Catályma

On this eve, Amy-Jill Levine writes to clear up some Christmas clutter.

Luke's κατάλυμα is one: this is not a "room at the inn". Actually scratch that: it is that room, in The Prancing Pony where everyone is hoisting beers and watching Pippin sing The Cow Jumped Over The Moon. The Catalyma has no topos for Mary - nor for any other woman - to give birth. I mean, come on; says Levine.

That said, and to counter Levine elsewhere: there may be a case that Jewish law in Bethlehem enforced a purity-law in its taverns. She argues the Pharisees - protoRabbis - trended against the harsher regulations of Oral Torah. There were however Rabbis who argued for the harshness; the school of Shammai is remembered, and Levine herself notes some snobs among the Mishna canon. Recently dug up, are nonPharisaic Jews who were even worse - the Sadducees and their spinoffs at Qumran. Pharisees were stronger up north of the holier cities, like around Galilee or Sidon - or around Sepphoris (Nazareth was a suburb of Sepphoris). But the Holy Family were in David's City, a suburb of Jerusalem. Depending on when they were there, they may have stumbled into a partisan inn or at least a partisan crowd. As Levine points out, by Christian terms the birth of this ultimate sage may have undone the Blight Before Christmas as Jesus, later, would have undone leprosies. But the innkeeper couldn't know that, he'd be demanding the heavily pregnant Maryam go to the stables. Which everyone should be agreeing she do anyway, see paragraph ante.

All that said, Levine is doing us a service mainly in explaining what is a κατάλυμα. Although it seems a service being performed by other bloggers. Also popular is that this wasn't even a tavern but Joseph's (or Mary's) extended family domus. In which case the Catalyma is simply the parlour and the "keeper" is, like, someone's dad.