Sheep Outside in December

[rolazaraberin]

God only knows the date when Jesus was born

I think that Mary and Joseph would also know the date when Jesus was born. He’s their son.

 

[DavidWJackson]

Come to think of it, wasn’t it common back then for people to own thousands of sheep? They would be hard to keep indoors. I seem to recall reading this in many books of the Old Testament. I’ll have to look at Job for starters.

 

[patg]

Come to think of it, wasn’t it common back then for people to own thousands of sheep? They would be hard to keep indoors.

It was also common for authors to write Infancy Narratives about extremely significant people. Since these were mostly fictional, the sheep’s relation to the weather didn’t really matter. They weren’t intended as biographies or as history; they were written to present an image of the significance of the subject person.

 

[patrick457]

Come to think of it, wasn’t it common back then for people to own thousands of sheep? They would be hard to keep indoors. I seem to recall reading this in many books of the Old Testament. I’ll have to look at Job for starters.

Remember: only those who could afford to own large flocks of animals would have done so, and even then they wouldn’t care for it themselves but use hired hands to do it for them.

 

[DavidWJackson]

Remember: only those who could afford to own large flocks of animals would have done so, and even then they wouldn’t care for it themselves but use hired hands to do it for them.

That is sort of exactly what I was thinking. They were shepherds (hired hands) watching over the sheep. A family with a few sheep wouldn’t need shephards - plural more than one.