Madam, - The letter from the "evangelical Christians, both Catholic and Pentecostal", Paddy and Anne Monaghan (March 6th) simply doesn't "add up".
They say that "Jewish people bear absolutely no blood guilt" for the death of Jesus. Of course they are right in that.
But anti-Semitism is rife in the New Testament writings. Matthew's "His blood be on us and on our children" (27.25) is mirrored by Paul in Acts 18.6. Further anti-Jewish emphases are found at Acts 13.8, 13.45, 13.50, 14.2, 17.5, 17.13, 19.9 and 25.7. In all these places, comparison of the canonical New Testament texts with the equivalent passages of the extra-canonical Acts of Paul reveals the simple fact of interpolation of anti-Semitic elements into original texts which had no such slant.
Do evangelical Christians hold these passages to be the "Word of God" or not? That is the problem they have to face. If these passages indeed represent the "Word of God", then - whatever they say to the contrary - anti-Semitism is institutionalised on divine authority.
How much more reasonable to accept that the New Testament is a fallible human attempt to transmit spiritual truths. Sometimes things go badly wrong, and we are left with the monstrosity of anti-Semitism masquerading as something divinely inspired. At other times the real view of Paul (and Jesus) shines through, piercing in its truth: "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one" (Galatians 3.28).
Mainstream - and particularly evangelical - Christianity needs to exorcise the ghosts in its own cupboard (which means facing up to what is in the New Testament, and repudiating some of it) if it is to have any shred of respectability over this whole sorry business of anti-Semitism. - Yours, etc.,
Dr MARTIN PULBROOK, New Meeting House, Prince's Street, Cork.