Jesus Christ was born where?

July 19, 2006 By

Jesus born in BethlehemCNN.com, one of the most heavily visited news sites on the Internet, posted these headlines this morning in an attempt to cover the rapidly developing cycle of violence in the Middle East:

  • Israeli soldiers battle Hezbollah inside Lebanon

  • A Hezbollah rocket attack on Nazareth, revered as birthplace of Jesus, kills two people, Israeli army says
  • Israeli soldiers battle Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon near Avivim, Israel
  • Orient Queen leaves Beirut carrying about 800 U.S. and British citizens to Cyprus

Note to editors and producers at CNN.com: Jesus Christ was not born in Nazareth. Nazareth was his hometown. He is often referred to as “Jesus of Nazareth.” But he was born in Bethlehem. Like in the Christmas carols. It may sound like a minor error, but it is actually quite significant theologically. A Nazarene being born in Bethlehem was a bit unusual at the time, as people did not travel much, and it fulfilled key biblical prophecies.

What does this say about CNN editors’ knowledge of religion and their ability to present the news of a conflict that has ancient roots in religion?

The good folks over at Christianity Today noticed this error and one of their interns, Jason Bailey, a Wheaton College senior, was smart enough to take a screen shot. The error was quickly fixed, but not corrected. A correction requires admission of a past wrong. We in the print media know that an error requires a retraction. This makes us quite careful in what we publish. Apparently those standards do not apply to cable news websites.

Jason would like to refer CNN editors to this map for future reference, and maybe they could search their own archives to fact-check their headlines in the future.

Update: One of our readers, Michael M., noted that The Boston Globe did the exact same thing in an article on Monday:

Last night, Hezbollah rockets fired from Lebanon penetrated farther than ever into Israel, hitting Afula, 33 miles south of border, and landing on the outskirts of Nazareth, revered by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus. Israeli officials said Hezbollah possessed rockets that could fly more than 40 miles and warned residents of Tel Aviv, the country’s metropolitan hub about 70 miles from the border, to be alert.

The blast in Haifa, Israel’s third-largest city, brought the Israeli death toll to at least 24, half of them civilians. Israeli airstrikes have killed at least 148 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians.

So not only did CNN get it wrong — CNN got it wrong in what looks a lot like a cut-and-paste job from the Globe. The wording is nearly identical.

I should also note that others have heard the same mistake over the radio.

It’s time to call for a correction, folks. I’ll let you know when we get it.

Second Update: If you want to help us out in getting the Boston Globe article corrected, go here. It’s a basic error. Let’s see how long it takes the Globe to fix it.

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Filed Under: Godbeat, Islam, Journalism, Judaism, Politics, Radio & TV, Religion, Social Issues, Web/Tech, World
  • http://rpreeves.wordpress.com Russ

    I heard the same thing on NPR while driving.

  • Pingback: Tolle, Blogge » Blog Archive » O Little Town of Nazareth?

  • Michael M.
  • Lea Magruder

    Shep Smith just said it on FOX News.

  • Lea Magruder

    FOX just corrected the earlier statement.

  • Larry Rasczak

    This is interesting

    A) because of what it says about the level of religious knowledge in today’s newsrooms…(can you imagine someone identifying Ted Kennedy as the Senior Senator from Vermont?).

    B) what it says about the “cut and paste” (or rip and read) nature of journalisim today.

    Note to editors… I don’t care if you get me the story 52 seconds before your competition does if what you send me is WRONG!!

  • Deacon John M. Bresnahan

    These mistakes are far too common and media personnel are generally no more well trained in medicine, law, science, politic, world affairs etc. I have been told many others find similar–or even worse– mistakes in their fields made in the media. I know of a doctor who says he cries tears of frustration most of the time when he reads medical stories in the media. There was a time when the media of the day turned to experts in a field and then taught them the basics of journalism (which is much quicker and easier than learning a field in depth)
    Today the emphasis in journalism seems to be to teach the mechanics of the trade and then not seriously care what kind of incompetent drivel is being poured out.
    And, unfortunately, in this democracy of ours, most voters vote based on the information and the horrendous amount of misinformation supplied by the media. This can clearly become a threat to our survival as a nation and can have a devastating effect on organizations and institutions in our society, including religions.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    My suspician is that the error was in a WIRE SERVICE report somewhere and, thus, filtered into several different sources.

    Maybe there is an uncorrected AP or Reuters report out there….

  • http://blogs.salon.com/0003494/ Bartholomew

    Of course, Jesus may well have actually been born in Nazareth, although I doubt the author was intending to make a stand on the historical Jesus quest.

