Regarding the town of Jesus’ birth, Bart wrote “What’s going on is that both Matthew and Luke want Jesus to be born in Bethlehem even though they both know that he came from Nazareth.”

It is interesting how the New Testament is loaded with fake news.  This was not a peculiarity of the New Testament, though, but rather the way ancient historians of the time operated. 

Consider the following quotes from Godfrey’s review of the anthology “Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (ed. Gill and Wiseman, 1993):

To quote A.J. Woodman . . . :

‘Our primary response to the texts of the ancient historians should be literary rather than historical since the nature of the texts themselves is literary. Only when literary analysis has been carried out can we begin to use these texts as evidence for history; and by that time . . . such analysis will have revealed that there is precious little historical evidence left.’ . . . . 

Later in the same chapter . . .

Do ancient historiographers sometimes say things they know to be factually untrue? Emphatically, yes. The accusation of deliberate fabrication is made repeatedly. Herodotus is dubbed the father, not only of history, but of lies; Polybius castigates historians not only for incompetence, but falsehood; Lucian tells of historians who claimed to be eye-witnesses of things they could not possibly have seen; invention and manipulation of factual material is (I believe) demonstrable in Herodotus and Plutarch, as well as Hellenistic tragic historians. The motives vary: some, of course, crudely political — propaganda, flattery, denigration; literary rivalry (to trump one’s predecessors, of which we have seen examples even in Thucydides); the desire to spin a good yarn (often important in Herodotus and other historians of the exotic); sometimes (surely) historiographical parody; sheer emotional arousal or entertainment; the need to make moral points or bring out broader patterns or causes behind complicated sequences of events.

And

Why then do Herodotus and Plutarch behave in this way? Serious ancient historians (which both Herodotus and Plutarch intermittently are) face the problem of the eternal see-saw of history: the need to generalize from specifics. No serious ancient historian was so tied to specific factual truth that he would not sometimes help general truths along by manipulating, even inventing, ‘facts’. Of course, the requisite manipulation could sometimes be achieved through the medium of ‘what-is-said’ material, to whose historicity the ancient historian did not commit himself. But there were some occasions when the issues were so serious that it was rhetorically necessary, even at the risk of attack, to maintain the illusion of strict historicity. On those occasions the historian could never admit to manipulation or invention. Such is the tyranny of factual truth.

J.L. Moles, “Truth and Untruth in Herodotus and Thucydides” in Lies and fiction in the Ancient World edited by Christopher Gill and Timothy Peter Wiseman, University of Exeter Press, 1993. — pages 90, 115, 120

Finally from T.P. Wiseman, “Lying Historians: Seven Types of Mendacity” in Lies and Fiction ….

For Seneca, in the first century AD, it was axiomatic that historians are liars. There is a passage in his Quaestiones Naturales (7.16.if.) where, discussing comets, he brushes aside the theory offered by Ephorus with a damning remark:

It takes no great effort to refute him — he’s a historian.

. . . .

Seneca justifies his paradox with a sardonic little digression on the practice of history as mere entertainment:

Some historians win approval by telling incredible tales; an everyday narrative would make the reader go and do something else, so they excite him with marvels. Some of them are credulous, and lies take them unawares; others are careless, and lies are what they like; the former don’t avoid them, the latter seek them out. What the whole tribe have in common is this: they think their work can only achieve approval and popularity if they sprinkle it with lies. (Wiseman, pp. 122f)

Wiseman cites another ancient historian, Arrian, who explains the criteria he used in deciding what stories to write about Alexander the Great.

Everything concerning Alexander which Ptolemy and Aristobulus have both described in the same way I have reproduced as being true in every respect; when they have not given the same account, I have chosen the version which seemed to me more worthy of belief and also more worthy of telling . . . Other incidents recorded by other writers, because they seemed to me in themselves worthy of telling and not altogether unworthy of belief, I have reproduced as being merely ‘reported’ about Alexander.

Arrian has two criteria for what to include — essentially, credibility and interest, what’s worth believing and what’s worth telling. . . .

Seneca, in Wiseman’s view, held historians of his day in low esteem because

the historian is merely a story-teller, and story-tellers are liars. (Wiseman, pp. 135, 136, 137)

**N.B.  A big problem is that fake history (like Jesus being born in Bethlehem) was often par for the course in ancient sources.

For example, E. L. Bowie writes of Hesiod’ seemingly straightforward autobiographical account that:

“Brief consideration is also needed of Hesiod’s other poem to survive intact, Works and Days. Didactic epic of a different sort, it offers much biographical information about Hesiod himself, about his brother Perses, and about their quarrel over their father’s land. Much of this may be straightforwardly true or simply a tendentious account. But the apparently conflicting information about Perses and the author’s relations with him have raised the question of whether a brother (whether called Perses or not) really existed … To my mind the evidence [plausibly] points to the conclusion Perses is invented … In a poem communicating apparently sincere views on gods, justice and society, as well as practical, if traditional, information on methods of farming, the didactic poet did not think he would weaken the authority he so clearly arrogates by incorporating biographical detail about his addressee which members of his audience would detect as fictitious.”

– E.L.Bowie, “Lies, Fiction and Slander in Early Greek Poetry” in
“Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World (1993, ed. Gill and Wiseman).”

I would say too that we shouldn’t conclude the historicity of an element in the New Testament just because it seems to be a mundane tidbit.  It’s amazing to ponder how much fake news we are failing to detect in the New Testament.