It occurred to me this morning that having a blog means that I have a platform for my pet theory on Jesus\u2019s birthplace.<\/p>\n
Some years ago, reports on opinions about Jesus\u2019s birthplace were all over the internet.\u00a0 The explanation is this:\u00a0 yes, it\u2019s true that the Romans had censuses, but there\u2019s no historical precedent for a census that required individuals to return to the village from which they traced their distant ancestry.\u00a0 Therefore, Joseph didn\u2019t need to return to Bethlehem for a census, and the entire tale of being born in Bethlehem was just to work that city into the story due to Old Testament prophesies.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
It seems to me that there\u2019s an entirely plausible reason for Joseph to have gone to Bethlehem.\u00a0 It\u2019s the same reason as my husband\u2019s Berlin-born grandmother ended up in a small town in Bavaria.\u00a0 In that case, my husband\u2019s father was a Bavarian carpenter who followed the practice at the time (pre-WWII), and after his carpentry apprenticeship, was not just a journeyman as a status in the skilled trades, but a literal journeyman, travelling to build up his experience to ultimately become a Master Carpenter.\u00a0 (Same thing was true on the other side of the family, a generation prior \u2014 his great-grandfather left Hungary, and spent time in Germany and Austria before settling in Poland \u2014 at a time when the borders were different than now, of course.)\u00a0 Anyway, his grandfather met his wife in Berlin and settled there, but when the bombing campaigns started, he moved his family back to Bavaria.<\/p>\n
The same was true in the Middle Ages \u2014 a \u201cjourneyman\u201d travelled.\u00a0 <\/p>\n
If the same was true at the time of the Roman Empire, then it would have made sense for Joseph have been born in Bethlehem, but\u00a0to have become engaged to Mary while working in Nazareth, and for the census to have spurred the family to have returned to Bethlehem.\u00a0 Rusty history here \u2014 but I remember that, much later, it mattered very much where one was from, and I can easily imagine the same being true at this point, especially since Nazareth was a part of Galilee and Bethlehem, of Judea.\u00a0 Hence, Joseph was not just \u201cof the house and lineage of David\u201d \u2014 that was just a poetic way of stating, \u201cJoseph was originally from Bethlehem and thought it would be prudent to have the family officially registered there.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n
Anyway, I\u2019m no Bible scholar, but that\u2019s my theory.<\/p>\n