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Nobody knows. There are some problems placing The Bible story in what we know of history.

Matthew puts Herod the Great as the ruler at the time. Herod died in 4 BC, so it must have been before that.

Luke puts the trip during (and gives the reason for the trip as) a census conducted by Quirinius, the governor of the region. However, Quirinius conducted his census in 6 or 7 AD. You begin to see the problem. Either Matthew or Luke must have been wrong. (This is far from the only discrepancy between the two.)

There's some possibility that Luke was referring to an earlier census, though we don't have any evidence there was one in that area, and there is no known historical evidence that people were ever required to travel to their ancestral homes during a census anyway.

By far the simplest hypothesis is that one of the other of them, writing probably around 70 years afterward, simply got the facts wrong. (Not terribly surprising... quick, which happened first, the sinking of the Titanic or the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand?). Complicating things further is that there were several different rulers called Herod.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Joseph and Mary did not travel to Bethlehem sometime prior to 4 BC, it just means that if they did, they did so for their own reasons and not because of the census of Quirinius and without such a specific reason for the trip, we have no way of dating it accurately.

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Q: What time of year did Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem?
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Related questions

Where was Mary's husband from?

Joseph's ancestral home was Bethlehem. However, at the time he took Mary as his wife he was living in Nazareth.


When is the time for counting all the people?

Are you referring to the census that luke mentions as the reason for why Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem? We have no historical record of such a census.


What did Mary and Joseph have to do to obey the order for a census?

Luke's Gospel says that Mary and Joseph had to travel from Nazareth in Galilee to Bethlehem in Judea, and be counted there for the census. However, scholars say that not only was the census at the wrong time for the nativity story in Luke's Gospel, there would never have been a requirement for Mary and Joseph to travel from Galilee where they would be taxed, to Judea where any census record would have no value in ensuring the collection of taxes. They say that the journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem simply did not happen.


Was Saint Joseph born in Bethlehem?

We do not know where Joseph was born. His ancestral home town was Bethlehem but he was probably not born there. Perhaps he was born in Nazareth where he was living at the time he tool Mary as his wife.


How many days did Saint Joseph travel for?

We do not know the amount of time Joseph traveled. However, we know that he and Mary traveled from Nazareth to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born. He and the family made a quick escape to Egypt and a few years later returned from there to Nazareth.


Would Mary and Joseph's parents have gone to Bethlehem also?

At the time of Luke's journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem, Mary and Joseph were only bethrothed, and Mary was still a virgin. We can assume that they were both in their teens, with Mary probably in her early teens. Their parents would likely still have been alive and less than forty years old. If there really was a census during the reign of King Herod, something most scholars dipute strongly, then Joseph's parents would have been expected to go Bethlehem as well. Tradition tends to support the notion that Mary was also descended from King David, although the Bible is silent on this, in which case we could also expect her parents to travel to Bethlehem as well. However, for some reason, Luke's Gospel makes no mention of the extended family travelling together to Bethlehem.


Where did Mary and Joseph live with Jesus?

Supposedly in Bethlehem initially; unfortunately there is not documentation of a town named Bethlehem in any historical records. Then they lived for a time in Egypt, then Nazareth before he went on the road full time.


Where were Mary and Joseph traveling to when Jesus was born?

We have no reliable records of where Mary and Joseph were born, but can reasonably assume that they were probably born in the town where they continued to live in later life. This was either Bethlehem or Nazareth. According to the Gospel According to St Matthew, the home town of Mary and Joseph appears to have been Bethlehem, near Jerusalem in Judea. But, Luke's Gospel says that their home town was Nazareth in Galilee.


How long did it take Joseph and Mary to travel from Egypt to nazareth?

As they walked slowly and Mary on a donkey, that does not travel fast like a horse they covered 4-to 7 miles a day s. so it took them time a year or two.


Why was Joseph going to return to Bethlehem after the birth of Jesus?

A:It is in Matthew's Gospel that Joseph and Mary were going to return to Bethlehem some time after the birth of Jesus. In Luke's Gospel, Joseph had no reason ever to go to Bethlehem again, and the gospel makes it plain that although the young family travelled from Nazareth to Jerusalem each year for the Passover, they never went to Bethlehem. Bethlehem, not Nazareth, was the home town of Joseph and Mary in Matthew's Gospel. They fled from Bethlehem to Egypt for fear of King Herod, who sought to have Jesus killed. After Herod had died, they began the return journey to their home in Bethlehem but, being warned in a dream, Joseph turned aside with his family and travelled to Galilee instead. There they settled in a city called Nazareth (Matthew 2:23).


Why did Marie and Joseph go to Bethlehem?

In their nativity stories, Matthew's Gospel and Luke's Gospel each have Mary and Joseph going to Bethlehem, but in different circumstances.Luke's Gospel says that Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem because of a census during the time of Quirinius. That census is now known to have begun about 6 CE, more than ten years after the death of King Herod. Raymond E. Brown (An Introduction to the New Testament) says the best explanation is that, although Luke likes to set his Christian drama in the context of well-known events from antiquity, sometimes he does so inaccurately.Matthew's Gospel says that Mary and Joseph were returning from Egypt to their home in Bethlehem after the death of King Herod but, being warned in a dream, turned aside and travelled instead to Nazareth in Galilee. In this account, they did not travel to Bethlehem before the birth of Jesus because Bethlehem was already their home town.


How much interaction with others did Mary and joseph have when in Bethlehem before Jesus birth with travelers all around?

Except when looking for lodgings they had no time for socializing.