In our February 2000 issue, we asked, “Where Was Jesus born?” BR 16:01. Steve Mason made the case for the city championed by many scholars but ultimately determined that we couldn’t know where Jesus was born because the earliest Christians to leave a record didn’t know (“O Little Town of…Nazareth?”). The traditional site was defended by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (“Bethlehem…Of Course,” BR 16:01). But our query was not aimed at scholars alone; we also wanted to know what our readers thought. The result was the largest response since we asked whether we had acted properly when we cropped a work […]
