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For Clarification About the Nativity Scene

A lot of people have seen the nativity scene and it is often depicted as in the picture above. However, the depiction is incorrect. We can know this because of the description in the Bible and the historical data from that time.

A condensed version of the Bible story is that Joseph and Mary arrived in Bethlehem and found that the inn was full. (It was tax time.) The birth of Jesus was imminent, so they went to the stable and baby Jesus was born there.

Here is the problem. Look at the image above. It shows a wooden building, presumably the stable, with baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and so forth all outside of the building. That would mean that the baby would have been exposed to the elements, plus the fact that the Bible is clear that He was born in the manger, which would be inside of the stable, not outside of it.

Another problem is that the manger and the stable are depicted as being made of wood. In fact, there was very little wood used in the construction of Bethlehem. The stable where Jesus was born was actually hewn out of rock. It was basically a man-made cave. The manger was also chiseled out of stone and was a feeding trough within that man-made cave. 

The fact is that the manger where Jesus was born still exists and Biblical scholars (and many other people) know exactly where the place is. If it had been made from wood, it would have long since decomposed.

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What do you think?

Written by Rex Trulove

4 Comments

    • It doesn’t make a difference where are what materials were used, except as a point of clarity. The scriptures are usually literal when they are taken in context and not used to try to support a point that they absolutely have nothing to do with. In fact, there is an enormous amount of archeological and other scientific data that has been discovered that supports the bible. A number of the most well-known evangelists started out as scientists who specifically tried to disprove the facts in the bible. They couldn’t do it and in the attempt, became believers. That doesn’t necessarily mean that people always understand the scriptures, though.

    • Well, perhaps not forever, but for a very long time. People in those days were experts at working stones and rock. Joseph and Jesus are often called carpenters today, but they were more stonemasons than they were carpenters. It would be more precise to just call them builders.