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    Christmas musings

    From this Kevin Williamson column

    But that isn’t exactly what happened. Not really. He was not called wonderful or mighty — He was called criminal and heretic. We may call Him the Prince of Peace now, here at 2,000 years of safe reserve, but He knew very little peace in His own time. He was rejected even before His birth: We hear in the traditional account of the Nativity that “there was no room at the inn,” but many contemporary scholars believe that this translation represents a mishandling of the Greek, which specifies not a pandokheion, an ordinary commercial inn, but a kataluma, something quite different: the guest room in a family home. (I am indebted to the Reverend David Rea of Providence Presbyterian Church in Dallas for this insight.) That is a very different story: Mary and Joseph were not turned away by an overbooked hotelier but by their own family, who were no doubt filled with shame and indignation at Mary’s irregular condition. All the best people, the straight and the good and the true — they never really change. They’ve been insufferable since 6 b.c., at least.

    How much can the interpretations change based on Greek translations?

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