I am not a religious person and don't know much about this at all, but something came up in conversation about Joseph and Mary not really going to Bethlehem as a census would never ask you to go to your home town and blah blah blah... not sure how legit that all is but it got me thinking.
The Old Testament was absolutely considered to be a holy scripture before Jesus was born. The Old Testament is the same as the Hebrew Bible, and parts of it were certainly in existence by 700 BC. The earliest archaeologically recovered fragment of Scripture is Numbers 6:24-26, which was recovered on a pair of silver scrolls at Ketef Hinnom and dated to the early 6th century BC (550-600 BC). (Jesus' ministry took place in the first century AD).
The Muslims also consider the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible to be a holy scripture, but they began about 600 AD, well after Jesus.
Now, some scholars do in fact assert that Romans would not make people report to their ancestral hometown. However, many of these scholars are outspoken atheists with an axe to grind against Biblical historicity (such as Bart Ehrman). However, we do have evidence from Egypt in the form of a papyrus inscription (P.London 904 Alexandria, currently housed in the British Museum) which specifically orders people to "return to their own hearths" in preparation for a census. This papyrus further outlines that these people had to register their family members, including wives and children. Therefore, assertions that the Romans never commanded people to return to their hometown are false. It may not have been usual practice in all censuses, but the practice did exist and has been attested.