Saint Jerome "On Being Born in a Stable"

From a blog, appropriately called Singing In The Reign, a joint effort of Michael Barber and Brant Pitre, a couple of our younger Christian scholars.

Not born in a manger, which would be decidedly awkward for everyone, St Luke says he was "laid in a manger" after he was born that is; a manger is a feeding trough for animals, from which it seems natural to suggest that he was born someplace where animals were housed, perhaps a stable.

I wonder if the dissident monk Martin Luther was inspired by the reflections of Saint Jerome on this business of being born in a stable: "He is not born in the midst of gold and riches, but in the midst of dung, in a stable where our sins were filthier than the dung."

Father and later Lutheran pastor Luther reckoned that his explanation of justification was better than the Church's theologians over the centuries: "We are dung hills covered by snow."