Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text: Ideas
The customs, offices and ideas a first reader knew without being told, what each meant then, and the nearest thing you already know.
The village house
Most village families lived in one main room, with a lower end by the door where the animals spent the night, a flat roof of beams, branches and mud, and sometimes a guest room on the roof or built on at the end.
At night the donkey came in, the door was barred, and the whole family slept on mats in the one big room. A village house in Jesus' world was simple. The family cooked, ate and slept in one main room. At the door end, a little lower, the animals were brought in each night, with feeding troughs cut into the floor. The roof was flat, reached by an outside stair, and made of beams covered with branches and packed mud. Some homes had a guest room on the roof or built on at the end.
Bailey had seen such homes in Upper Galilee and in Bethlehem. He describes simple village houses with two rooms. One was a guest room, attached to the end of the house or built on the roof. The other was a family room where everyone cooked, ate and slept. The end of the family room by the door was lower or fenced off with timbers. The cow, the donkey and a few sheep were driven in there each night and tied in the courtyard by day. Mangers were cut into the floor. Bailey finds the same house behind 1 Samuel 28:24 and Judges 11, and behind the saying that one lamp gives light to everyone in the house. Wright likewise places the birth of Luke 2:7 on the ground floor of a house, where animals were often kept. Many homes had a single room. The children slept on mats on its floor, and the door was secured by a heavy bar run through rings. Roofs were beams laid over with branches or reeds and packed mud, reached by an outside staircase. They were strong enough to walk on and soft enough to dig through. Luke describes the tiled roofs his own readers knew. Flat roofs were used for work and rest, and a voice from them carried over the street. Walls of dried mud could be dug through, though better-off homes were built of stone.
An analogy: an old farmhouse where the kitchen is the only warm room, the family sleeps by the stove in winter, and the animals are just through the door. Nobody thinks it strange; it is how a working family lives.
If the crowded space in Luke 2:7 was a guest room, the manger stood in an ordinary family room, not a stable. A roof of mud and branches can be opened to lower a sick man, as in Mark 2:4. Peter goes up on the flat roof to pray in Acts 10:9.
Not a farmhouse with the animals in a barn next door. In the village house the animals came into the family room itself each night, at its lower end, with mangers cut into the floor. Bailey notes farmers wanted them inside for warmth and safety from thieves. It was ordinary and no sign of poverty or rejection.
What was the crowded place in Luke 2:7? Bailey, following Plummer, reads it as the guest room of a private home. He points to Luke 22:11, where the same Greek word, katalyma, names a guest room. The baby is laid in a manger in the family room. Wright reads the ground floor of a house. Keener's background commentary takes the word as home or guest room, with the birth perhaps in a vacant cave outside used for livestock. The ESV Study Bible takes it as a public lodging place for travelers, full because of the census. The CSB Study Bible reads no room anywhere in Bethlehem, so the family used a stable or a cave. The cave tradition is early. Keener's notes say it was circulating in Bethlehem by the early second century, and Bailey traces it to Justin Martyr. Strauss, in the Zondervan backgrounds commentary, takes it as a guest room or an informal public shelter. He notes that Luke uses another word for the inn of Luke 10:34, and leaves open an animal room in the house, a cave or an open feeding place.
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- Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, ch. 1, The Story of Jesus' Birth
- N. T. Wright, Luke for Everyone, comment on Luke 2:1-20
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Luke 2:6-7, 5:18-19, 11:7, 12:2-3 and 12:39-40
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Luke 2:7, 5:19, 11:7 and 12:3
- ESV Study Bible, study note on Luke 2:7
- CSB Study Bible, note on Luke 2:7
- Mark L. Strauss, Luke, in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, on Luke 2:7
- J. D. Douglas and Merrill C. Tenney, Zondervan Illustrated Bible Dictionary, manger
