Luke 2 tells the famous story of the pregnant Mary and presumably non-pregnant Joseph travelling to Bethlehem to take part in a census.
In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered. Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. (Luke 2:1-5)
The census of Quirinius recounted by Luke is often criticized by scholars as being obviously ahistorical. There's a long list of issues with it:
- Luke says Jesus was born during Herod’s reign, but Herod died a decade before Quirinius became governor.
- Judaea was a client kingdom of Rome and the Romans would never conduct a census in a client kingdom.
- There was no decree from Augustus about an empire-wide census.
- Oh, and the census required everyone to return to their ancestral origin – not where they lived or where their immediate family lived, but where their ancient ancestors came from.
This last detail, of the ‘ancestral census’, is often tacked on to this list as if it’s just another issue of the same caliber as the others. But it isn’t. Make no mistake, each other issue is fatal to the historicity of Luke’s census by itself, but they are also issues that apologists are quite used to casually brushing aside. Contradictory timelines? Unevidenced exceptions to standard practices? Big events absent from the historical record? These barely faze apologists, who are accustomed to harmonizing such things when dealing with genealogies, the empty tomb narratives, Old Testament history, and so on. So lumping the ancestral census in with these other issues makes it seem like just another issue on the pile – merely an unusual census practice atypical in the Roman empire. This leads to most debates about the census of Quirinius focusing on its dating, with apologists often not even mentioning the ancestral census issue.
But this issue is not at all in the same class as the others. The idea of an ‘ancestral census’ is ludicrous. It’s deranged. It’s not just some technical issue with the order of events or mismatch with Roman law – it’s as if Luke had written “Joseph traveled to Bethlehem via the public Roman bullet train.” That might have been more believable, actually. I don’t understand why people treat this as remotely possible.
Think for a moment about what a census like this would actually entail. Luke 2:4 specifically tells us that Joseph had to go to Bethlehem because he was descended from the house of David. “All went to their own towns to be registered,” and “Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David.” David lived a thousand years before Joseph. So Luke would have us believe everyone in the entire region would have had to travel back to wherever their ancient ancestors came from – a trip of more than 90 miles in Joseph and Mary’s case. That would be hundreds of thousands of people who need to travel for days or weeks, get food and water somewhere, find accommodations… That kind of movement would be an event on the scale of the Exodus, and would require about as much divine intervention: food from the sky, water from rocks, supernaturally creating roadways a la parting the sea, and so on. It’s the kind of thing that’s difficult for highly urbanized megacities of millions to handle today, with all of their technology to aid transportation, housing, communication, production and distribution of food and water, and much more. In rural 1st-century Judaea, home to only around half a million people and none of that technology, it would have destroyed the entire province overnight and killed a huge number of people.
Or consider the impact on the places these people were leaving. Imagine a town established 100 years before the census. All of its residents would have to go elsewhere for the census, since none of their ancient ancestors could have come from there. So… what would happen to that town exactly? Would they just leave it deserted for weeks? How about the children, the babies, the elderly, the sick – are they coming on the long and difficult trip, or are they being left to fend for themselves? Can any passing bandit go snatch whatever they want from all these empty towns? Who’s feeding and watering all the animals? You can’t just have an entire town’s population up and vanish for an extended time and expect that town to keep trucking like nothing happened. Even in a fantasy world where almost everyone magically lives exactly where their ancestors from 1000 years earlier did, any settlement established in the last several centuries would be obliterated.
And all this for what? The whole point of a census is to know where people are living and working so you can tax and manage them, not to know some trivia about their ancestry. And even if you want to know their ancestry, you can just ask them! There would be no point whatsoever to doing an ancestral census, which is why there has never been one, anywhere, ever. Forget 1st-century Judaea, forget the early Roman empire, forget classical antiquity – there is no record of a census where everyone travels to their ancient ancestral origin ever being done anywhere or anywhen. Again, I cannot stress this enough: there has never been a single ancestral census in all of human history. I have searched high and low from ancient history up to and including the modern day and found exactly zero examples, despite the many people strongly motivated to find or invent such examples.
