Problems with St Luke's Nativity Census

St Luke’s account of the birth of Jesus centres round a census that apparently took place “when Cyrenius was governor of Syria”. This required Joseph and his heavily pregnant wife to journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem because Joseph “was of the house and lineage of David” and Bethlehem was “the city of David”.

This story has always struck me as being wildly improbable. For a start, the implication of it is that everyone in Palestine at that time knew who they were descended from, going back hundreds of years, and that they also knew where their distant ancestors came from.

All sorts of questions are begged here. How far back were you supposed to go before you hit on the ancestor in question? Above all, what was the point of having to travel to your “ancestral city” – always assuming that it still existed?

There is evidence that censuses were held in various parts of the Roman Empire, but their purpose was, as Luke implies, to enable taxes to be levied. This would be done by officials travelling from place to place to see what people owned, in terms of land, animals, etc, and making their levies appropriately. This sort of census would therefore be very much like the Domesday Book survey made by King William I in England in the 11^th century. There would therefore be absolutely no point in requiring people to move away from the property on which the tax would be due – they needed to be at home when the officials arrived so that all the property could be shown to them and the tax paid in person.

Another huge problem with Luke’s account is that taxation would be levied on heads of households and not their wives. Even if Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem, why on earth would he have had to take Mary with him? Surely she could have been looked after by neighbours while her husband was away? In her condition she could have gone into labour at any time on the journey, and surely Joseph would not have taken that risk.

Another difficulty with Luke’s account is that the dates do not make sense. Luke is clear that the events of the Nativity took place “in the days of Herod, the king of Judea”, and that the census was held “when Cyrenius was governor of Syria”. There is historical evidence that Cyrenius did hold a census in the newly established province of Judea, but this cannot have happened before 6 AD. However, Herod died in 4 BC!

The conclusion has to be that Luke twisted the facts to fit the story that he wanted to tell. That story involved the need to place the birth in Bethlehem but the home of Jesus in Nazareth, for reasons of fulfilling Old Testament prophesies. He may not have known about the historical impossibility of what he was saying, or he may have been relying on his readers not being interested in checking the facts for themselves, even if they had the ability to do so.

The difficulty for modern readers is that we tend to look for historical accuracy whereas that was not always the purpose of ancient writers. Luke may not have intended to deceive, and he probably saw nothing untoward in telling the story in the way that he did. From his point of view he was writing not so much a history as a historical novel, and the inaccuracies that it contained did absolutely nothing to invalidate the message that it contained. After all, if the story could include messenger angels and the “heavenly host” singing to startled shepherds, what did a few historical inventions matter?

© John Welford