As well as the internal consistency issues with the Birth narratives mentioned earlier. There are a number of historical difficulties surrounding Jesus birth narratives in Luke and Matthew as well.
Luke records that the census was to be of the entire Roman Empire which seems quite a challenge and there is no suggestion of a complete census like this anywhere outside of Luke. There is also no record of a census where everyone had to return to the town of their ancestors, a place they may have never been to before and had no current connection to. The only evidence is one archaeological find recording a census where migrant works had to return to their permanent homes to register. The upheaval caused by a census with people going to the towns of their ancestors that lived 1000 years beforehand in the time of David would cause a lot of unnecessary upheaval and economic cost with little or no benefit. It is likely that many people would have moved away from their ancestors homes meaning simultaneous, and perhaps long, journeys would need to be made by many people to locations where there wouldn't be inn space for them combined with a number of empty homes with their owners in other parts of the Empire or Israel. This would mean a long duration where people could not do their normal work and earn money that could be taxed by the Roman authorities. If this census were carried out today I don’t even know which town I would have to go to in order to register myself. There is also no clear reason why Joseph and Mary, who were apparently unmarried at the time, had to travel to the same place. If knowing the ancestors town was important then it would be far more sensible carry the census out at everyone’s current location and just ask people to provide their town of ancestry when they registered themselves.
The alternative is that the census was not simultaneous, but this is not mentioned in the text. If this were the case it could be that only the Jews had the extra part of returning to their ancestral home, although the reason for this remains unclear. These two assumptions and not supported by reading the Bible alone.
In Luke 2:2 we read that, “This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.” We know from other archaeological records that Quirinius became governor of Syria in 6 AD. The Gospel of Matthew, which has a different birth narrative, describes Jesus' birth taking place during the life of Herod the Great (Matthew 2:1), who died ten years earlier, in the spring of 4 BC. It is hard to reconcile these mutually exclusive dates to find a coherent time for Jesus birth. There are many different ways to fill the silence in the narrative and make it coherent but these are nothing more than ad hoc suggestions and none is supported by the evidence.
It is also not clear why Joseph, Mary and Jesus had to go to Egypt to escape Herod’s slaughter of babies when Matthew 2:16 records that only “Bethlehem and its vicinity” were included in Herod’s scheme. This cannot have included Nazareth, a long way to the north of Bethlehem, where Joseph and Mary’s home was according to Luke. There is also no evidence of this slaughter outside the Bible.
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