MANGER (cpciro); phatne). The word 'halite occurs four times in the N. T. ,and only in St. Luke's Gospel. In the account of the nativity, where it is repeated thrice, it is in the A. V. translated manger,' but in the fourth passage it is translated stall.' The question to be discussed is, what is St. Luke's meaning in employing the word as he does. In order to ascertain this, it will be best to read his narrative, having first dismissed any previous im pressions, and inquiring only what meaning the word commonly carried at the time when he wrote. The derivation of phatne is by no means certain. It is however said to come from oct-yo.i, or else from rarloptaL (rderaolai), words meaning to eat,' though we consider rwrew (rarnrov), signifying to trample, etymologically just as likely. In classical Greek it means certainly a manger,' as in Hero dotus, ix. 70, and possibly a stall,' as in Pindar, 0/. xiii. 131. We cannot go so far as Dr. Words worth, who says on St. Luke ii. 7, that by the LXX. phatne is not used for manger' but for stall' only, because in such passages as Job xxxix. 9, and Hab. iii. 17, and Is. I. 3, there is nothing to decide the point ; but Prov. xiv. 4 seems decisive that phatne does mean a stall or stalled place. The A. V. indeed there translates, where no oxen are the (phatnw) crib is dean,' but it must be evident that the manger is not likely to be less clean through the presence of oxen : that which is defiled is the stall. Thus ercoarvicrActra means dung removed from the stall. It may perhaps he doubted whether the word crib, which appears here in the earlier versions as well as in the A. V., did not itself mean a stall or ' fold for cattle'—a meaning assigned to it by Halliwell. Moreover, the Hebrew word for ipdrvat here means, according to Ge senius, stable.' On the whole, we take up St. Luke with the notion that phatne has the meaning both of a manger and a stalled-place where cattle stand and eat, and that it is an open question whether the one meaning or the other was most present to the mind of the evangelist. Now, we find him saying (ii. 7), that Mary swathed the child, and laid him in the phatne, because there was not room for them in the inn.' (Not the re ceived, but the more probable reading here is hi odrirri, omitting the article, which is so far impor tant, inasmuch as any phatne, and not necessarily that belonging to the inn, may then be designated.) Again, as a direction to the shepherds (ii. 12), Ye shall find a babe swathed lying in a phatne.' Again (ii. /6), They found Mary and Joseph, and the babe lying in the phatne' The reader will bear in mind that in this account, if 'Shane mean manger, there has been no direct mention of any stable at all, and we are then told that the mother placed her babe in the manger (or a manger) be cause there was no room for them in the inn. But, as Wordsworth says, It was not necessary that he should be laid in the manger, because there was no room in the inn :' the word manger and the word inn are not in any way contrasts. We could well understand, on the other hand, how a stall, or stalled place for cattle, should be resorted to, the inn being full. We think, however, that if the inn was full, the stable of the inn would be full also, and that both criticism and common sense lead to the conclusion that the phatne was not attached to the inn.
Again, the direction to the shepherds seems rather to refer to a stall-place than to a manger ; and where are we to suppose the parturition itself to have taken place? As, in the following passage from Bishop Andrewes, we constantly find the men tion of the stable assumed : When ye come to Bethlehem, never search in any house or chamber, in a stable there shall you find a babe swaddled and laid in a manger." In the fourth passage of St. Luke (xiii. 5), where the meaning might be considered more doubtful, this word is in the A. V. translated stall.
Having considered St. Luke's account of the nativity, we conclude from itself, that lie speaks nothing of a manger, but only of a stalled-place for cattle. This view is not contradicted by the earlier Christian notices of the scene of this great event. Thus, Justin Martyr says that Joseph, not finding in that village a place to rest at, rested in a certain cave near it, and there Mary brought forth the Christ, and laid him in a pliable,' is e., as
we conceive, in one of the stalls with which the cave was furnished, it being well known that such excavations are commonly used for housing cattle in the East. The testimony of Justin belongs to the middle of the zd century, and the date of the Protevangel of James is probably not much later. Now, in this apocryphal gospel, the par turition is described as taking place a little before the arrival at Bethlehem, in a cave, without any mention of a photon', in which, however, Mary hides the babe afterwards, at the time of the slaugh ter of the Innocents. In what Tischendorf calls the Psendo-dllatthcei Evangelium, there is the same distinction between the cave and the 'halm ob served. But Origen says distinctly, that the cave is shown, and in it the thane in which lie was swathed.' Now, in a manger, this operation of swathing could not have been performed at all. But how then are we to account for the diffusion through Christendom of the belief that the heaven-born child,' as Milton has it, in the rude manger lay ?' No doubt, it is a very easy step from a stall to a manger, if indeed in the East there was any distinction betwixt the two, and probably the fitness of a manger, such as was in ordinary use in the West, suggested to western Christians that the word prasepe, which in Latin amply represents the ambiguity of the Greek phatne, must stand for manger. Thus, in our own tongue, the words crib' and cratch' are as much equivalents for a child's sleeping-place as is the word cradle.' We come now to the fact of the visit of Helena, A.D. 325, and the building by her, over a grotto at Bethlehem, of the Basilica or Church of the Nativity, the nave of which, according to Stan ley, yet remains. In the year 642 the wooden cradle or manger, referred to below, was deposited at Rome. Bishop Arculf, whose visit is assigned, doubtfully, to the beginning of the 8th century, appears to have been shown a sort of natural half cave, the outer part of which is said to have been the place of our Lord's birth ; the inside is called our Lord's manger.' And, in the 9th century, Bernard the Wise speaks of the manger of our Lord on the west side of the crypt. Then, in the r2th, Sxwulf sees, near the place of the nativity, the manger where the ox and ass stood, when the child was placed before them in it.' In the 14th century Maundeville saw the place where our Lord was born, which is full well made of marble, and full richly painted with gold, silver, azure, and other colours. And three paces from it is the crib of the ox and the ass. And beside that is the place where the star fell.' Hasselquist, in the year 1751, descended some steps under ground to come into the cave where these two places are shown, viz., on the left hand the place where the infant was born, and on the right where he was laid in the manger.' The American, Stephens, describes this manger : On the right, descending two steps, is a chamber paved and lined with marble, having at one end a block polished and hollowed out ; and this is the manger in which our Saviour was laid.' If, however, Stephens sup posed that no other claims could be set up, he was mistaken, as will be seen in the following extract from Dr. Stanley. From the nave of the church we descend to that subterranean vault over which and for which the whole structure was erected. There, at the entrance of a long winding passage, excavated out of the limestone rock, of which the hill of Bethlehem is composed, the pilgrim finds himself in an irregular chapel, dimly lighted with silver lamps, and containing two small recesses nearly opposite each other. In the northern most of these is a marble slab, which marks the supposed spot of the nativity. . . . In the southern recess, three steps deeper in the chapel, is the alleged stall in which, according to the Latin tradition, was discovered the wooden manger or prxsepe' now deposited in the magnificent Basi lica of S. Maria Maggiore at Rome, and there dis played, under the auspices of the pope, every Christmas-day.' Dr. Stanley's own opinion, as to this grotto being the true scene of the Nativity, appears to have been pretty evenly balanced ; the natural features he thought unfavourable to the identity, but the early reverence of the spot favour able to it. {CARAVANSERAI ; BETHLEHEM.] W. L. M.