Birth and Infancy of Jesus

122:7.1In the month of March, 8 B.C. (the month Joseph and Mary were mar­ried), Cae­sar Au­gus­tus de­creed that all in­hab­i­tants of the Ro­man Em­pire should be num­bered, that a cen­sus should be made which could be used for ef­fect­ing bet­ter tax­a­tion. The Jews had al­ways been greatly prej­u­diced against any at­tempt to “num­ber the peo­ple,” and this, in con­nec­tion with the se­ri­ous do­mes­tic dif­fi­cul­ties of Herod, King of Judea, had con­spired to cause the post­pone­ment of the tak­ing of this cen­sus in the Jew­ish king­dom for one year. Through­out all the Ro­man Em­pire this cen­sus was reg­is­tered in the year 8 B.C., ex­cept in the Pales­tinian king­dom of Herod, where it was taken in 7 B.C., one year later.

122:7.2It was not nec­es­sary that Mary should go to Beth­le­hem for en­roll­ment—Joseph was au­tho­rized to reg­is­ter for his fam­ily—but Mary, be­ing an ad­ven­tur­ous and ag­gres­sive per­son, in­sisted on ac­com­pa­ny­ing him. She feared be­ing left alone lest the child be born while Joseph was away, and again, Beth­le­hem be­ing not far from the City of Ju­dah, Mary fore­saw a pos­si­ble plea­sur­able visit with her kinswoman Eliz­a­beth.

122:7.3Joseph vir­tu­ally for­bade Mary to ac­com­pany him, but it was of no avail; when the food was packed for the trip of three or four days, she pre­pared dou­ble ra­tions and made ready for the jour­ney. But be­fore they ac­tu­ally set forth, Joseph was rec­on­ciled to Mary’s go­ing along, and they cheer­fully de­parted from Naz­a­reth at the break of day.

122:7.4Joseph and Mary were poor, and since they had only one beast of bur­den, Mary, be­ing large with child, rode on the an­i­mal with the pro­vi­sions while Joseph walked, lead­ing the beast. The build­ing and fur­nish­ing of a home had been a great drain on Joseph since he had also to con­tribute to the sup­port of his par­ents, as his fa­ther had been re­cently dis­abled. And so this Jew­ish cou­ple went forth from their hum­ble home early on the morn­ing of Au­gust 18, 7 B.C., on their jour­ney to Beth­le­hem.

122:7.5Their first day of travel car­ried them around the foothills of Mount Gil­boa, where they camped for the night by the river Jor­dan and en­gaged in many spec­u­la­tions as to what sort of a son would be born to them, Joseph ad­her­ing to the con­cept of a spir­i­tual teacher and Mary hold­ing to the idea of a Jew­ish Mes­siah, a de­liv­erer of the He­brew na­tion.

122:7.6Bright and early the morn­ing of Au­gust 19, Joseph and Mary were again on their way. They par­took of their noon­tide meal at the foot of Mount Sartaba, over­look­ing the Jor­dan val­ley, and jour­neyed on, mak­ing Jeri­cho for the night, where they stopped at an inn on the high­way in the out­skirts of the city. Fol­low­ing the evening meal and af­ter much dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing the op­pres­sive­ness of Ro­man rule, Herod, the cen­sus en­roll­ment, and the com­par­a­tive in­flu­ence of Je­ru­sa­lem and Alexan­dria as cen­ters of Jew­ish learn­ing and cul­ture, the Naz­a­reth trav­el­ers re­tired for the night’s rest. Early in the morn­ing of Au­gust 20 they re­sumed their jour­ney, reach­ing Je­ru­sa­lem be­fore noon, vis­it­ing the tem­ple, and go­ing on to their des­ti­na­tion, ar­riv­ing at Beth­le­hem in midafter­noon.

122:7.7The inn was over­crowded, and Joseph ac­cord­ingly sought lodg­ings with dis­tant rel­a­tives, but ev­ery room in Beth­le­hem was filled to over­flow­ing. On re­turn­ing to the court­yard of the inn, he was in­formed that the car­a­van sta­bles, hewn out of the side of the rock and sit­u­ated just be­low the inn, had been cleared of an­i­mals and cleaned up for the re­cep­tion of lodgers. Leav­ing the don­key in the court­yard, Joseph shoul­dered their bags of cloth­ing and pro­vi­sions and with Mary de­scended the stone steps to their lodg­ings be­low. They found them­selves lo­cated in what had been a grain stor­age room to the front of the stalls and mangers. Tent cur­tains had been hung, and they counted them­selves for­tu­nate to have such com­fort­able quar­ters.

122:7.8Joseph had thought to go out at once and en­roll, but Mary was weary; she was con­sid­er­ably dis­tressed and be­sought him to re­main by her side, which he did.