“And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.”
And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night — the shepherds are the first recipients of the nativity announcement in Luke — not the religious elite, not the wealthy, not the learned, but the night-watch shepherds in the fields outside Bethlehem. Shepherds were low in the social hierarchy, their occupational requirements for Sabbath-day work placing them in tension with scribal law, and their seasonal outdoor living making them ritually suspect. The kingdom arrives at the margins.
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