Madam, - Vincent Browne (March 24th) is totally wrong in his allegation that Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, is based on "a mixture of non-scriptural pietistic folklore about Jesus, with gospel accounts that, by any non-fundamentalist standards, are historically unreliable". This is the view of liberal-modernist biblical scholars who for years have been sapping belief in the historical veracity of the Gospels. Their damaging theories and false suppositions have, however - to their reported stupefaction - been completely discredited by recent (1994) stunning discoveries which confirm the four Gospels as completely genuine and historically reliable documents.
Whether Mr Browne will be pleased to learn this is very debatable. After all, a bludgeon with which to attack the Catholic faith has taken away from him. In the interests of truth, however, should he care to read the international best seller, The Jesus Papyrus (Phoenix Paperback/ Orion Books) by the German scholar and papyrologist, Peter Carsten Thiede and Matthew D'Ancona, contents editor of the Daily Telegraph, he will find scholarly documentation of how a few, small, 2,000-year-old papyrus fragments, containing 24 lines of the Greek text of St Matthew's Gospel, when examined by a powerful laser scanning microscope, revealed a number of amazing discoveries, on the basis of the empirical evidence of which, the historical authenticity and veracity of the four Gospels can, beyond any doubt, be accepted.
His textual nit-picking is of no real account. In every case the sublime "Good News" is told - that Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, suffered and died for our salvation and rose from the dead. - Yours, etc.,
JOHN McCANN, Glenhill Park, Belfast.
Madam, - May I make two comments on Mel Gibson's film, which I have not seen and do not intend to watch.
Many reviews report that the flogging is prolonged and that metal-topped scourges are used both front and back of the victim. One article mentioned that when the victim is apparently being nailed to the cross one arm is not long enough and is pulled out of its socket.
But is it not known that Gibson is an experienced film maker and these seeming tortures can no more be happening in reality than an arrow can be truly deadly in The Lord of the Rings?
But this film urges viewers to believe that they are really watching what was done to Jesus. It seems to me a mockery.
There is a video with a calm, detailed commentary on what treatment produced the wounds that are now visible on the holy shroud of Turin.
There is enough there to awaken anyone's imagination - without any taint of sado-masochism.
The Tablet gives the judgment of a priest who had seen the full version of the film. He said, "Well, it's better to read the book." - Yours, etc.,
MÁIRE MULLARNEY, Main St., Rathfarnham, Dublin.
Madam, - Andrew Furlong (March 30th) wonders if it was necessary for Christ to have had such a gory death to fulfil part of a divine plan from a God of love. A glance at Kevin Myers's diary alongside his letter that day confirms that the world continues, 2000 years on, to be full of senseless violence.
My own recent experience of my mother dying last Wednesday, from a brutal and ravaging illness, was a personal experience of a "fallen" world.
Andrew Furlong has missed the point that the brutal death of Jesus, along with the greater pain of separation of Jesus from his Father, reflects the magnitude of our need. It is precisely because God does love us that Jesus died as his did for mankind and for my mother. We see in The Passion of the Christ how God's grace, though free, was certainly not cheap. - Yours, etc.,
PENNY PHILIPS, Waterloo Road, Dublin 4.