The Christmas story is so familiar to many of us. Most of us who have grown up around the church will have heard it most years. We all know the nativity scenes, the children’s plays around Christmas and the various advent calendars telling us the story. Little captures the imagination more than the belief that Jesus was born in a stable.

Perhaps most interestingly, there is no mention of a stable in the story. No stable and no donkey hee-hawing away. I suspect the assumption has built up around two things that are mentioned. First, we are told there was no room where Mary and Joseph happen to be. Second, we are told that Jesus was laid in a manger. To the modern Western mind, it isn’t difficult to see the steps from here. If Jesus is in a manger, an animal feeding trough, he must be where the animals are kept. And where do we keep animals? In a stable of course! And being in a stable would be totally weird, except there was no room! So, there we have it, Jesus was born in a stable.

But a stable simply isn’t mentioned in the story. Stephen Carlson has argued (pretty convincingly in this study) that the word often translate ‘inn’ (κατάλυμα tr. kataluma) should properly be understood as ‘place to stay’. He argues ‘the final clause of Luke 2:7 should be rendered “because they had no space in their place to stay”. Moreover, three clues in the context—Joseph’s compliance with the census order, the betrothal of Mary, and the manger—suggest that the accommodations presupposed by Luke are a marital chamber too small for giving birth.’ So, Mary and Joseph were not turned away from an inn. There was no room in the place where they were staying, which would almost certainly be a normal family home belonging to one of Joseph’s relatives.

Further, understanding the layout of houses at the time makes much more sense of a manger being inside the house. Whilst Westerners obviously keep animals in stables, 1st century Israelites kept them inside the house. As Ian Paul lays out in his frequently reposted article on this topic (which lays out the fulsome case in more details):

[T]he actual design of Palestinian homes (even to the present day) makes sense of the whole story. As Bailey explores in his Jesus Through Middle-Eastern Eyes, most families would live in a single-room house, with a lower compartment for animals to be brought in at night, and either a room at the back for visitors, or space on the roof. The family living area would usually have hollows in the ground, filled with hay, in the living area, where the animals would feed.

This kind of one-room living with animals in the house at night is evident in a couple of places in the gospels. In Matt 5.15, Jesus comments:

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

This makes no sense unless everyone lives in the one room! And in Luke’s account of Jesus healing a woman on the sabbath (Luke 13.10–17), Jesus comments:

Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the manger [same word as Luke 2.7] and lead it out to give it water?

Interestingly, none of Jesus’ critics respond, ‘No I don’t touch animals on the Sabbath’ because they all would have had to lead their animals from the house. In fact, one late manuscript variant reads ‘lead it out from the house and give it water.’

So, the there was no inn, but rather a place to stay, and normal houses had managers and animals inside the family home. All of which is to say, Jesus wasn’t born in a stable (even if he was lain in a manger); he was born in a normal family home.

Now, this isn’t intended to be one of those mythbuster things to pour cold water on everyone’s Christmas. Rather, I mention this because it does make something of a difference to how we understand the Christmas story and its relevance to us. It may not massively change our theology or doctrine, but it does change how we understand what Jesus came to do.

When stables are assumed, the story tends to be read (rightly) along lines that Jesus didn’t come to a palace like a king primarily for the rich and influential. Rather, Jesus came for the poor. The problem with this reading is, if Jesus was born in a stable, the poor often didn’t have animals that they could keep in stables. Even if we overlook that, being born in a stable makes Jesus’ birth entirely other. Whilst he doesn’t come into a palace that most people can’t enter, he finds himself born in a stable away from all the people he came to be with too.

But if Jesus was born in an ordinary family home, then we really do have a proper message of God with us. Jesus isn’t away with the animals, far off from the people he came to be with, but is genuinely with us. Jesus is never more appropriately called Immanuel than when he is with his people. Being off in a stable with the animals is not where he came to be.

It is also the case that Jesus came into the world to fix the mess of the world marred by sin. It can’t escape our notice, but we don’t think animals sin. They are not the ones in need of a saviour. Jesus didn’t come to save the animals, but to save his people. He didn’t come to be a saviour to the animals, but to save his people from their sin. Jesus didn’t come to fix the material mess and muck of a stable, but to resolve the very real spiritual and material problems caused by our sin. If he is found among his people, he is both with the people he came to be with and around the very problems he came to resolve.

Jesus similarly came to restore the relationship between man and God. A relationship that had been broken ever since Adam sinned in Eden. But if Jesus is away from people and off in the stable, he is neither with his people, nor is God dwelling with us, nor is there any relationships to be had. But if Jesus is in and among the people he came to save, around the mess he came to fix, he is able to actually bring reconciliation between God and man. He is, indeed, God with us rather than God away from us with the animals.

Of course, no major doctrine is damaged if Jesus was born in a stable. Believing it isn’t going to wreck our theology. But it does alter what we understand of the Christmas story and how it applies to us. Jesus came to be with us, and couldn’t be ignored off in the stable, but came amidst the mess of humankind to restore the broken relationship between man and his creator. And I think that is worth getting right.