census

• ancients opposed taking

88:1.6Cer­tain days of the week were fe­tishes. For ages Fri­day has been re­garded as an un­lucky day and the num­ber thir­teen as an evil nu­meral. The lucky num­bers three and seven came from later rev­e­la­tions; four was the lucky num­ber of prim­i­tive man and was de­rived from the early rec­og­ni­tion of the four points of the com­pass. It was held un­lucky to count cat­tle or other pos­ses­sions; the an­cients al­ways op­posed the tak­ing of a cen­sus, “num­ber­ing the peo­ple.”

• Joseph registered at Bethlehem

122:4.3Joseph was not of the line of King David. Mary had more of the Da­vidic an­ces­try than Joseph. True, Joseph did go to the City of David, Beth­le­hem, to be reg­is­tered for the Ro­man cen­sus, but that was be­cause, six gen­er­a­tions pre­vi­ously, Joseph’s pa­ter­nal an­ces­tor of that gen­er­a­tion, be­ing an or­phan, was adopted by one Zadoc, who was a di­rect de­scen­dant of David; hence was Joseph also ac­counted as of the “house of David.”

• Caesar Augustus decreed c. in 8 B.C.; Jews against

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.