Stephen Carlson - Mary, Joseph, and the so-called "Inn"

Episode: Jason Staples and Stephen Carlson try to ruin your Nativity! Jason discusses Stephen's essay "The Accommodations of Joseph and Mary in Bethlehem: Κατάλυμα in Luke 2:7." They also discuss when and how Mary and Joseph get married, the census in Luke 2:2, and ... (wait for it) ... the Spanish Inquisition. Guest: Dr. Stephen Carlson is Associate Professor in the Biblical and Early Christian Studies program at the Australian Catholic University. He's the author of three books, The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith's Invention of Secret Mark (Baylor, 2007), which debunked the "Secret Gospel of Mark"; The Text of Galatians and its History (Mohr Siebeck, 2014), which applied state-of-the-art computer phylogenetic software he wrote himself to produce a family tree of ninety-two manuscripts and witnesses of Galatians; and Papias of Hierapolis' Exposition of Dominical Oracles (Oxford, 2021), the most complete edition of the fragments of Papias of Hierapolis, a second-century Christian commentator. He is also the author of numerous peer-reviewed journal articles, including his article on the so-called "inn" in Luke's infancy account (under discussion in this episode) and essays on the donkeys in Matthew's triumphal entry: Stephen C. Carlson, “‘The Jenny and the Colt’ in Matthew’s Messianic Entry, Part 1: Matthew 21:5 as a Reading of Zechariah 9:9 in Light of Mark 11:1-10,” in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, volume 81, number 1 (January 2019), pages 62-84 ( link ). Stephen C. Carlson, “‘The Jenny and the Colt’ in Matthew’s Messianic Entry, Part 2: Matthew 21:7 as a Reading of Mark 11:7 in Light of Zechariah 9:9,” in the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, volume 81, number 2 (April 2019), pages 235-251 ( link ). HERE is a link to the article " Luke 2:2 and the Census ."

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Stephen Carlson - Mary, Joseph, and the so-called "Inn" is an episode from Biblical World by Chris McKinny, Lynn Cohick, Kyle Keimer, Oliver Hersey, Mary Buck, and Mark Janzen.

This episode is 58:15 long.

This episode was published on Dec 23, 2025.

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