“Saint Joseph seeks a lodging at Bethlehem” illustrated, with notes by James Tissot
Saint Joseph Seeks a Lodging in Bethlehem (Saint Joseph cherche un gîte à Bethléem). By James Tissot. In the collection of the Brooklyn Museum (reproduction freely allowed).
Commentary by the Brooklyn Museum
In the biblical narrative, Mary and Joseph live in Nazareth but must journey to Bethlehem, the ancestral home of Joseph’s family, to be counted in a census imposed by the Romans. On their arrival in the town, Joseph searches for lodgings without success. Tissot contrasts Joseph’s anxious plea—calling up to townspeople in hopes of finding accommodation—with the Virgin Mary’s quiet resignation.
Tissot’s expeditions to the Middle East in the 1880s provided rich source material for his watercolor compositions. The thick masonry walls and labyrinthine alleys of Jaffa, an ancient port city near modern Tel Aviv in Israel, serve here, with minor revisions, as the backdrop of Bethlehem.
Commentary by James Tissot in his lavishly illustrated “Tissot Bible”
Saint Luke — Chap. 2:3-5
ET ibant omnes, ut profiterentur singuli in suam civitatem. Ascendit autem et Joseph a Galilaea de civitate Nazareth, in Judaeam, in civitatem David, quae vocatur Bethlehem, eo quod esset de domo et familia David; Ut profiteretur cum Maria desponsata sibi uxore praegnante.
AND all went to be taxed, every one into his own city. And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem (because he was of the house and lineage of David); To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
It is three days' walk, by the direct road from Nazareth to Bethlehem; and if you go by way of Jerusalem, four days are required. The travellers summoned to be taxed by the decree of Caesar Augustus, when Cyrenius was Governor of Syria, must have been very numerous, and the one caravansary the town could boast, must have been quite insufficient to accommodate them all. As a matter of fact we must understand bv the “diversorium” used in the Vulgate, a simple caravansary and not a regular hostelry properly so called, such as is implied in most French translations of the Gospels. The sort of establishment to which we apply the term of hostelry, or inn, would have been altogether foreign to the Oriental usages of the time under notice and this is still very much the case.
It will be well to say a few words about this town of Bethlehem where the first years of Our Saviour's childhood were passed.
Bethléem or Bethlehem is also known by the Hebrew name of Ephrata. These words mean the “House of Bread” and “the land or country”.
The Arabs give it another name resembling the first: for they call it Baif-Lahem, or the”House of Meat”.
The origin of this town dates from the most remote antiquity. Moses speaks of it in the 35th chapter of Genesis in connection with the birth of Benjamin, which took place, he tells us. when his parents had but a little way to come to Ephrath (which is the same as Bethlehem). Rachel dying immediately afterwards.
At the time of the Conquest of Patestine hy Joshua, Bethteheni was, like Jerusalem, inhabited by the idolatrous Canaanites, and in the division of the conquered districts, it fell to the lot of the tribe of Judah.
The situation of Bethlehem, moreover, is most beautiful. Built on the crest of the mountains of Judea, about two leagues to the south of Jerusalem, its form is that of a crescent, one end of which is marked by the Wells of David, the other by the Grottoes of the Nativity. Between the two horns of the crescent stretches a fertile valley, the Wady-el-Karoubeh. The descent of this valley is very steep, and resembles a circus, with low, parallel walls, which keep the earth from sliding down, representing the tiers of seats. This valley presents a most charming appearance, clothed, as it is, with an abundant vegetation, in which vines, fig, olive and almond trees abound.
The view from the top of the plateau is bounded on the north by the Hill of Mar-Elias,and on the west by the Mountains of the Desert where St. John dwelt. On the east, Beit-Saour rises from the little hill where Ruth gleaned the ears of corn in the field of Boa, whilst beyond can be seen the sterile stony hills, called the Wilderness. Yet further to the east the rocks of Mount Moab stretch along like a wall, the base of which is bathed by the waters of the Dead Sea. On the south. Mount Herodion forms a regular cone, on the summit of which a few ruins indicate the site of the castle of Herod. It was here that the tetrarch was interred, and later, the Crusaders raised defensive works, hence its more modern appellation of the Hill of the Franks.
Commentary by Me
The French artist whose birth name was Jacques Joseph Tissot anglicized his name and moved to England when he was in his late 30s. Throughout his subsequent career, even after he returned to France eleven years later, he was variously known as James Tissot, James Joseph Tissot, legally as James-Joseph-Jacques Tissot, and—as you can see in the following image from the frontispiece of his book of New Testament illustrations—J. James Tissot. In 1896, Tissot published the French edition of La vie de notre Seigneur Jesus Christ, which came to be popularly known as Tissot’s Bible. The English edition, The Life of Our Saviour Jesus Christ, was published in 1897, and both of these lavishly printed (with multiple painstakingly produced images printed using the new chromolithography process) and therefore pricey books became best sellers. His New Testament illustrations along with some preparatory ink sketches by Tissot were purchased by funds enthusiastically funded by a public collection and unabashedly intended be a prestigious part of the holdings of the new Brooklyn Museum, but over the decades, as society’s interest in both figurative and religious art faded, the illustrations were moved to storage and the full collection has not been displayed since the 1930s.
In the meantime, the Tissot works have been dismissed by many because of their “religiosity,” and replaced by more “inclusive” works. For one rather sickening example of how extremely times have changed, about seven decades later, in 1999, the Brooklyn museum held a show that included Chris Ofili's infamous The Holy Virgin Mary, an image in which a thick red-lipped caricature of a black woman is portrayed with one exposed breast made of elephant dung, surrounded by collaged “putti” made from cutouts of women’s buttocks from pornographic magazines.
