SIR,—The letter from Surgeon is impressive at first sight, but
the matter needs to be looked at a little more closely. We must face the fact that the only documentary evidence for the incidents described in the Gospels (and the Acts of the Apostles) is supplied by those writings themselves. We know nothing about what Jesus or Pilate or Joseph of Arimathuea or any other character in the story said or did or thought, except what the Gospels tell us. We can legitimately set aside the whole story as uncorroborated by other contemporary evidence, or we can accept the whole story because nothing less can explain subsequent events which are matters of unquestionable historical fact. What we cannot legitimately do is to accept the Gospel accounts as accurate even on details such as Pilate's reactions or the spear-thrust, but reject them as inaccurate on the far more important subject of the Resurrection. The latter and the former rest upon precisely the same ground, namely the recollections of the disciples who claimed to have been witnesses.
Presumably it is agreed that St. Paul believed that St. Peter believed Jesus to have died and risen from the dead. St. Paul also specifically states that the truth of Christianity stands or falls by the truth about the Resurrection. If we decline to accept the death and Resurrection of Jesus as facts, we are forced to conclude that : (a) St. Peter and his colleagues were either such nit- wits as to he unable to distinguish a living man when they met him or else conspirators to put across a conscious fraud; and (b) St. Paul was so gullible that he could live and work with these people for years without having the slightest doubt of the genuineness of their evidence about what he himself considered to be the one im- portant question.
What we have to consider is whether these two propositions are consistent with what we know, historically, about St. Peter and St. Paul, about their work and its results, and about the subsequent de- velopment of the Christian Church.—Yours faith- fully,
CHARLES JEFFRIES 22 Manor Way, Beckenham, Kent
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