the elements than sleeping on the street or in the open fields. More truck stop than motel, they were not the kind of place to give birth. Bernard Gagnon/Wikimedia Commons Joseph and Mary might have lodged in Bethlehem in a caravansary like this one in Qalaat al-Madiq, Syria. Because none of the expected human lodging was available, Mary laid the child in a phatnē [5336] (“feeding trough” or “animal stall”; cf. Luke 13:15), traditionally rendered as “manger,” an archaic English term for a feeding