Madam, - Andrew Furlong (March 30th) denies that the Gospels are historically accurate.
He claims that Christian writers sifted back through the Old Testament to find prophecies of the Messiah, which they then incorporated into the narratives of the Easter story as if they had actually happened.
He gives as examples the entry of Jesus into Jerusalem riding on a donkey and of what he calls the "alleged" words on the Cross.
Irritatingly, he states the above as though it were a fact instead of merely his opinion.
Surely there is another, simpler explanation of the way prophecies match what happened at Easter.
The Messiah was eagerly awaited; Jesus was the obvious candidate and had been for many Jews since the visit of the Magi at his birth, followed by his acceptance by John the Baptist.
His followers knew these prophecies as well as Andrew Furlong and his arrival in Jerusalem was certainly going to occur as they expected. No other way would have been right and proper for the welcome into Jerusalem, so Jesus followed the pattern laid down long before.
What happened after that was not what they expected, for Jesus had his own destiny, which the Gospel writers later tried to explain.
What is wrong with the words uttered on the Cross? They seem perfectly natural and appropriate to me. "My God, my God why have you forsaken me?" is the first line of Psalm 22 and like many psalms begins with despair and ends in hope.
Perhaps he felt that the quotation was enough for those listening, as they would know the rest, and also he might have been too weak to chant the whole rather long psalm.
The words, "Woman behold your son" and, speaking to John, "Behold your mother" were after all heard by John and recorded by him, so why should they be only "alleged", according to Andrew Furlong?
It was natural for the Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, to incorporate extracts of the Old Testament to try to make its connection with Christianity clearer for their readers. That does not mean that they wrote their accounts to fit with the prophecies.
I realise that Andrew Furlong, like other correspondents, will have a mindset that the Gospels were written long after the events by writers who were not witnesses (or had no access to witnesses) and so we cannot accept them as historically valid. It requires the most tortuous reasoning to support such an unlikely belief, which does not fit with the Gospel accounts themselves, (or with many of the New Testament letters, which similarly are often regarded as forgeries).
I was pleased to read John McCann's letter of March 31st, declaring his belief in the historical veracity of the Gospels. - Yours etc.,
ALISTAIR McFARLANE, Campbellstown, Letterkenny.
Madam, - Now that John McCann (March 31st) has started quoting a book about Jesus, I would like to mention another book, The Authentic Gospel of Jesus, by the eminent scholar Geza Vermes (Penguin Books, 2003).
In it, Vermes very carefully tries to find out what words in the synoptic Gospels can be attributed to Jesus himself and what may be assumed to have been edited or inserted by the Gospel writers, Matthew, Mark and Luke when they wrote the Gospels at least four decades after his death.
Jesus never called himself Son of God and never expected that he would die for our sins.
The idea that he died for our sins originated from his followers after his death, particularly Paul, who never met him and, in his letters, does not show much interest in the life, the acts and the words of Jesus himself.
This does not mean that Jesus deserved to suffer - he was an extremely loving and caring holy man, a source of inspiration for all of us. - Yours, etc.,
JAN VAN PUTTEN, Lismore, Co Waterford.