This article is an excerpt from Unity Magazine®. Learn more about this thought-provoking, fresh and provocative publication from Unity.

By Rev. Maggy Whitehouse

Jesus was poor, right?

Wrong.

I apologize if this ruins your idea of the perfect Christmas nativity, complete with heartless innkeepers, but it is much more likely that the story of Jesus' birth was just one in a long line of prosperity miracles.

You'd expect that from a Son of God really, wouldn't you? It's plain silly to think someone as clear, loving and powerful as Jesus was broke. And yet we are still infected with the idea that Jesus was poor and that, if we are good people, we should follow that very same path.

… I've never found any evidence in the Bible to show that Jesus or his family lived a life of poverty. What I have found is modern misinterpretation of ancient lifestyles.

… The story we love at Christmas only exists in the Gospel of Luke. It reads: Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. 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 (Luke 2:4-7).

There is no donkey, no ox, no trailing around Bethlehem, no unkind innkeepers, not even the slightest hint that Mary was in labor while they searched for somewhere to stay.

A lodging house in Jesus' day didn't have rooms the way modern motels do. It consisted of two dormitories, with men and women segregated from each other. This meant that more people could be accommodated at a time of pilgrimage and made it easier with respect to the laws of purity (where orthodox Jewish men and women spend up to two weeks not touching during and after the woman's menses). The shepherds could never have found their way into the female dormitory to see the Holy Child and Joseph couldn't have been there either!

It is also worth noting that a stable was rarely separate from a house in those days; animals lived next to the kitchen; their body warmth being useful and their dung being used for fuel.

The next problem is the word that Luke uses and that we translate as inn. This is kataluma and it is not used in the sense of public accommodations or inn anywhere else in the whole New Testament. … Kataluma is translated in almost all versions of the Bible as “upper room” or “guest room.”
   
… Luke writes that Joseph was of the House of David and had to return to his family's hometown for the census (apographo, meaning “written record” rather than the usually-translated “tax”) so it's more than likely that he had extended family in the town.

It has been suggested before by scholars that Joseph and Mary would have stayed with relatives rather than at an inn. … If there was more than one couple staying in a private house, there probably wouldn't have been enough space for a woman to give birth, so Mary would have been moved out of the guest room and into a warm place where she could walk, sit, lie down, be attended by others and where she didn't have to worry about the ritual purity laws and the blood and natural mess of a baby's birth.

… Both Jesus and his family knew how to manifest exactly what they needed at the perfect time without being encumbered by unnecessary possessions, duties and cares.

They weren't poor; they were truly prosperous, just as we can be.