I was reading some early church writing today, and I came across this passage from Justin Martyr.
Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Cyrenius, your first procurator in Judæa.
I wondered if there were any other early writing citing Jesus’ birthplace, and I came across this passage from Against Marcion, another early church writing:
But there is historical proof that at this very time a census had been taken in Judaea by Sentius Saturninus, which might have satisfied their inquiry respecting the family and descent of Christ.
To my knowledge, we don’t have the public record for Rome at the time, but we have arguments citing the public record which says that Jesus’ birthplace was Bethlehem. It would be bizarre to make such a point if the record was either not available or did not mention Jesus’ birth details.
What does this mean? One implication is that Jesus in fact existed. Not that that fact is in serious dispute among even atheist New Testament scholars.
One more serious implication is on popular disputes about where Jesus was born. There have been claims that the gospel writers corrupted the story to make their guy come out of Bethlehem, so as to fulfill old testament prophesy.