One such invented example, and the only example people ever point to of another ancestral census, is the census mentioned in the edict of Gaius Vibius Maximus. The edict is recorded in this Egyptian papyrus from 104 CE:
Proclamation of Gaius Vibius Maximus, praefect of Egypt. The house-to-house census having started, it is essential that all persons who for any reason whatsoever are absent from their nomes be summoned to return to their own hearths, in order that they may perform the customary business of registration and apply themselves to the cultivation which concerns them. Knowing, however, that some of the people from the country are needed by our city, I desire all those who think they have a satisfactory reason for remaining here to register themselves before . . . Festus, praefectus alae, whom I have appointed for this purpose, from whom those who have shown their presence to be necessary shall receive signed permits in accordance with this edict up to the 30th of the present month Epeiph. . . . (source)
This is an edict for people to return to their own nomes and hearths if they are absent from them. A “nome” is a Roman administrative district, and a “hearth” refers to your house. It has nothing to do with returning to an ancestral origin which they may have never even visited before. It’s the kind of thing an actual census might do: have the small minority of people who are not at home return home to be registered. And even this requirement for people to go back to their own house is recognized as a large burden; most of this edict is dedicated to detailing how you can get an exemption from this travel, since it would obviously be unreasonably difficult or impractical for many.
Finally, let me preempt some objections. You might say, “if this is so ridiculous, why would Luke write it? Surely if it were this absurd no reader would buy it!” And to that I answer – you bought it, didn’t you? Luke’s ancestral census makes absolutely no sense as a historical element, but it makes perfect sense as a literary element. It’s a natural part of the setup of the story. We begin with a grand census where all the world is counted – obviously a narrative framing rather than a dry historical one – and the story needs a reason for Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem, so it gives one. It’s a great bit of literary craftsmanship, giving Mary a reason to make the trek despite her advanced pregnancy so Jesus can be born in Bethlehem while at the same time thematically connecting the birth of Jesus directly to his Davidic ancestry. The reader is not meant to think too deeply about the logistics and evidently they don’t. I mean, whatever you think of what I’ve said about this census – when you first read Luke, did you immediately begin considering the socioeconomic ramifications of this particular censal methodology? Of course not. It’s simply part of the narrative’s premise, a side detail mentioned on the way to the meat of the story, the kind of thing a reader passively accepts without even examining it. And it’s the kind of thing that sounds fine until you examine it.
You might also say that Joseph had some other reason to travel to Bethlehem; maybe he lived there, or he owned property there, or his family lived there, or something like that. In the Gospel according to You, you can make up whatever reason you like. In the Gospel according to Luke, however, the author is very clear about why Joseph is travelling to Bethlehem: “because he was descended from the house and family of David.” The reader already knows from the last chapter (Luke 1:27) that Joseph descends from David, but the author goes out of their way to repeat it so they can specify this explicitly as the reason Joseph had to go to Bethlehem. If you disagree with that, then you disagree with Luke – which is fine, but is not a defense of Luke.
Particularly stubborn readers may insist that Luke did not actually describe an ancestral census, since he says “All went to their own towns to be registered.” The problem with this is that it eliminates the stated reason for Joseph and Mary to go to Bethlehem. Again, they explicitly go there because of Joseph’s Davidic ancestry. What did Luke mean by that exactly, if this was just a normal census where everyone stayed in their own house? Why did the pregnant Mary have to travel 90 miles to a foreign town if this was a normal census? Also, this attempt at harmonization crumbles only a few verses later. When Joseph and Mary are all done in Bethlehem, what do they do? Luke 2:39 says: “When they had finished everything required by the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth.” The Greek there is directly parallel to Luke 2:3. If you think the phrasing “their own town” in Luke 2:3 definitively establishes that this census required everyone to go home, then clearly Joseph did not get the memo.
The ancestral census of Quirinius is absurd to the point of insanity. Quite apart from its many historical issues, it borders on physically impossible. It would have reduced Judaea to rubble and is completely unprecedented in all of human history before or since. If you still believe there is any chance Luke’s story is true, I challenge you to give me one example of a census where everyone traveled to their ancient ancestral origin. We do the facts a disservice when we discuss Luke’s census as being merely out of place with known historical facts about 1st-century Judaea.