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CORRESPONDENCE
am glad you have now had time to read through my book, "Jainism, Christianity and Science." As requested by you, I am sending, under separate cover, the life of the founder of Jainism whose name is Risabha Deva and not Mahavira, the latter being the 24th Tirthamkara and not the 1st. The book is a present to you and I shall be glad to hear your views concerning the work after it has been read.
His
As for your interesting points, there can be no doubt to my mind that Jesus is a personification-the personification of the ideal of perfection for the imagination of man. tory does not support the historicity of Jesus. No contemporary writer knew anything at all about him. His life does not consist in a single event which can be said to be human. Who will regard the virgin birth as history? Who can deem Herod's putting to death small children (for fear of Christ overthrowing his kingdom) as history? Who can hold the view that a child under twelve went into the Temple to read the book of Isaiah and entered into learned disputation with the Professors ? Who can regard the part played by the Evil One in showing him the empires of the world as a fact in the world of men ? What history will recognise the miracles ascribed to Jesus as having a historical basis at all? And where is the historian who will put faith in the historicity of the events connected with the so-called resurrection and ascension ? What is left outside these is very little, and I gather from your letter that you do not believe that Jesus ate meat and drank wine or that he even changed water into wine. I doubt if you believe in the cursing of the fig tree or the use of harsh epithets against the the scene in the Garden of Gethsemane,
Pharasees and others or
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In the Biblical reading in the non-allegorical sense, there is no question of the historicity of a human being at all. you have a god, ready-made, descending from heaven,
There
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