Shawn Ryan

What apparently happened is that Mary and Joseph were coming into Bethlehem and they went to a home of a relative and knocked on the door and said, hey, we're here for the census.

And the person said, oh, yeah, we got a lot of people coming for the census.

Everything's crowded.

We don't have room in the guest room, the ketalima.

I'm sorry, there's no room.

So she could come and you could stay in the family area, the living area.

And so Mary and Joseph probably lived and stayed in that living area of the home until the baby was born.

And you know what?

Some of the animals may have heard the commotion and come up the stairs to see what was going on.

They were proud.

They may have witnessed it.

And then after...

Jesus was born, she placed him in the clean hay of the feeding trough, the manger there in the living area.

That's probably what took place.

Interestingly, in the year 1395, so this predates the King James Version.

In the year 1395, John Wycliffe did his translation into English of the Bible, the New Testament.

And the word he chose for Catalima was gestrum, his room.

Today, the most popular translation of the Bible into English in America is NIV, the New International Version.

If you look it up in there, it doesn't say there was an inn.

There's no inn.