Diogenes the Cynic

There is extremely implausible. Peasants didn't keep family records.
An illiterate day laborer living hand to mouth in a Galilean backwater owned property in Judea? If that was the case, then why didn't he live there? Why didn't he at least stay there, instead of going to inn.

Diogenes the Cynic

A note about "no place for them at the inn" in its historical context - "Inns" in that time and place did not have private rooms. Basically it was one big room where people slept together. A woman delivering a baby would not have privacy there, and the stable would be place they would go for privacy, not because the joint was booked up.

rizdek

There gonna make sure there's room at the inn...so if some unwed pregnant woman shows up claiming to be the mother of god she'll have room service and a jacuzzi.

sotto voce

Quite so. They just couldn't live with the publicity twice.

sotto voce

Israelites did.

Not a day labourer, a skilled tradesman, and there's no reason to suppose illiteracy. But property was much more widely distributed among Israelites than among others.

Work. Galilee was a prosperous and growing region, and there were plenty of opportunites for the building trade. There is some evidence that there was a general migration in that direction at this time.

Diogenes the Cynic

What do you mean by "Israelites?" That is already an archaic identification by the 1st Century. Also, we don't have any family records from the Israelites either, or evididence that they kept them for anyone who wasn't royalty, but even if they had (which they didn't), they were no longer extant by the 1st century.
This is erroneous on both points. Jospeph is called a tekton, which did not really mean "carpenter," but "builder," and was used to refer to a class of day laborers which included wood workers, but also bricklayers, stonemasons and the like. They were a subsistence class, which John Crossan says were below even peasants in terms of social class. They were also illiterate, as well over 90% of the Palestinian populace was illiterate, and the tekton class was not one which had either time or money for learning how to read. They worked day to day, often for food and were a rung above absolute destitution at all times. They were roughly analogous to the day workers who hang out in Wal-Mart parking lots hoping for a day's work.
Some of the cities were, notably the Greek cities of the Decapolis were, but it was still mostly a backwater. My question had more to do with why a day laborer would own property and not live in it or sell it.

sotto voce

Were there no 'Jews' in the 1st century?

Unsurprisingly. The Romans made very sure of that.

Except one.

Joseph's own genealogy, that included King David, escaped, being preserved in the NT. Family records were essential for property rights and also religious rights in Israel, to preserve religious purity.

Then he has identified the only stonemasons in the cosmos to pack up their chisels at 5.00 pm and leave the work to someone else the next day. John Crossan has identified the only skilled workers to have status below that of unskilled workers in the history of the world.

It's not a promising sign to even mention literacy. The great majority of the world's population before the advent of readily accessible printed materials was illiterate, including even some monarchs, but this did not stop people from owning property.

'Their soil is universally rich and fruitful, and full of the plantations of trees of all sorts, insomuch that it invites the most slothful to take pains in its cultivation, by its fruitfulness; accordingly, it is all cultivated by its inhabitants, and no part of it lies idle. Moreover, the cities lie here very thick, and the very many villages there are here are every where so full of people, by the richness of their soil, that the very least of them contain above fifteen thousand inhabitants.' Josephus, The Wars Of The Jews, Ch.3.

mountainman

Typical Roman PR. It's a wonder that one didn't become a god of the entire uneducated Roman Empire from Briton to Africa to Asia Minor in antiquity sometime. Oh wait a moment ...

sotto voce

Roman PR was not like the laws of the Medes and the Persians. It was firm, but more 'pragmatic'. It said, "If you really can't beat 'em, join 'em. Or at least, give that appearance."

PhilosopherJay

Why is the birth story filled with so many absurdities?

For example, Mary accompanying Joseph to Bethlehem is an absurdity. Women were not taxed, There was no need for a woman to register for a tax census.

Marriage was a private affair. The government was not involved. Most marriages, especially of poor people were common-law. The man or woman simply separated when they found someone they liked better and could work out the arrangements. The government did not keep marriage records and registering wives would have been utterly pointless.

There would be no reason for a nine month pregnant, 13 year-old (Jewish age of marriage) to accompany Joseph on a six day walk from Galilee to Bethlehem. Only a complete male chauvinist and sadist would have forced a nine month pregnant girl to make the journey instead of sending her a few blocks away, back to her parent's home to give birth.

From a technical story writing point of view, it is evident that the census story is an addition to a Bethlehem birth story. It is designed to explain how a couple from Galilee ended up giving birth in Bethlehem.

Since the story is about a royal birth in Bethlehem, the city of David, we can assume that the story originally was King David's birth story. This would explain the Bethlehem setting, the emphasis on shepherds and the fact that the baby is treated like a king. (Note: Jesus was never a king in the gospel stories. He is a poor magician-prophet and dies before becoming a king.).

The absurdity of the story results from the writer trying to tie together two unrelated stories, the birth of King David with the Jesus of Nazareth crucified Christ story.

A similar absurdity comes about today when certain Christians try to deny President Obama's Hawaiian birth and claim that he was born in Africa. The resulting story dismisses the factual evidence of his historical narrative and substitutes a false one in order to deny legitimacy to an American black man's presidency.

The fabricated birth narrative of Jesus of Nazareth has the opposite view, to give legitimacy to claims about Jesus being a king although he was not born in Bethlehem, the city of David.

The fact that we are dealing with a mythological story (Jesus) in one case and an historical story (Obama) in the other should not obscure the fact that the narrative production process is similar and both produce utter absurdities in the narrative.