2.2 At that time Emperor Augustus ordered...

When in his time the Roman Emperor Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD) was concerned about the corruption of his people's family life, he enacted the laws - Lex Julia and Lex Papia - which restricted polygamy and supported the growth of birth rate. With hindsight, those laws seem to have had little effect. This was just another era of world history, which ended in the downfall of Rome and was again followed by new ideas.

Emperor Augustus will remain in history by ordering perhaps the most important census in world history. The Romans needed information for tax collection and thus Joseph and Maria went from Nazareth - their town of domicile - to Bethlehem where their family lived. Still many census takers contemplate whether to take a census according to people's actual domicile, temporary domicile or place of origin - using the present-day terms. Although historians disagree about the exact time of that census, what happened in Bethlehem set in motion the spread of Christianity all over the world.