From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sun Dec 23 2001 - 08:00:39 EST
At 12:05 AM -0500 12/23/01, Neal Stublen wrote:
>Dear B-Greekers,
>
>Is it possible that Luke's account of Jesus' birth in Luke 2:7 does not
>refer to the entire stay of Mary and Joseph in Bethlehem, but only that the
>inn had no facilities to accommodate a woman giving birth? Would an inn
>necessarily have had private rooms? Is it possible that an inn had a common
>area for the guests to share?
>
>As I have always heard the story, Mary and Joseph ended up in the stables
>because there were no vacancies in the inn, but does TOPOS give the idea of
>vacancies or could it also mean there was no place, given Mary's
>circumstances?
>
>My question arose while looking at verse 6. Is it possible (or even likely)
>that Mary and Joseph had been spending some time in Bethlehem already (EN TW
>EINAI AUTOUS) and at some point during their stay Mary went into labor?
>Could we think that perhaps Mary and Joseph had been staying in the inn
>while in Bethlehem, but when she went into labor the inn could not
>accommodate the birth of a child and it was better for them to move to the
>stables?
>
>I have a pretty good idea that I'm way off base here, but would the text
>prevent me from understanding the story this way? (I'm a novice with the
>Greek text, but looking to learn more.)
>
>Thanks for indulging me,
Although the word TOPOS is open to a pretty broad range of applications, I
really think this suggestion is fanciful. Here's the relevant entry in Louw
& Nida:
80.1 TOPOS, OU, M: an area of any size, regarded in certain contexts as a
point in space - 'space, place, room.' DIOTI OUK HN AUTOIS TOPOS EN TWi
KATALUMATI 'because there was no space for them in the inn' Lk 2:7; KAI ETI
TOPOS ESTIN 'and there is still space' Lk 14:22; hOI ANDRES TOU TOPOU
EKEINOU APESTEILAN EIS hOLHN THN PERICWRON EKEINHN 'the men of that place
sent into all the surrounding area' Mt 14:35; EN TWi TOPWi hOU ERREQH
AUTOIS, "OU LAOS MOU hUMEIS" 'in the place where it was said to them, You
are not my people' Ro 9:26.
In Jn 11:48 the expression TON TOPON refers to the Temple in Jerusalem.
On the other hand, I think you have something in your raising the
implications of EN TWi EINAI AUTOUS EKEI: the normal way to understand this
is as meaning, "while they were there" -- and notice of the inception of
labor raises the question where they were staying prior to this point.
Yet in the last analysis all this is speculation and it's impossible to
derive from the text more than the meager details that the evangelist
offers us in the narrative. As is the case with lots of little incidental
stories, we often would like to know more than the narrator tells us, but
we are obliged to take what we are given and assume that if more details
were essential to what the narrator wants to tell us, he would have given
them to us. The Greek text as it stands won't yield any more by way of
facts.
--
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
Most months: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad@ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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