Misguided move

Housing Minister Kevin Stewart has announced a new scheme for affordable housing for the elderly which is somewhat misguded as the emphasis in Scottish housing

David Whitlie (Letters, 25 October) should note that there cannot be any “established and indisputable facts”, a point I made in my letter of 20 October. This applies to history as much as anything else; we cannot know for certain what happened in the past. In thecaseoftheoriginofchristianity, we can only speculate on the basis of the scant evidence presented by the New Testament and a few contemporary historians. However, I do not doubt that Jesus existed, even though some would quarrel with the Josephus’ “Testimonies”. The “Jesus myth theory” poses more problems than it solves and I have always opposed it.

Nevertheless, that does not mean Jesus was resurrected; the evidence for that is extremely doubtful. The fact that his tomb was empty has a mundane explanation, as does the absence of any body. The posthumous last chapter of John’s Gospel shows that the disciples were not even sure that the figure they encountered was their master. In fact he appeared to be an elderly shepherd, anxious to retire.

I agree that “looking into Jesus’s” life can be “life changing”. It changed me from a Christian to an atheist and later the author of a book, The Rise and Fall of Jesus. STEUART CAMPBELL Dovecot Loan,

Edinburgh