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.
Joseph's ancestral home was Bethlehem. However, at the time he took Mary as his wife he was living in Nazareth.
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.
Mary and Joseph had to travel to Bethlehem, Joseph's ancestral home, to be counted in the census ordered by the Roman Emperor. This journey was approximately 90 miles and they likely traveled by foot or on a donkey.
Mary and Joseph went to Bethlehem in the winter. Bethlehem experiences mild winters with temperatures ranging from 40-60 degrees Fahrenheit during this time.
Mary and Joseph's parents likely did not accompany them to Bethlehem for the census, as there is no mention of them in the biblical account. It is believed that Mary and Joseph made the journey alone.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
Except when looking for lodgings they had no time for socializing.