Bethlehem

…But if that were so, why should Mary, in her last month of pregnancy?
Make the difficult and dangerous seventy-mile overland journey to Bethlehem? Luke might have says that it was done at Gabriel’s orders, but
He didn’t. Instead, with literary economy, he made use of the landmark of Jesus’ birth for the additional purpose of having Jesus born at Bethlehem. Once Caesar Augustus had issued his decree commanding the census in advance of taxation.
Luke 2:3 and all went….
Luke 2:4 And Joseph…
Luke 2:5 to be taxed…
Though this device has much to be said for it from the standpoint of literary economy, it has nothing to be said for it in the way of plausibility. The Romans couldn’t possibly have conducted so queer a census as that. Why should they want every person present in the town of his ancestors rather than in the town in which he actually dwelt? Why should they want individuals traveling up and down the length of the land, clogging the roads?
And interfering with the life of the province? It would be even have been a military danger, for the Parthians could find no better time to attack than when Roman troops would find it hard to concentrate because of the thick crisscrossing of civilians on their way to register.
Even if the ancestral town were somehow a piece of essential information, would it not be simpler for each person merely to state what that ancestral town was? And even if, for some reason, a person had to travel to that ancestral town, would it not be sufficient for the head of the household or some agent of his to make the trip? Would a wife have to come along? Particularly one that was in the last month of pregnancy?

No, it is hard to imagine a more complicated issue of implausibilities and the Romans would certainly arrange no such census. Those who maintain that there was an earlier census in 6 B.C. or thereabouts, conducted under the auspices of Herod, suggest that one of the reasons this early census went off quietly was precisely because Herod ran things in the Jewish fashion ,
According to tribes and households. Even if Herod were a popular king (which he wasn’t ) it is difficult to see how he could have carried through a guided census by requiring large numbers of people to tramp miles under the dangerous and primitive conditions of travel of the times. All through their history, the Jews had rebelled for far smaller reasons than the declaration of such a requirement.
It is far easier to believe that Luke simply had to explain the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem for theological reasons, when it was well known that he was brought up in Nazareth. And his instinct for drama overcame any feelings he might have had for plausibility. Judging by results, Luke was right. The implausibility of his story has not prevented it from seizing upon the imagination of the Christian world, and it is this second chapter of the gospel of St.Luke that is the epitome of the story of the Nativity and the inspiration of countless tales and songs and works of art.

….but why December 25? No one really knows. To Europeans and North Americans such a date means winter and, in fact, many of our carols depict
a wintry scene and so do our paintings. Indeed, so close is the association of winter and snow that each year millions irrationally long for a “white Christmas” though snow means a sharp rise in automobile fatalities.
Yet upon what is such wintry association based? There is no mention of either snow or cold in either Luke or Matthew. In fact, in the verse after the description of the birth, Luke says:

Luke 2:8. And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. It is customary, since we have the celebration firmly fixed on December 25, to imagine these shepherds as keeping their watch in bitter cold and perhaps in deep snow.
But why? Surely it is much more likely that a night watch would be kept in the summertime when the nights would be mild and, in fact, more comfortable than the scorching heat of the day. For that matter,
It is but adding still another dimension to the implausible nature of the census as depicted by Luke if we suppose that all this unnecessary traveling was taking place in the course of a cold winter time.
The point is that neither Luke nor Matthew gives a date of any kind for the Nativity. They give no slightest hint that can be used to deduce a day or even guess at one.
Why, then, December 25? The answer might be found in astronomy and in Roman history.

It continues….

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