CHAPTER XVI.
THE BIRTH-PLACE OF CHRIST JESUS.
The writer of that portion of the Gospel according to Matthew which treats of the place in which Jesus was born, implies, as we stated in our last chapter, that he was born in a house. His words are these:
"Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, there came wise men from the east" to worship him. "And when they were come into the house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother."[154:1]
The writer of the Luke version implies that he was born in a stable, as the following statement will show:
"The days being accomplished that she (Mary) should be delivered . . . she brought forth her first-born son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger, there being no room for him in the inn."[154:2]
If these accounts were contained in these Gospels in the time of Eusebius, the first ecclesiastical historian, who flourished during the Council of Nice (A. D. 327), it is very strange that, in speaking of the birth of Jesus, he should have omitted even mentioning them, and should have given an altogether different version. He tells us that Jesus was neither born in a house, nor in a stable, but in a cave, and that at the time of Constantine a magnificent temple was erected on the spot, so that the Christians might worship in the place where their Saviour's feet had stood.[154:3]
In the apocryphal Gospel called "Protevangelion," attributed to James, the brother of Jesus, we are informed that Mary and her husband, being away from their home in Nazareth, and when within three miles of Bethlehem, to which city they were going, Mary said to Joseph:
"Take me down from the ass, for that which is in me presses to come forth."