The Historical Jesus

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Because that's not how censuses worked in Roman times, no more than they do today.  The whole point of carrying out a census for the Romans was to find out how many people lived in an area and who they were, so they could more efficiently collect taxes and apportion levy duties for the legions.

Plus, Mary and Joseph were living in a client state of Rome at the time, where censuses didn't happen, rather than in Rome proper.  Even with the nonsense justification of the bible, they were not obligated to take part in a census.

"In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that the entire empire should be taxed." Okay so could this be a new decree? Because it sounds new to me. 

Now I can imagine just how upsetting this would be at the time, imagine if Trump (after taking office in 2024) decided that in order to file your taxes this March you must first return to your home-state. People would obviously be in an up-roar. But sometimes Tyrants do tyrannical things which only serve to increase the tension between themselves and the people whom they govern.

So it is not entirely un-reasonable to assume that Caesar may do something like this, especially if he is confident in his ability to conquer any rebel citizens which wish not to pay such a tax or report to their home city.

So first of all, even though this census would obviously be very demanding of people who travel by foot and donkey it is still not at all outside the realm of possibility, especially when we consider all of the many demands that even more tyrannical leaders have made in the past.

So now the question becomes a question of evidence, when I ask how do you know that Caesar Augustus never made such a decree I want to know what evidence you base this claim off of. 

Merely establishing a norm for how a Roman census usually works won't necessarily rule out a new decree which changes things for a time. Also, I think it is implied (but not stated) that this was a one-time deal. Meaning that once a man has complied with Caesar's new decree one time, then I believe that they were free to travel and do business elsewhere, as making people report to their home city every single year would just be too far outside what citizens, Jew or Roman, could have accepted at that time.

"And everyone went to his own city to be taxed."

Scholarly consensus is that the author of Luke made the whole thing up. He needed Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem so Jesus would be born in the City of David in order to fulfill the prophecy in Psalm 87:6.

This is known as ‘cooking the books’.

Boru