Originally Posted by Dryhad

It's always been my understanding that the census under who's circumstances Jesus was allegedly born was a somewhat ham handed fabrication of Luke's for the purposes of shoehorning Jesus into the relevant prophecies. Even if you set aside the fact that it doesn't appear in any records, the process is absolutely ludicrous. Joseph is asked to go to a city because a distant and irrelevant (as far as the Romans are concerned) ancestor lived there? However, I was recently left without an answer when a Christian told me there were records of similar practices, particularly one in Egypt in the second century. I was unable to press for more information, but has anyone here heard of this? Did such a census ever take place, anywhere?