2:6 While they were [in Bethlehem], the time came for [Mary] to deliver her child. 2:7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

‘No room in the inn’ (along with a grumpy inn-keeper) is part of the fabric of the nativity story, as popularly told.  But the biblical text makes no mention of a stable, and the word commonly translated ‘inn’ may well mean something else.

So, let’s explore the alternative understandings.

Stable?

The assumption that Jesus was born in a stable (or perhaps a cave) is an inference from his being laid in a manger.  (It may also stem in part from a Messianic reading of Isa 1:3 – ‘The ox knows its master, the donkey its owner’s manger, but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.’  But such a messianic reading is dubious, to say the least.)

So the contributor to the CSB Study Bible:

‘That baby Jesus was laid … in a manger indicates that the family was forced to stay in a stable, or perhaps a cave that served as a stable, because there was no other room available in Bethlehem.’

It is curious that the Bible Odyssey web site (which claims to showcase the results of modern biblical schorlarship) carelessly conflates fact with fiction (well, guess-work, anyway) when it says:

‘Jesus was born in a stable, not because all the hotels were full but because the guest room of the relatives with whom Joseph and Mary were staying was already overcrowded with guests.’

Once again: the text does not say that Jesus was born in a stable!  It doesn’t even say that the guest room was overcrowded (although that suggestion does have some plausibility): the text says that there was no place to lay the baby, not that there were too many people in the house!  Mary and her new-born baby needed privacy at least as much as space.

A room on the ground floor of the family home?

It is, then, quite likely that the manger was in a room on the ground floor of the family home, normally used to shelter animals at night.

Edwards describes the layout of a typical dwelling:

‘The footprint of a typical first-century Palestine dwelling was a rectangle divided into three spaces: a large central room with a stable for animals on one end and a guest room (katalyma) on the other. All three rooms normally had separate entrances. The katalyma was an attached guest room separated from the central room by a solid wall. The stable was separated from the central room by a half-wall, thus allowing the family to feed animals without going outdoors.’

Keener remarks on the layers of elaboration that subsequent generations have laid upon the text:

‘Many of the details supplied in Christmas tellings of this story do not come from Luke. There is no indication of a long search for a place to stay or of an insensitive innkeeper who made Mary and Joseph stay outdoors. The text merely describes the arrival in simple terms: She gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.’ (IVP NT Commentary)

France clarifies what Luke does, and does not, say about the physical circumstances of Jesus’ birth:

Luke’s mention of a “manger” has led most Western readers to assume that Jesus was born in a stable, and that idea has become fixed in our Christmas traditions, even though Luke does not speak of a “stable.” Rather, an ordinary Palestinian village home was a one-room house in which the animals were kept on a lower level (not in a stable), with the mangers set along the side of the family’s living area. The manger was therefore part of an ordinary living room, and there is no basis in Luke’s account for the sentimental idea that Jesus was born excluded from human society. Since Bethlehem was Joseph’s ancestral home, we may assume that they were staying with relatives.

James McGrath (The A – Z of the New Testament):

‘Most people, whether they were agriculturalists or raised animals, did not have extensive properties with large structures to shelter grain or livestock. An ordinary individual in Jesus’s time and context would have brought their few animals into their home at night throughout most of the year. If there was something that we might call a “stable,” it was within the structure of the home. Feeding troughs would be located within that structure as well. If Jesus was laid in a manger after he was born, the assumption most ancient Mediterranean readers would make is that it was located inside a home.’

Cave?

A church is sited on the presumed site of the nativity. Steps on either side of the altar lead down into a cave, where the birth is said to have taken place. The splendour of the setting should not be allowed to hide the reality of the event itself.  Still it should be remembered that this cave is in the middle of the old town; Jesus was not born in solitude, but in the hustle and bustle of a busy town.

There is an early tradition that Jesus was born in a cave:

‘The present Church of the Nativity, lying at the west edge of the hill that marked the old city, was erected over a large rock cave, some 12 × 3 meters in size. This cavern is one of several that were located near houses and served as stalls or for storage of supplies (cf. Lk 11:33) in the first century. Already at the beginning of the second century, the local tradition was so well established that Hadrian (in c. A.D. 135) made the cave into a sanctuary to Adonis in order to eliminate veneration of it by Jewish Christians (ELS 83ff.). Jerome still remembered the original “manger” (phatnē) of Luke 2:7 consisting of a rock groove with plain clay walls (ELS 91) in a sidecave some 3 × 3 meters in size (GBL 2.847).’ (DJG, 2nd ed., art. ‘Archeology and Geography’)

The tradition of Jesus being born in a cave goes back as far as Justin Martyr (AD 150), Origen (AD 248) and Jerome (4th cent.).

‘In his book, “Where God Came Down: The Archaeological Evidence,” Joel P. Kramer notes that a series of caves beneath the Church of the Nativity “were excavated in 1949-1950 by Bellarmino Bagatti, who found evidence establishing that thy were in use in the first century AD.”’ (Source)

Concerning the presence of a manger, the same source indicates that:

‘numerous permanent stone-carved or plastered stone-built mangers have been discovered on the ground floor of houses from biblical times. People in ancient Israel would sometimes keep young, vulnerable, or special animals safe inside the home at night.’

Conclusion:

‘The archaeological and textual evidence suggests that Mary and Joseph were not stuffed in a barn out behind the local Motel 6 in Bethlehem, but rather occupied the manger room on the ground floor of a relative’s house because the upper room was already occupied. There need not be a discrepancy between a cave and a manger room in a house, as some domestic structures were built against a cave, which would have housed the manger room.’