that in his gospel, Luke does not say anyone offered the family space in a barn, and he also does not even say that the manger was situated in a barn or a stable:

“She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.” [Luke 2:7, NIV, 2011]

We might assume that animal feeding troughs are placed in structures that contain only animals and are separate from houses, as they are in our culture. But in Jesus’ culture, animals were not kept in barns, but rather in houses, Dr Bailey further explains. In peasant houses, one end of the family room was slightly lower or separated from the main section with timber. The family brought their animals into this section of the house each night, where they were safe from theft and offered warmth in winter, then took them outside in the morning. There were wooden mangers for the sheep on the lower level, plus mangers dug out of the higher family room floor for the cow to reach up and eat from. These simple houses existed in this area until the mid-twentieth century, Dr Bailey writes. They are also assumed in other parts of the Bible, such as when Jephthah vows to sacrifice the first thing that comes out of his house when he returns in victory from battle, tragically finding it was not an animal but his only daughter [Judges 11: 30-35].

The original readers of Luke’s gospel would have assumed the writer was referring to a house with mangers inside. This means it is very unlikely that Jesus was born in a barn, and much more likely that he was born in an ordinary peasant house and placed in one of the mangers, with the house’s occupants generously sharing their family room because their guest room was full.

We should not, however, be hasty in suggesting that this recovered understanding of the birth of Jesus changes the Christmas message. Christmas plays and plastic nativity scenes featuring the baby Jesus in a stable generally point out how amazing it is that God came to earth not in the form of an impressive ruler on a throne, but as a helpless baby born in humble surroundings. Luke is making the same point in his gospel, and understanding that the manger was likely in a house rather than a barn does not change this. A chapter earlier, Luke recorded Mary’s song of praise to God after the angel Gabriel told her she would give birth to the promised Davidic king through the power of the Holy Spirit:

“He [God] has been mindful
of the humble state of his servant.
“From now on all generations will call me blessed,
for the Mighty One has done great things for me…
“He has brought down rulers from their thrones
but has lifted up the humble.” [Luke 1: 48-49, 52, NIV 2011]

The same theme of reversal is evident in her song: God has done great things for Mary, despite her humble state; God has humbled the exalted and exalted the humble. In the birth narrative, the king of the universe is born as a child and placed in an animal’s feeding trough in the modest surroundings of a simple home in Bethlehem. But through this child from most humble beginnings, particularly through his willing death on a cross some 33 years later, God would rescue the world.

Undeserved salvation, freely given, through Jesus: now that’s the improbable work of a miraculous God.