Posted on 12/20/2013 2:45:07 PM PST by DouglasKC
What is all the hoopla about whether there was no room in an Inn or no guest room at another place? How does it change the story? Why do so many Christians go off on so many tangents about things that have absolutely nothing to do with carrying the Word?
Hotels.com or Kayak?
Exactly.
Words like seems, doubtful, probably.
Almost poetic... :-)
Sure it is. It certainly wasn't an honor to have to stay with the animals and to sleep in a manger. But it was better than the alternative...to be outside.
One of the signs that the shepherds were given to find Jesus, if they hadn't noticed the neon sign was that he was lying in a manger...So we know regardless of your story that a newborn baby lying in a manger was very remarkable..
Yup and as the story points out part of the wonder was that the shepherds were told that that the baby to be born was the messiah...the future king...and he wasn't going to be born in a setting of the rich and powerful but in the house of a peasant family. That alone would have been a shock to many..
If Jesus was born in a house full of people, there would have been no need for outside witnesses...In fact, who would believe such a common occurrence???
I'm not sure if the role of the shepherds were to be merely witnesses. Their role seemed to be one more of spreading the news. I did a quick study and there are some who believe that shepherds in the time of Christ were kind of like dog walkers...a poor family might not have many sheep so a shepherd would take the sheep from many families out to the field to take to tend them. Because of this they would be dealing with many diverse peoples...just speculating then that they would be in a position to tell many people. And of course the other thing is that they it was appropriate for shepherds to come tend the lamb of God.
It doesn't change the basic story. But it can enrich our faith.
Going back to this point....we have a whole body of tradition based on this verse:
Luk 2:7 And she brought forth her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
1. It's surmised that there were animals all around him.
2. It's surmised that he was in a freestanding structure.
3. It's surmised that they were turned away from a public lodging place.
There are many other assumptions that are made concerning the whole story. Leaving off "assumed" and "speculated" from the traditional story doesn't make the traditional explanation any truer. It's tradition.
Jewish shepherds at the time of Christ were not able to leave their sheep in order to participate in obligatory pilgrimages to the temple in Jerusalem, besides being too poor to afford the required sacrifices.
Because they didn’t fulfill these requirements, they were rejected by the Jewish people.
They lived in the country with their sheep, sheltering at night in caves and sleeping at the entrance so as to guard the sheep from predators or thieves. (Thus Jesus describes himself as “the sheepgate”.)
It is highly unlikely that a respectable Jew would have accepted these shepherds into his home to see the newborn Jesus, so, if the shepherds visited, it was unlikely that Christ was sheltered in a home.
From the beginning the Word Incarnate was rejected by his own people and he extended hospitality to the outcasts.
I haven't studied shepherds in general but from other studies I know that the very strictest of the Jews (Pharisee's, Scribe, etc.) were a relatively small proportion of the population. One of the big biblical themes and a big message of Christ was how much the religious elite had hijacked God. How their religion had become too dependent upon manmade traditions and exclusionary conduct which of course was hypocritical to begin with.
The possibility that the king of the jews would be born in peasants home and the message spread by shepherds would have been difficult for the elitists to believe. And of course this is seen in the gospels.
So yeah, I agree with the caveat that "outcast" in perspective meant those who weren't part of the so called standard, orthodox, traditional religion of the day.
And all of these arguments do nothing but take away from the fact that God took on human flesh.
Doesn’t matter one bit if there were animals there or not.
Some don't have your faith and seeing the story of God being made flesh presented in a realistic and historic way can hopefully give others faith.
You nailed it!
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