The Roman Census that the Goat-herders Guide to Galaxy CLAIMS to have happened did NOT happen.
A 'count' of the population of their subjects was kept ONLY when taxes were collected and the Tax Collectors traveled from city to city,town to town rather than forcing the people to collect in one set place or return to their birth-place.
Under Roman Law, taxes were collected on the calends of the month of Janus ( January) the first month of each year and again on the calends of the 7th. month of each year, September.
All taxes collected were then handed over to Governor of the Province to be counted and tallied up with the population count before being divided between the Governor to pay the Legions under his command, the Emperor and the Treasury of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.
Roman taxes were usually based on being 1 denarius per person in each household plus 1/10th of the value of crops produced or 'income' realized from any business activities conducted, i.e. a household of 2 Adults + 2 children would be expected to pay 4 denari +plus a 'tithe' of 1/10th. of the income earned for every month between tax collections.
the Romans were very pendantic, strict and excellent record keepers even including down to precisely how much grain was needed for EVERY man in EVERY Legion for EVERY meal he ate.

From the UK government [ons.gov.uk]

They were going home for Thanksgiving, but the story was changed in the retelling.

The simple truth here is that the Romans did not make everybody go back to their birthplace to be counted. It never happened. This is something added to the gospels to explain how Jesus fits in with the prophesies. It is all manipulated. Imagine Mary and Joseph in Egypt but they had to come back because of this. Balderdash! Tommyrot!

Because taking the Bible literally requires an absolute willingness to suspend all logic.

The ridiculous, never-happened, census was added to the story in order to have Jesus born in Bethlehem and fit the Jewish prophesy about the messiah.

I've never heard of this census and just learned something new - thank you.

Having moved here from Italy, with my religiously catholic family, we were only taught 3 things..

1. God is watching us all the time.

2. If anything bad happens, regardless of when or where, you should probably pray for forgiveness.

3. When anyone asks if we're "connected" just say no.

The idea that everyone had to return to their place of birth was an invention just to try and make the so called prophesies of the bible (ie the birth of the messiah) fit. There is no corroborating evidence at all to back this up. Like the rest of the bible, it's a load of bollocks!

There is no evidence that that census ever took place. It is only mentioned in some ancient book by illiterate superstitious tribesman...the bible.

People in those days, unless in the army or navy, seldom wandered more than few miles, if at all, from their birthplace. No transportation except feet & donkeys.

Yeah, well considering these things were written between 60 and 80 years after the events supposedly took place, mostly from oral tradition, you get all kinds of crazy shit making its way into the "gospel truth". Ever play the game telephone, where you whisper something, and that person whispers it to the next, and so on, and in the end what started out is nothing like what ended up? Those are the gospels, primarily stuff that people made up, misunderstood, or added in because they thought it sounded neat.

Can We Have Confidence In the Gospels When They Contain Ridiculous Stories?
One of the most ridiculous Christmas stories is found at Luke Chapter 2.
1And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from
Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed.
3And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.

In order to understand the scope of this ridiculous decree, we need to
know that the word translated "world" , as in "all the WORLD should be
taxed." is the exact same word translated "world" in the following verse;
"""And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the WORLD
for a witness unto all nations; and then shall the end come."""

So you can see that according to Luke, everyone in the world, or at least
everyone in the Roman Empire, was to obey the decree of Caesar Augustus,
and return to the city of his birth in order to be taxed.

Think about how crazy this would be. Millions of people would be traveling
many miles, perhaps some traveling hundreds or even a thousand miles,
to get "home" during the month of December, the month with the fewest
hours of daylight and cold weather. Then after registering for the tax, they
would have to go back to where they now resided during the month of
January the coldest month of the year.

The people would have had to walk, or ride horses or donkeys or ride
in wagons. Taking a ship to go home would have been dangerous
as it says at Acts 27:9 , because December is after the "fast" or Day
of Atonement, which is usually in October."""9Now when much time
was spent, and when sailing was now dangerous, because the fast
was now already past, Paul admonished them,""" Acts 27:9

We live in a modern world with planes, trains, and automobiles,
hotels and motels, fast food restaurants and electricity. We could
do it. But imagine the primitive conditions 2000 years ago and
you can see how ridiculous this idea is.

Does this all seem like a ridiculous way to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem for Jesus' birth?

Can We Have Confidence In the Gospels When They Contain Ridiculous Stories?

