c. 1995 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ A newly betrothed couple is forced to register for a census in a town far away. The woman is nine months pregnant. When they finally reach their destination after an arduous journey, there is no place to stay. The baby is born in a spot fit only for animals.

Scholars and clergy differ on whether the Nativity stories in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew are historical accounts or symbolic narratives of Christianity’s beginnings.

But one thing is certain: The world of Mary and Joseph was a difficult and dangerous place, one whose harsh conditions were not fully chronicled in the Gospels themselves.”Matthew and Luke are so laconic about the (Nativity) event because they assume the reader would know what it was like,”said James F. Strange, a New Testament and biblical archaeology professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Today, he added,”we have no idea how difficult it was.” Joseph and Mary’s hardships would have begun more than a week before the birth of their son when the couple would have left their home in Nazareth, in the northern highlands of Galilee, to register for a Roman census.

They probably would have traveled the usual route to the city of Joseph’s forebears: south along the flatlands of the Jordan River, then west over the hills surrounding Jerusalem, and on into Bethlehem.

Making that 90-mile journey would be like walking almost halfway through Pennsylvania from north to south: over the hills surrounding Allentown in the north, then east to the Delaware River, and south to Philadelphia.”It was a fairly grueling trip,”said Strange, who annually leads an excavation team at the ancient city of Sepphoris, near Nazareth.”In antiquity, the most we find people traveling is 20 miles a day. And this trip was very much uphill and downhill. It was not simple.” Strange estimates Joseph and Mary likely would have traveled only 10 miles a day because of Mary’s due date.”I would be reluctant if my wife were that pregnant to press it more than that,”he said.

Mary’s physical condition would not have been the only factor to make the journey grueling. The trip would have been troublesome because it occurred in winter, said Strange. And what’s the Judean desert like during winter?”Sort of like New Jersey,”he said.”It’s in the 30s during the day, rains like heck. It’s nasty, miserable. At night it would be freezing.” To protect themselves from the elements, the ancients wove a heavy woolen cloak one and a third times larger than the human form. Afterwards, it was shrunk to size. The shrinking process helped the cloak shed rain and snow, Strange said. Under cloaks, people wore long robes, belted at the waist. Tube-like socks and enclosed shoes protected the feet, he said.

Unpaved, hilly trails and harsh weather were not the only hazards Joseph and Mary would have faced on their journey south.

One of the most terrifying dangers in ancient Palestine was the heavily forested valley of the Jordan River, Strange said. The woods there were populated with flesh-eating beasts such as lions and bears. Travelers also feared attack by wild boars. Archaeologists have unearthed documents warning travelers of the forest’s dangers, he said.”People were frightened to death to travel near this forest,”said Strange.”They would carry a short spear or a short sword to protect against these wild animals.” Brutes of a two-legged variety also posed risks.”Bandits, pirates of the desert and robbers”were common along the major trade routes like the one Joseph and Mary would have traveled, said the Rev. Peter Vasko, a Catholic priest and director of the Holy Land Foundation, an organization that works to retain a Christian presence in Israel and promotes the restoration of sacred Christian sites there.

The threat of outlaws often forced solitary travelers to join trade caravans for protection.”It was like the pioneer days with wagons and coaches,”Vasko said.”Traders took a number of people with them as passengers, and they (Mary and Joseph) probably had to pay something for protection.” Caravans may have been as large as 300 people with 60 camels. So did Mary ride to Bethlehem on the back of a camel rather than on the back of a donkey? Not likely.”Camels were basically used to bear packs. Donkeys were used for passengers,”said Vasko.

As he further considered Joseph and Mary’s possible method of travel, along with their lowly financial condition, Vasko said,”Maybe they rented a donkey, like a U-Haul. They weren’t very well-to-do people.” The camel was key to travel on a shoestring. In addition to the animal’s burden-bearing ability, its dung, when dried, was burned to provide warmth at night and fuel for cooking. Camel hair was used to make bedding, and camel milk might have provided nourishment for Mary, the mother-to-be.

But Mary and Joseph would not have relied solely on camel’s milk for sustenance during their trek to Bethlehem. The couple would have had to bring their own food and water.”In wineskins, they carried water,”said Vasko.”And they carried a lot of bread. … Breakfast would be dried bread, lunch would be oil with bread, and herbs with oil and bread in the evening.” If the hardships of spending more than a week on the road at nine months pregnant would not have been taxing enough, Joseph and Mary could have arrived in Bethlehem to find”10,000 other people from the house of David there for the census,”Strange said, referring to the descendants of ancient Israel’s King David.

Under normal circumstances, he said, the pair would have expected to stay in the spare bedroom of a relative or another Jewish family.”Hospitality was considered a great virtue in Hebrew society,”Morton Kelsey, a theology professor at the University of Notre Dame, wrote in his book”The Drama of Christmas”(Westminster John Knox Press).

In those days,”families … added one or several large rooms to their personal homes,”he wrote.”The rooms were built not for commercial gain but for kind, thoughtful hospitality.” However, an overcrowded Bethlehem would have forced Joseph and Mary to seek lodging at an inn that night.”An inn was regarded as emergency accommodations,”Strange said.”They were not really desirable places.” Scholars may disagree on exactly what an ancient inn was, but they do agree it was a crude facility.

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Typically, an inn was a rectangular-shaped building divided into small rooms and”most likely loaded with vermin,”said Strange. The inn was built around an outdoor courtyard, which may have been partially covered with a slanted roof, he said.

If all the rooms were taken, travelers could sleep outside, in the courtyard. More fortunate shelter seekers who arrived at the inn early enough might claim space under the roof, Strange said. Their animals were kept in an adjacent cave.

In his Gospel, Luke writes that Joseph and Mary were assigned a bed with the beasts.”In a way,”Strange said,”it was not such a terrible place to be because at least they had cover and it was better than staying out in the courtyard.” Vasko described the ancient inn in even less inviting terms.”In those days, an inn was a huge cave where somebody just squatted,”said Vasko. Lodgers stayed on one side of the cave and their animals on the other. Since the couple from Nazareth would have arrived at the inn late at night, the only place left would have been closest to the animals, he said.

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It is widely agreed that Jesus was born in a cave used for housing animals. But how realistic are the Renaissance images of Joseph, Mary and the newborn Jesus surrounded by a menagerie of camels, oxen, cows, chickens, pheasants and peacocks?

Not very, according to Strange. Since the stable was part of the inn, the only animals likely to be found there would have been donkeys used for travel _ and perhaps a few sheep, he said.

Both Strange and Vasko believe overcrowded conditions in Bethlehem on the night of Jesus’ birth would have resulted in others being close at hand during Mary’s delivery.”There were others present at the birth of Jesus,”Vasko said.”… It’s human nature to help somebody. If there was another woman there, I am sure she would have helped Mary.””I wouldn’t be a bit surprised that she had help,”said Strange.”There’s another account of the Nativity … where it says that when it was time to have the baby, Joseph went out looking for a midwife,”he said, referring to a non-canonical gospel written either by James the apostle or another James, known as the brother of Jesus.

Even though Mary could have had help and the cave may have provided some protection from the elements, the”noisy and dirty”conditions under which Jesus was born would have made the event anything but”warm and wonderful and sweet and comfortable,”Strange said, referring to 20th-century misconceptions about the Nativity.”Sleeping in the cold, on the ground, trying to keep the baby from getting an infection, keeping the mother from infection _ childbirth was a major hurdle in antiquity,”Strange said.”You might lose the child, you might lose the mother, you might lose both. … It was a very trying circumstance.”

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