Post
Without looking it up can you remember *why* Mary and Joseph were traveling when she was so pregnant? Why didn't they have a place to stay?
If you can't remember or never knew give your best guess. (I'm curious about the stories that live in people's heads as much as the ones that were written down.)
@futurebird Because everyone was supposed to return to their birthplace to be taxed.
@futurebird I was actually asking myself the same question not long ago.
And didn't bother look the answer up.
So my guess would be a king/governor/ruler of some kind kicking people out?
Mind you, "exile" is kind of the number 1 reason for Biblical characters to move around so I'm not taking much risk here.
@futurebird they were required to move from the southern Gaza Strip by Tel-Aviv government.
@futurebird Joseph got Mary a donkey ride trip for an early Xmas present. Despite being pregnant and there not being any Christmases yet, she really wanted to go on a donkey ride, so off they went.
They were required to return to Bethlehem for a Roman census, but found no place to stay.
@futurebird Joseph burned down their house during a messiah-reveal party mishap involving a Greek fire recipe he got from a travelling scroll salesman
At last a sensible answer.
@futurebird@sauropods.win King Herod was conducting a census. (There is no other record of this census, which is odd but not impossible.)
He required people to return to their town of birth for this census. (You conduct a census to determine how much labor / tax base you have available. This means knowing how many workers there are in a given area on a normal day. You want to count people while they're at home.)
Naturally, this resulted in a lot of travel, and that meant the hospitality industry was heavily overloaded. That meant they couldn't rent a proper room. (I'm not sure how this interacts with the duty of hospitality in Judaism.)
@futurebird They needed to return to Joseph's home village for the census.
And that's why all the inns were full, because everyone else was home too.
@futurebird wasn't it something about having to pay their taxes?
@futurebird I'm Jewish so my guess is that Joseph's mother guilt-tripped them into spending the holidays with their family, and the census story is just a later embellishment.
@futurebird My family' s understanding was that the "Quirinus census" became necessary in Luke' s gospel so that Rabbi J could be born in Bethlehem, and fulfill Psalm 87 . And it dates his birth. But he connects it to Herod the Great, in error. BTW, Galilee, a somewhat autonomous region, was in revolt against the census and its subsequent taxation. Nazareth, in Galilee, was Joseph' s and Miriam' s "own" city, so they should have been counted there.
@futurebird IIRC they had to go to Bethlehem to be counted I'm a census because they were originally from there. Also, I've read somewhere this part of the story resonates another story about an earlier prophet, just like the part with a precursor of Pontius Pilate ordering the murder of all first-borns is to align the story of Jesus with the one of Moses.
I remember it was the census, everyone was supposed to go back to their official town — lots of parallels in history — and I kind of assumed that meant everyone was traveling and all the inns were full.
ADHD and a complete lack of executive functioning?
Speaking from experiencing my own parents...
@futurebird
Off the top of my head - they were headed to Joe's hometown for a census, and when they got to his family home it was already crowded (it wasn't an inn) and so they were housed with the animals (which wasn't nearly as bad as it sounds).
jeez it's been a long time but i think...
there was a census + head tax and for some reason they had to appear in person for it in their city of birth so traveled back to Bethlehem?
@futurebird They had to travel for a census and I think they went to where Joseph was born. I'm not sure we know where Mary was from? Everywhere was full because sure, I guess it was an area without sufficent jobs or housing so lots of folks left but had to return to be counted.
I'm not sure if I'm missing anything.
@futurebird Det var i de dage da det utgikk et bud fra Keiser Augustus om at allverden skulle innskrives i mantall. (after that I'm a bit fuzzy, but somehow Mary and Josef had to got to Bethlehem to be recorded by census-takers).
Been atheist all my life, if that is relevant to your survey 😊 .
@futurebird there was a census in the town of David, and all who had him as an ancestor had to flock that way.
@futurebird to be censed by the Romans, and the town was full because of Roman census
@futurebird A supposed census where Joseph had to go to his ancestral town, designed to retcon Jesus into being born in the right place. I guess that goes along with high inn occupancy.
@futurebird It was a census run by the occupying Romans, I think. Everyone had to travel back to their home (birth?) town to be counted.
They had to go for the census.
@futurebird some kind of poll tax that meant everyone had to be in their birthplace to be counted if I recall things told me 40 years ago correctly
@futurebird sure they were going to Bethlehem for a census, right? Because Joseph's family were from Bethlehem.
The story in my head is that there was a "everybody has to return briefly to their hometown for tax purposes" decree, so the inn was booked up because everyone was traveling.
I went to church enough that I think this ought to be correct, however, I've been very wrong about these things in the past (with confidence) when working from memory.
My understanding was that everyone needed to go home because the Romans were doing a census so they could count all the people and collect taxes, so they were trying to get home in time but didn't quite make it.
@futurebird Yes, they had to go back to the place of their birth and that was Bethlehem. (I’m guessing the place of JOSEPH’s birth, on the basis that he was the big important man. More fool the Romans.)
@futurebird funny thing. The taxes bit are not in the Bible verse I recall just the census and Bethlehem and all the ones that have David as ancestor going there. Historically the census was obviously for calculating taxes I just don’t remember that as part of the gospel.
@pms @futurebird the romans had a general census in the entire realm every five years, though sometimes it was delayed for a year due to e.g. revolts or other events. These were tax censuses, and in some regions they counted members of tribes like in Judea, which meant that members of a tribe had to go to where the tribal center was to be counted.
There were other more local censuses as well, but it's like there was a census around 2 or 1 BC.
@futurebird My understanding of the text as explained by our pastor last year is that there is an unnecessary focus on the lack of a guest room. The most likely place they were staying is with relatives, but in a standard one up one down home the relatives would have already filled the "up" room and so the "down" room, shared with the animals, would have been the only available place. So the equivalent of sleeping on relatives' sofas, except smellier and less comfortable.
@futurebird I am definitely curious about why the gospel writers told this story, since as far as we know nothing like this ever happened. The book I recently read by Elaine Pagels argued that most of the biographical details in the Gospels are there either to retroactively fulfill prophecies or to defend Jesus against various kinds of slander (i.e. that his father was a Roman soldier, which it seems several texts allege)
@futurebird that's the story I got taught too. With the slight wrinkle that they weren't going "home" home, but to the place of their birth, and the census didn't really asked if folks are good to travel...
Bethlehem was Joseph's ancestral homeland. It's just that all of the inns were full, so they had to sleep in the manger. So I'd say that they got there in time.
@futurebird As I recall, they weren't traveling home: it wasn't just a census, it was a census that required people to go back to their place of birth. Not where they currently lived, where they were born.
@futurebird Incredibly stupid bureaucracy which meant a census had to be taken in people's place of origin, not where they lived. I have never understood it.
@Ailbhe IIRC, the people writing the gospels were trying to reconcile a prophecy that the messiah would be born in Bethlehem with another prophecy that he would be from Nazareth.
The solution was to use vaguely gestured at Roman census machinery to compel Joseph and Mary to travel to Bethlehem, have them flee to Egypt due to Herod's widespread infanticide, and return later to settle in Nazareth.
This is a bonfire demo instance for testing purposes
