Was Jesus Born In a Caravanserai?

Christmas is coming! Christmas is coming! Rudolph is coming! Hear the Jingle Bells? This is the day we exchange gifts, put up trees, decorate our homes to an extent that would make the famous Las Vegas Strip seem austere.

We do all this because this is the day Jesus Christ was born in a manger (or a cave in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem) because there was no room at the inn. The date? December 25, A.D. 1.

We know all this, have known it all our lives; or do we? As Will Rogers was fond of saying, 

It isn't what we don't know that gives us trouble. It's what we know that ain't so.

Sorry, but all this just ain't so.

The Date

In Luke 2:8 we read

 And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

Why would the sheep be kept outdoors in the cold and rainy winter? Perhaps they had a shelter of some kind. And how about the people, traveling on sandaled feet on rough, and in winter often muddy, roads? Joseph and Mary are reported to be going to Bethlehem to be counted in the census. Surely the Roman Empire could have survived without a census until springtime. And it probably did.

It is part of Mormon mythology, widely accepted but never actually declared by the Church, that Jesus was born on April 6, A.D. 1.

But in the Mortal Messiah, by Bruce R. McConkie, we read,

We do not believe it is possible with the present state of our knowledge — including that which is known both in and out of the Church — to state with finality when the natal day of the Lord Jesus actually occurred. James E. Talmage takes the view that he was born on April 6, 1 b.c., basing his conclusions on D&C 20:1, which speaks of the day on which the Church was organized, saying it was "one thousand eight hundred and thirty years since the coming of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in the flesh." April 6 is then named as the specific day for the formal organization. Elder Talmage notes the Book of Mormon chronology, which says that the Lord would be born 600 years after Lehi left Jerusalem. (Talmage, Jesus the Christ, pg 102-104.)Elder Hyrum M. Smith of the Council of the Twelve wrote in the Doctrine and Covenants Commentary: "The organization of the Church in the year 1830 is hardly to be regarded as giving divine authority to the commonly accepted calendar. There are reasons for believing that those who, a long time after our Savior's birth, tried to ascertain the correct time erred in their calculations, and that the Nativity occurred four years before our era, or in the year of Rome 750. All that this Revelation [D&C 20] means to say is that the Church was organized in the year commonly accepted as 1830, a.d." Rome 750 is equivalent, as indicated, to 4 b.c.

 The Place: No Room in the Inn

"Inn" at that time and place probably meant "caravanserai." These were the places where camel caravans stopped along the way; people stayed in rooms on the second floor, while the animals were housed at ground level. Note that Luke 2:7 says,  

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.

  Caravanserai -- water trough front and center.

The operative word here is room, not space.

All the rooms upstairs were taken, but there was still space on the ground floor among the animals and in the courtyard. Mangers (actually water troughs) would naturally have been where the animals could get to them
easily.




We might read the above as: [Mary] wrapped him in swaddling clother, and laid him in a watering trough; because all the rooms in the caravanserai were occupied.

I won't comment on the Christmas tree, the holly, the candles and all the accoutrements of Christmas in our day and time. Much has already been written, and is easy to find on the Net. Christmas is a day for prayer and thanksgiving, but it is also a day for the delight of children (and sometimes for the child within ourselves). So don't feel guilty about the gift-giving, or about the sweets we will all consume. Just enjoy. 
The exact date, especially considering the various changes in the calendar, is really of no importance.  As Joseph Smith wrote,

The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it. ( Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, sel. Joseph Fielding Smith [1976], 121).

Wishing everyone a slightly more realistic Merry Christmas!
 Beryl