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Why was Joseph with his wife obliged to leave Galilee and go to Bethlehem of Judea to be enrolled?
Luke: “Because he was of the house and lineage of David,” and Bethlehem was the “city of David” ([ii, 4]).
Even if he had been subject to taxation there was no law or custom requiring him to leave his own country and go to that of his ancestors to be enrolled. The assessment, according to the Roman custom, was made at the residence of the person taxed. Nothing surpasses in absurdity this story of Luke, that a woman, on the eve of confinement, and the subject of another ruler, was dragged across two provinces to be enrolled for taxation.
In regard to this taxation Dr. Hooykaas says: “But here again we are met by overwhelming difficulties. In itself, the Evangelist’s account of the manner in which the census was carried out is entirely incredible. Only fancy the indescribable confusion that would have arisen if every one, through the length and breadth of the land of the Jews, had left his abode to go and enroll himself in the city or village from which his family originally came, even supposing he knew where it was. The census under David was conducted after a very different fashion. But it is still more important to note that the Evangelist falls into the most extraordinary mistakes throughout. In the first place history is silent as to a census of the whole (Roman) world ever having been made at all. In the next place, though Quirinus [Cyrenius] certainly did make such a register in Judea and Samaria, it did not extend to Galilee; so that Joseph’s household was not affected by it. Besides it did not take place till ten years after the death of Herod, when his son Archelaus was deposed by the Emperor, and the districts of Judea and Samaria were thrown into a Roman province. Under the reign of Herod nothing of the kind took place, nor was there any occasion for it. Finally, at the time of the birth of Jesus the governor of Syria was not Quirinus, but Quintus Sentius Saturninus” (Bible for Learners, vol. iii, pp. 55, 56).