No room at the inn?

The Bethlehem Hotel is centrally located in the heart of Bethlehem, within walking distance of Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity. There are many shops, museums and sites within the vicinity of the Hotel.

A good news story, told by Marian Wright Edelman, seen in the December 27, 2017 issue of The Greene County Democrat:

Some years ago it was Christmas Eve and the pews at New York City's Riverside Church were packed. The Christmas pageant was under way and had come to the point at which the innkeeper was supposed to turn Joseph and Mary away with the resounding line, "There's no room at the inn!"

The innkeeper role had seemed the perfect part for Tim, an earnest youth of the congregation who had Down Syndrome. Only one line to remember: "There's no room at the inn!" 'Tim had practiced the line time after time with his parents and with the pageant director, and he seemed to have mastered it.

So Tim stood at the altar, his bathrobe costume firmly belted over his broad stomach, as Mary and Joseph made their way down the center aisle. They approached him, said their lines as rehearsed, and awaited his reply.

 Tim's parents, the pageant director and the whole congregation leaned forward as if willing Tim to remember his line.

THERE'S NO ROOM AT THE INN!" Tim boomed out, just as rehearsed. But then, as Mary and Joseph turned away on cue to travel further, Tim suddenly yelled, "WAIT!"

Joseph and Mary turned back, startled along with the congregation, and looked at Tim in surprise.

"You can stay at my house!" he called.

Pastor the Rev. William Sloane Coffin then strode to the pulpit and said "Amen."

It was the best sermon he never preached.

However . . . . . . 

The word "inn" in the King James scripture version that created our most widely accepted nativity tradition is likely a mistranslation of the Greek word kataluma, which means simply something like "accommodation," at most "guest space," not "inn." Actually, there likely would have been not even a that-era equivalent of a lowly Motel 6 in the little podunk town of Bethlehem.

So we're actually told that the birth takes place in some family's living space, which in that era would likely have included space for at least some livestock to be brought in over night (thus the manger). And would in that era and under those circumstances have been the most suitable and hospitable place for a birthing.

That means Tim's version of the story is closer to the (possible) history. Not an innkeeper but some Bethlehem family must have said "You can stay at our house!"

The gnarly part of all this is that it is only if we buy the KJV no-room-at-the-inn nativity tradition can we recognize that Tim's version is so much more inspiring, his stepping outside a strictly scripted role to respond from the heart to human need, enacting the message that the grown-up baby Jesus would later deliver in the Sermon on the Mount – using the "unless you become as a little child" analogy.