After twice this year failing to correct false references to Jesus as either Palestinian or living in Palestine, The New York Times has finally come through with a stealth correction on an additional item falsely stating that the revered figure lived in Palestine. In his May 14 article about Christian doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, Andrew Higgins erred: “Mr. Mackenzie, casting himself as a Christ-like figure, lived in a section he called Galilee — after the area of Palestine where Jesus lived most of his life” (“He Told Followers to Starve to Meet Jesus …,” May 14, 2023).
As The New York Times itself noted in a commendable June 20, 2008 correction, the Romans named Judea and the Galilee, where Jesus was born and then lived, “Palestina” more than a century after he was crucified. The Times’ correction 15 years ago accurately stated:
The Malula Journal article on April 22, about efforts in the village of Malula, Syria, and two neighboring villages to preserve Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, referred incorrectly to the name of the region where Jesus spent most of his time. It was Galilee — not Palestine, which derives from the word Palestina, the name that Roman conquerors gave to the region more than 100 years after Jesus’s death.
Jesus died a century before the Romans renamed the Galilee and Judea ‘Palestina’ (Illustration by Pixabay)
Four years ago,
The New York Times corrected an Op-Ed by Eric V. Copage which had erroneously stated: “But
Jesus, born in Bethlehem, was most likely a Palestinian man with dark skin.” The April 27, 2019
correction stated: “Because of an editing error, an
article last Saturday referred incorrectly to
Jesus’s background. While he lived in an area that later came to be known as Palestine,
Jesus was a Jew who was born in Bethlehem.”
Regarding last month’s error in the piece on the cult leader, Times editors followed up on CAMERA’s request to correct, quietly deleting the false reference to Jesus residing in Palestine, apparently on May 24. The amended online text now accurately reports, “Mr. Mackenzie, casting himself as a Christ-like figure, lived in a section he called Galilee — after the area where Jesus lived most of his life.” (The publication of this post was delayed as the quiet correction has just now come to CAMERA’s attention.)
Breaking with standard New York Times practice, the paper did not append a correction to the article alerting readers to the change. A different correction, dated May 18, however, does appear at the bottom of the piece, stating: “An earlier version of this article mischaracterized the Book of Revelation. It is a book, not a chapter, of the New Testament.”
In addition,
The Times has yet to correct the
Spanish version of the feature on the cult leader, and CAMERA has again followed up with editors on that point.
June 21 Update: New York Times Corrects Spanish Article
In response to additional follow up from CAMERA, editors removed the erroneous reference to Palestine from the Spanish version of the article. A screenshot of the Spanish feature before the change is at left.
After twice this year failing to correct false references to Jesus as either Palestinian or living in Palestine, The New York Times has finally come through with a stealth correction on an additional item falsely stating that the revered figure lived in Palestine. In his May 14 article about Christian doomsday cult leader Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, Andrew Higgins erred: “Mr. Mackenzie, casting himself as a Christ-like figure, lived in a section he called Galilee — after the area of Palestine where Jesus lived most of his life” (“He Told Followers to Starve to Meet Jesus …,” May 14, 2023).
In response to additional follow up from CAMERA, editors removed the erroneous reference to Palestine from the Spanish version of the article. A screenshot of the Spanish feature before the change is at left.