    But the Guardian has worse mistake, which it has left uncorrected for the past two years. It describes a photo taken at Easter 2004; read and weep:

    A Christian woman prays inside the Church of the Nativity in the West Bank city of Bethlehem. Some believe the church to be Jesus Christ’s final resting place.

  • http://blogs.salon.com/0003494/ Bartholomew
  • Tom Breen

    I may be alone in this, but I don’t really think this portends the end of Western civilization as we know it. It seems like a sloppy mistake created by the extraordinary pressures of deadlines in the Internet age more than anything else. I agree it should be corrected, but I don’t think it should be treated as anything more than a goof.

  • http://theaccidentalanglican.typepad.com Deborah

    Tom, honey, I don’t think anyone here has any illusions about this mistake ending Western civilization as we know it. I think the point is that it reflects a larger problem: a widespread ignorance within media about the most basic tenets of faiths involved in entrenched Middle East conflicts. If journalists contend they don’t just report facts but also point out the significance of them, this kind of factual “sloppiness” does little to enhance the profession’s credibility. That’s all.

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    TOM:

    Here is a recent USA Today op-ed that I wrote on this topic.

    http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-06-25-faith-edit_x.htm

  • http://www.tmatt.net tmatt

    And here is another resource for editors struggling with this issue:

    http://www.goodchoicemusic.com/fl_elvispresley_102850

  • Chip

    My question: Was this really unintentional sloppiness? More than a few progressive Christians seem to hold as a tenet of their beliefs that Jesus was born in Nazareth, not Bethlehem. Some of them have a large platform from which to speak.

    Peace of Christ,
    Chip

    (Since there’s been more than one “Chip” running around here lately, I’ll note that some fairly recent posts have not been from me.)

  • http://dpulliam.com dpulliam

    What you said Deborah. This is important. Chip, you raise a good point that I was wondering about when I wrote the post. I don’t have that level of expertise but it is something that is worth discussing. Can anyone else cite a good source for what Chip is talking about?

  • Chip

    Daniel, I started to cite Spong and Borg, but without copies of their works at hand, I couldn’t be sure that they were the sources I was remembering.

  • http://www.ecben.net Will

    The assertion that “the Bethlehem story” is pure legend goes back to Renan’s VIE DE JESUS at least.

  • http://hornswoggled.blogspot.com David B.

    I dunno — if I can bare my soul here, I read the article once through without catching the mistake. Then when you pointed out the mistake, I immediately thought to myself, “Wow, I can’t believe I didn’t catch that. (It was even in boldface type! Doh!)”

    I’m with tmatt — this is probably a wire service mistake that doesn’t mean much more than that the wire service editor didn’t catch it.

  • http://hornswoggled.blogspot.com David B.

    But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth a correction, by the way.

  • http://www.herbely.com Herb Ely

    I’ve often quipped that the worst thing Robert E. Lee did for the country was to found a school of journalism and Washington and Lee. He was hoping that trained journalists would produce reporting that was more accurate than what he experienced during the civil war. Looks like he was wrong.

  • http://www.nhreligion.com Stephen A.

    This seems to be almost the stereotypical mistake a journalist can make when reporting religion.

    Although, wasn’t there a denomination or two that DID believe the Jesus was born in Nazareth?

    The quote noted by Bartholomew (“Some believe the church to be Jesus Christ’s final resting place.”) is milk-shooting-out-of-the-nose funny. LOL!

  • steve wintermute

    no one knows where Jesus was born. The Bible is cannot be used to determine a site as it is not history as we undertand the term.

  • http://dpulliam.com dpulliam

    Herb, I strongly disagree with your characterization of journalism schools. I attended journalism school and received a BS in journalism. I do not believe that any other degree could have prepared me better for journalism. That is not to say that a history degree or a degree in political science would not have prepared me equally as well, but the gross generalization that you make that journalism students will produce reporters that tend to be inaccurate is wrong.

  • http://www.ecben.net Will

    The Bible definitely CAN be used to determine which sites are “venerated” by Christians, which is what the story said.

  • http://hornswoggled.blogspot.com David B.

    >The Bible is cannot be used to determine a site
    >as it is not history as we undertand the term.

    Is there something inherent in the 4 canonical Gospels that makes them less reliable accounts of historical fact than other writings?

    It’s not a valid argument, in my view, to argue that they are purely theological writings and are not an attempt to relay historical fact. I think the first Christians would have argued that they came to be convinced of the historicity of the Gospel accounts before accepting the religious tenets that sprang from the events. If you look at Acts, for example, there’s a lot of preaching of historical fact (verifiable and/or disprovable) as the means to convince people of Christianity’s theological claims.

  • http://methodius.blogspot.com Steve Hayes

    And then there’s the factoid that “it started when Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers.”

    Goebbels would be green with envy.