Nor would disproving the star of Bethlehem, the Slaughter of the Innocents, etc. Events like those are relevant to Jesus' place of birth. They can offer evidence pertaining to it. But the truthfulness of his birth in Bethlehem doesn't depend on something like the accuracy of Luke's census account or whether the Slaughter of the Innocents occurred. In his video I responded to in my last post, Bart Ehrman addressed events like the ones I just mentioned while ignoring the large majority of the evidence relevant to where Jesus was born.
As I've argued elsewhere, it would have been easy early on to discern where Jesus was born. And it would have been easy for many people and by multiple means. That's especially true through the middle of the first century, but a significant amount of evidence would have still been available after that. Mary couldn't have helped but know where Jesus was born. She had to be there. Other relatives (Joseph, Jesus' siblings, etc.) wouldn't have had to be there in the way Mary did, but they probably would have had reliable information on the subject. Jesus would have been told, reliably, where he had been born. The people of Bethlehem and Nazareth would have had reliable information on whether Jesus was born in their town, including memories of events connected to the birth and Jesus' childhood more broadly. People involved in doing building work would have known whether Joseph ever did any building in southern Israel or in the Bethlehem area in particular. And so on. See my post linked above for more about these issues.
We have information about how the early Christians and their opponents interacted with the relevant sources. Mary was alive past the time of Jesus' death, and the author of the fourth gospel claims to have lived with her for a while (John 19:26-27, 21:24). The author claims to have known other relatives of Jesus and Jesus himself as well. The first gospel is attributed to Matthew, and he knew Jesus and some of his relatives, including Mary. Matthew, John, and other early Christian sources visited Nazareth. Luke met James the brother of Jesus (Acts 21:18), and I've argued that he consulted James as a source, including for some of his material related to Jesus' childhood. Some of the documents attributed to Paul seem to imply the Bethlehem birthplace, as I've argued here, and Paul met at least one of Jesus' brothers (Galatians 1:19) and was in contact with the Twelve. Even if Pauline authorship of Ephesians and 1 Timothy isn't accepted, a belief in the Bethlehem birthplace in multiple documents that originated in Pauline circles makes more sense if that belief dates earlier and if it's a view Paul held. (To get some idea of the difficulties involved in denying the Pauline authorship of Ephesians, see here. And we have posts in our archives arguing for Paul's authorship of 1 Timothy.) Josephus tells us that James lived into the 60s, and Paul refers to at least one other brother of Jesus as still alive multiple decades after Jesus' death (1 Corinthians 9:5).
Were the early Christian and non-Christian sources interested in making use of such opportunities to get information about Jesus' birthplace? In general, birthplaces are of interest to people, knowing your own birthplace and knowing the birthplaces of certain other people. Given how much of a public figure Jesus was and the type of public figure he was, it's more likely than not that some people were interested in where he was born. As Ehrman acknowledges, there was early interest in the fulfillment of Micah 5, so that would have been a context in which there was interest in Jesus' place of birth. Ancient Jewish tradition often encouraged people to look into the background of certain individuals: "If a man is suspected of apostasy, the circumstances of his birth are to be investigated. For the mamser (bastard) is inclined toward rebellion and blasphemy. (Lev. 24, 10 ff.; Targum same place; S. Lev. 24, 10 ff.; Kalla 41 d. The mamser must be distinguished from the beduki and the shethuki. The beduki is a child whose birth still requires investigation [Kid. 4, 2; B Kid. 74 a; J Kid. 4, 65 d]. The shethuki is a child whose father can no longer be determined [Kid. 4, 1; B Kid. 69 a; 73 a; Yeb. 100 b].)" (Ethelbert Stauffer, Jesus And His Story [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960], 207) The fourth gospel records some early interest in Jesus' background and some exchanges Jesus had with his critics on the issues involved (John 7-9). The gospel of Matthew gives a substantial amount of attention to Jesus' childhood, including his birthplace. Luke's gospel opens with a reference to an interest in doing research and discusses Jesus' childhood, including his birthplace, just after. As these examples illustrate, the early Christian and non-Christian sources didn't just have access to a lot of reliable information on Jesus' birthplace. They also had a significant amount of interest in the subject and took steps to acquire and disseminate that information.
People like Bart Ehrman need to address such factors and the widespread affirmation of the Bethlehem birthplace and the lack of support for an alternative that we find in the historical record. Talking about how unlikely you think it is that Mary would have traveled to Bethlehem while heavily pregnant, how unlikely you think it is that Quirinius was governor when Jesus was born, etc. isn't adequate.
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