Tool Beta
Hebrew and Greek Without Learning Either
A walk through Genesis, the Psalms, and John, plus the key Hebrew and Greek words worth knowing. Each card is a place the English Bibles part company, and what in the Hebrew or Greek made them.
Luke 2:7
No room at the inn. The word is not the word for inn. Luke uses it again for the upper room at 22:11, and he has a different word for a commercial inn at 10:34.
Luke 2:7, in every translation this tool compares.
There was no room at the hotel. There was no room in the spare bedroom. One word swap, and you have changed who was there, who turned them away, and whether anyone was unkind. Nouns carry scenery.
Because one noun produced the innkeeper, the stable, the cold refusal and half of every nativity play, none of which is in any Gospel. It is the best single demonstration in the New Testament that a translation can hand you an entire scene the text never described.
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.
Most versions still read inn. The CSB and NET read guest room, and the NIV now reads guest room with a note.
κατάλυμα kataluma · G2646
The word is kataluma, a place to unloose or lodge, used of the upper guest room where Jesus eats the Passover in Luke 22:11. When Luke means a commercial inn, in the parable of the Good Samaritan, he uses a different word, pandocheion.
English inn drags in an innkeeper, a no-vacancy sign and a family turned away in the cold, none of which is in the Greek. The picture is closer to a village house whose guest space was full, with the family moved in among the animals under the same roof.
When a translation gives you a scene, check whether the scene is in the words. The innkeeper of every nativity play does not appear in any Gospel. He is an inference from one English noun.
Inn has four hundred years of tradition and the Latin diversorium behind it. Guest room has Luke's own usage at 22:11, and the absence of pandocheion, the word he uses for a commercial inn at 10:34. The lexical argument is fairly one-sided.
- Kenneth E. Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, ch. 1
- Luke 22:11 and Mark 14:14 use kataluma of the upper room; Luke 10:34 uses pandocheion of an inn
- Published: jayms.com/the-birth-of-jesus-kataluma
