Culturally illiterate New York Times unaware of most basic Christian belief

I remember hearing a few years ago that a skyscraper in downtown Singapore featured, in its Christmas display, a manger scene featuring Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and the seven dwarfs. Now the nation's most prestigious newspaper has stepped in it about as badly.

This is utterly priceless. The New York Times printed an article on Israeli tourism which contained a reference to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, "marking the site where many Christians believe that Jesus is buried."

Huh?

The Times, apparently, is blissfully ignorant of the fact that the central belief of Christianity, a religion which boasts some 2.2 billion adherents worldwide and is intimately bound up in our own history and culture, is that Jesus was resurrected. Other than the cross itself, there is no more comprehensive symbol of Christian belief than the empty tomb.

It's sort of like not knowing that baseball involves hitting a ball with a bat or that milk comes from cows.

Here's Rod Dreher at the American Conservative on the Times' major gaffe:

I can understand someone living in Pakistan, or Sichuan province, not getting that all of Christianity, in its many versions throughout the ages, rests on the resurrection of Jesus. I don’t understand how an educated American, whatever his beliefs, can not know that. Yet that story got through several layers of editing at the Times before making it into print. It’s staggering.

As Dreher points out, it's one thing to disagree with this belief, but to simply be ignorant of it is inexcusable for the nation's most prestigious newspaper.

Read the rest here. HT: Rick Garrett at Mirror of Justice.