Response by Schaun Wheeler on May 22 with a detailed analysis of the reference to Joseph and family returning to Bethlehem for a census. He presents 5 “rhetorical moves” to change the wording into what we find in the story.
The ONS document [referred to by the OP] – which doesn’t provide a citation for it’s claim about return to place of birth – is essentially parroting 125-year-old Victorian apologetic reconstruction of a single Egyptian papyrus (P.London904, 104 CE).
This is the relevant passage from the papyrus:
τῆς κατ’ οἰκίαν ἀπογραφῆς ἐνεστώσης ἀναγκαῖόν ἐστιν πᾶσιν τοῖς καθ’ ἥντινα δήποτε αἰτίαν ἐκστᾶσι τῶν ἑαυτῶν νομῶν προσαγγέλλεσθαι ἐπανελθεῖν εἰς τὰ ἑαυτῶν ἐφέστια ἵνα καὶ τὴν συνήθη οἰκονομίαν τῆς ἀπογραφῆς πληρώσωσιν καὶ τῇ προσηκούσῃ αὐτοῖς γεωργίᾳ προσκαρτερήσωσιν.
Two words do most of the apologetic work: νομῶν (nomōn, “districts”) and ἐφέστια (ephestia, “hearths”). It takes at least five rhetorical moves to convert this into “return to ancestral hometowns”:
1. Translate ἐφέστια as “ancestral homes” rather than “hearths.” The hearth in Greco-Roman religion was the center of the family cult, so “return to your hearths” can sound ancestral in a way “return to your address” doesn’t. Apologists lean on this connotation, but in administrative Greek of the period, ephestia is just the household residence — your fire, your house, your domicile.
2. Quote the edict selectively. Compare the full text: “…return to your own hearths, so that they may complete the customary business of the registration and apply themselves to the farming that concerns them.” to how, say, creation.com paraphrases it: they end at “registration” and drop the farming clause. Without “farming,” the language sounds more compatible with ancestral return. With it, you’re being ordered back to land you actively work, which by definition rules out a village your family left ten generations ago.
3. Translate νομῶν as “their own places” rather than “administrative districts.” Nome is a technical term for the Egyptian administrative subdivision where you are legally registered. It’s bureaucratic. Soften it to “their own places” and you preserve room for “places of origin.”
4. Make a verbal-parallel argument. Both P.London 904 and Luke 2 use ἀπογραφή (apographē) for “census/registration.” Apologists argue: same word + both involve return = same practice. But of course, shared vocabulary is not evidence of shared procedure. Apographē just means “registration”; the institutional procedures around it varied enormously.
5. Make a patriarchal-property bridge. Once we fasten ourselves to the notion that “Roman census required return” apologists add that Jewish property was patriarchally linked, so Romans would have allowed registration at the ancestral estate. This silently smuggles in three unproven claims — 1. that Joseph owned land in Bethlehem, 2. that Rome accommodated patriarchal property tracing, and 3. that this matched Luke’s stated reason (Davidic descent over 1000 years back). Those assumptions are required for the papyrus to “support” a claim about Judea even though it’s about Egypt.
Move 1 has some philological cover. Moves 2 and 3 are textual misrepresentations. Move 4 is a logical error. Move 5 is an invention. Even the most generous reading concedes only that ephestia is mildly ambiguous…and the “farming” clause closes that ambiguity.
Also, in 8 BCE, Judea was a client kingdom under Herod the Great (who ruled 37–4 BCE). Herod was a rex socius – he collected revenue for himself and managed his own administration, so Rome got tribute from Herod, not from individual Judean households. Judea didn’t become a Roman province (Iudaea) until 6 CE, when Augustus deposed Herod’s son Archelaus and annexed the territory. That triggered the Quirinius census Josephus describes (Antiquities 17.355, 18.1–2) — a brand-new provincial census because there was a brand-new province. It also sparked the revolt of Judas the Galilean, exactly because direct Roman taxation was a novel imposition. So the 8 BCE census is not really a candidate for the one mentioned in Luke.
End Shawn’s Response.
My Thoughts – Shawn’s “five moves” are persuasive. For me an easy point to grasp and hold is that Judea was a client kingdom under Herod the Great (who ruled 37–4 BCE). Herod collected revenue for himself and managed his own administration, so Rome got tribute from Herod, not from individual Judean households. Rome would not have taken a census in Herod’s kingdom.
