Letter of the Day | Does Jesus exist?

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Apart from the preponderance of evidence confirming Jesus’ existence, let’s say there was no such confirmation as attested to by the many eyewitness or the several non-partisan individuals claiming its authenticity. Let us also say that since we have no personal experience or encounter with him waking the earth, we could conveniently label this as an article of faith.

Yet, to deny Jesus’ existence we still would be denying that what we read in the Bible about him is true, since it is impossible to gainsay nothing. Further, if we reject the stories we read in the Bible about Jesus as true, we are at least agreeing that such a man is portrayed but that he did not exist independently of the stories depicting him. If the profile presented of Jesus in the Bible is untrue, there is a least a Jesus presented there, even if we disagree he existed outside the pages. If there is a Jesus portrayed in the Bible but he did not exist, these various writers who presented him must themselves have seen Jesus.

However, what seems more plausible – that the various Bible writers, some of whom never met, and who lived in different places and time, could miraculously together present a perfect picture of a man while they themselves were imperfect – or that a single man embodied these united features painted by these different writers?

Either way, there is a Jesus to contend with. Either that these men could have randomly created Jesus or that he existed independently of their own imaginative work. The latter seems more logical.

HOMER SYLVESTER

Mount Vernon

New York