Access To Jesus' Census Record

There's a chapter on the census of Luke 2 in a book published a few years ago by Sabine Huebner, a historian at the University of Basel in Switzerland (Papyri And The Social World Of The New Testament [New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019]). She makes some points others have made about the plausibility of Luke's account (that the author of the gospel would have had a lot of knowledge of Roman censuses, including from firsthand experience; that there's precedent for a Roman census occurring in a client kingdom; etc.). She concludes:

It is also evident that none of the earliest commentators on the Bible, such as Justin Martyr, Tertullian, or John Chrysostom, had any great difficulty with the historical context of the events around the birth of Christ narrated in the Gospel of Luke. Problems only arose in modern times and through the imprecise translation of Luke's original Greek text by translators no longer familiar with the official titles used by the Romans and with the structures of Roman provincial administration….And it appears that none of the early commentators on the Gospel of Luke had any difficulty with the idea of a Roman census being carried out in the territory ruled by Herod the Great during the king's lifetime. We also have a parallel case in the Roman census which took place in the client kingdom of Cilicia Tracheia….

I am not arguing here that Luke's report of the journey made by Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem corresponds to historical facts, only that it is, if it is fictional, at least a story that could be true, since the author of the Gospel of Luke knows and respects the historical circumstances of the time in which he places the birth of Jesus. His depiction of the census can be seen as thoroughly realistic. (approximate Kindle location 1471)

Anybody who's interested can read the rest of her chapter on the census for more of her reasoning and evidence on those issues. What I want to focus on in this post is some comments she makes about the nature of ancient census records.

In 2007, I wrote a series of posts about what the earliest extrabiblical sources said concerning the issues surrounding Luke's census account. The post here discusses references in Justin Martyr and several other sources of the patristic era to the availability of census records that could be consulted to verify Jesus' Bethlehem birthplace and other facts surrounding his childhood. Regarding such census records, Huebner writes:

The census involved far more than simply counting the population: large quantities of personal data spanning a considerable range of categories were written down. The Roman Egyptian census declarations contain correspondingly detailed data on parameters including age, sex, occupation, place of residence, familial relationships, number of children, and possessions (see Figure 3.3)….

Censuses do not count people purely to determine the number of inhabitants in a given area. This is as true now as it was in ancient times. Citizens are normally required to fill in questionnaires and to disclose personal information in a wide range of categories: name, age, gender, normal place of residence, marital status, household size, occupation, religion, ethnicity, the language used for everyday communication, literacy, family background, birthplace and nationality, the place of residence and the nature of the stay in that place on the day of the census, and perhaps also specific physical features….

After the addressee and the dating by the regnal year of the current Roman emperor, the next piece of information is the name of the person registering his or her household and those who live within it. We typically discover the name of the head of the household here, along with the name of his father and his mother and sometimes also his paternal and maternal grandfathers, and the name of the village or town he is from….

We possess census declarations for land, for houses that were unoccupied or occupied only by tenants, and for households in which the person making the declaration resided along with his family….

We know from Roman Egypt that it was quite straightforward for the local population to obtain a copy of census declarations from earlier censuses from the archive in their nome. Historic census declarations could be retrieved from the local archives even after many decades, in order to resolve disputes over inheritance and similar issues. (1130, 1151, 1174, 1185, 1350)

The availability of census records is the most relevant to the earliest sources, including Luke. But it has some significance for later sources as well, like Justin Martyr. See my 2007 post linked earlier for more about the relevance of the comments made by Justin and others about census records.