Background for the Drama

WORSHIP CELEBRATION!

December 17, 2006

OPEN HEARTS IN BETHLEHEM

A CHRISTMAS MUSICAL DRAMA By the Rev. Dr. Kenneth BaileyTHE REAL LIFE SETTING OF THIS DRAMA

This presentation of the Christmas story is most likely different than any you have seen before. This drama is the scholarly result of a man intimately familiar with the Palestinian environment of Jesus Christ.  Dr. Kenneth Bailey's reading of the New Testament from the both the original language and study of the native culture has led him to this conclusion: Messiah Jesus was born, not out back in a lonely stable, but in His ancestral home surrounded by the warmth and protection of a loving extended family.

Joseph was of the line of King David, Israel's most important family. The village of Bethlehem, also known as the City of David, was this family's "home base." As Luke writes the account of Jesus' birth, Joseph must travel to his hometown. In a culture that puts an extremely high premium on hospitality as the traditional Palestinian culture does, Joseph would have been considered an insider and would have been welcomed in any home of that village - especially with a pregnant wife! No one would have turned them away.

Luke indicates that the Holy Family was indeed in a private home and not a commercial inn. Luke says that there was no room for Joseph and Mary in the kataluma (mistranslated "inn"), referring to the guestroom of a private residence. The fact that this family had a kataluma reveals that this family was doing fairly well for themselves! Since there was no room for the Holy Family in the kataluma, Mary and Joseph were in the main living room of the house. The other clue that lets us know that Jesus was born in the confines of a house is the manger itself. Animals were not kept in barns separate from the family dwelling, but kept inside at one end of the house. Mangers, animal feeding troughs, were in fact indoors, on the lower level, protected from the elements.

It is this understanding of Luke's account of the birth of Jesus Christ that forms the setting for this play.