Faith Facts

SO Yvette Bierbaum (Letters: Jan 4) thinks the SPGB is rewriting history eh? Well, pardon our 'personal bigotry and self-indulgent pomp' but I'm afraid her triumphant flourishing of the writer Josephus is not quite the 'crushing blow' she thinks it is. Perhaps Yvette, who quotes extensively from the 'apocryphal version to his book The Jewish War', needs to go and look up the word 'apocryphal' in a dictionary. In my dictionary 'apocryphal' is defined as 'of doubtful authority; spurious'. Although Josephus was indeed a contemporary to the supposed Jesus and his history covers the entire period, there is no mention of Jesus or any of his doings in the actual narrative. Josephus, being Jewish, was somewhat remiss to overlook his own messiah. The references Yvette cites come from an appendix known as the Slavonic Additions, because, rather obviously, they were added on afterwards. In fact, the first known appearance of these additions was in the 4th Century AD, when they were 'discovered' by the Christian theologian Eusebius. Yvette tells us to take a firmer grasp of historical fact but the best (and only) proof she can produce is a document which is now widely believed by experts to be a forgery. If Jesus really had existed, instead of being a myth invented long after the period by the gospel writers, why was there no mention of him whatsoever by any of the following famous writers, all contemporaries: Philo (also Jewish), Petronius, Seneca, Pliny the Elder, Juvenal, Martial, Ptolemy or Plutarch? Yvette tells us that 'we have long since progressed beyond the point where the existence of Christ was in any doubt'. Wrong. In fact, we are finally progressing to the point where it is in doubt. There's new information and research available on this subject which is there for any open-minded person to explore. We have to make sure that religion never gets that chance again, no matter who might be offended.