I remember reading something about the whole birth of jesus thing where some historians tried to work it out. This link is to a religious site but they have done a bit of the work to determine when it is most likely he was born. [ucg.org] Given as others have said that only the people of Palestine who were going back to their place of birth and some noted the distance which would only have taken a week at most even on foot to cover given the average person could walk about 20 miles a day easily, I know I did a ten mile walk as a child. People must have moved around even then for joe to have meet mary. However we are basing all of this on a poorly written text that had multiple authors over many years and has been translated from the original by people who wanted it to suit their own views at the time.

There was no census. It was a contrivance to make the fable work.

Lets recap, Joseph found out Mary was preggie. She told him she was a virgin. If he bought that story( he did) its entirely plausible that he travels to Bethlehem years earlier than needed to be counted. Its also likely he didn't use Expedia and had no reservations. Makes perfect sense he would let Mary have gods son in a manger. Its a simple matter of lack of planning and not asking for directions. Sound familiar to anyone?

There is no historical backing for any part of this story. The Romans never did such a thing and only counted people where they lived. This story is made up of whole cloth and echoes older mythologies with similar events.

Theology and knowledge? . . . . those two words are oxymorons . . .
.
Oxymoron - etymology from a Greek word whose literal translation is "pointedly foolish".

Lol!!! Yep, the plot thickens!! Who helped deliver the baby?? I suppose she just pooped it out in the "manger no room for a bed"
My question is how can the "seed" of David, be conceived with no seed. If indeed the Holy Spirit busted inside her, what did he say upon ejaculation?
Ohhhh God!!!!???

The whole bible ...old and new testaments, is a work of fiction. In the case of the census though, I think this story is more likely to have been credible than any of the miracles and other incredible tales.

It was only to fit the narrative, because it had been prophesied that Jesus was to be born in Jerusalem, this prophecy being in John 7:41-42. In practice, even Christian scholars cannot explain why they had to go to Jerusalem for the census, it doesn't make sense and the First census was by the Roman governor Publius Silpicius Quirinius, not in the reign of Herod the Great, who died nine years prior to this.
There would actually have been no reason for either of them to have to go to Jerusalem for the census, it would have been run pretty much like censuses of today, identifying where you were at a given time.

The timeframe of the census is a bit skewed. The event is the Census of Quirinius undertaken in 6CE which does not coincidence with the Luke narrative.

This is a paper discussing the matter

[sfu.ca]

There was no requirement for the populace of the empire to return to an ancestral district for a census so Luke carries a few liberties with his poetic licence.

The problem, with certainly the the three synoptic gospels, is that in some quarters they are taken as history. This in no more so than historical novels of today where storyline’s may be set within a period and general background is correct, but local and political quirks are ignored in order not to interrupt the narrative I.e. Luke needs to get the guys to Bethlehem and they wouldn’t be doing it on a whim so he constructs the legislative narrative to get them their. Basic plot writing really!

The gospels are literature and probably the best available at the time the canon was being constructed. To take them literally is to impede an understanding of their flair and the literary talent of the authors.

There is no evidence such a thing ever took place, not the census nor the massacre of innocents.

The Census of Quirinius was a census of Judea taken by Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, Roman governor of Syria, upon the imposition of direct Roman rule in 6 CE.[1] The Gospel of Luke uses it as the narrative means to establish the birth of Jesus (Luke 2:1–5), but places it within the reign of Herod the Great, who died 9 years earlier.[2][3][4] No satisfactory explanation of the contradiction seems possible,[5] and most scholars think that the author of the gospel made an error

Believers are convinced of a story, and once convinced see the world through a lens of that story. Stories carry forward more by emotional content than direct events in drama, it is not so important that the killer killed as to why they did, were they forced or did they relish it?
In this way believers in a story will overlook or discount evidence which ruins the tale to preserve the worldview they hold using it.
[en.wikipedia.org]

The devil is in the details, as they say. The more you look into the specifics, the more you poke holes in the entire belief system.

It was a very poor contrived way to have Jesus born in Bethlehem as prophesy dictated.

Because the people who wrote the bible did it long after the supposed events they described and were not knowledgeable of how the empire worked. Remember they were creating a myth not a history and yes I grant you the fact that during that time there wasn't a hell of a lot of difference between mythologist and historian. The actual censuses taken by the Byzantine empire were done by the same methodology as the Roman empire used. The tax farmers took down the information of who lived where, what they owned, and how much they produced... Tax farmers were people who bid a region to the Emperor saying "I will pay you 'X' amount for the right to collect the taxes for this region" They bought scribes for the recording to keep track of the details and hired soldiers to force people to pay what they demanded. Many of them later bought a place in the Senate with the money they made....

Welcome to the ship 'Rationality'.