Volume 6, Issue 6, page 14

dEa
EdmiTi
"We are so swamped with
letters re EJ F that we have
been compelled to hire additional help`, thanks to your
'mention' in ABERREE ." -- C. M .
Prang, Culver City, Calif.
(ED. NOTE -- We do get around,
don't we?)
444
"I believe everyone has a
right both to his religion and
his skepticism, but that one
may do a service when one
points out what one believes
to be an error of fact. September ABERREE,in the unsigned
article, 'You , Too ,Can Crucify Jesus', asked why, if the
story of Jesus is true, the
historians completely ignore
it. If they had completely ignored it, it would be because
they could not foresee the future, so did not see it was
important, history then dealing so with rulers. However,
something stirred a vague memory that it had been mentioned
and I turned to two books. The
first was 'Understanding the
New Testament' by Howard Clark
Kee and Franklin W. Young
(Prentice Hall Inc., Englewood
Cliffs, N. J.1. They stated that
there were references to Jesus
in the Talmud. Then I opened
the ninth edition of the Britannica and started copying, and
before I knew had copied several pages. I can't ask you to
reprint all that, but perhaps
I can ask you to reprint this
letter or a summary of it, saying that the scholar writing
for the Britannica says Jesus
is referred to (not always by
name) 22 times in the unexpurgated Talmud, and that Josephus
refers to events in Gospel
History three times, one in
which he mentions the preaching and execution of John the
Baptist, another the judicial
murder by the younger Aranas of
James the Just, the brother
of Jesus, called the Christ'.

141
There is another passage referring directly to Jesus,
which the gritannica writer
considers largely or wholly
spurious because it is not
mentioned by Origin and other
church fathers, and because it
speaks more kindly of Jesus
and the early Christians than
one would expect of Josephus.
The Britannica also mentions a
Jewish tract containing legends
about Jesus of which the Jews
are now very ashamed.
"Among pagan historians and
other writers, Jesua is mentioned by Tacitus, Suetonius,
Lucian, Celsus, according to
the Britannica.
"All these writers are hostile; it is no wander that
Christians do not quote them,
so we do not know about than
widely. Also, they do not add
any fact to the Gospel account.
But, taken together, they offer confirmation on the following points -- when and where
Jesus lived, that he stayed
for a time in Egypt, his Davidic descent, his parables,
disciples, that he worked miracles by magic, was crucified
on the evening before the Passover, due to instigation by
Jewish leaders, and condemned
to the cross by Pilate. Also
that he was innocent of every
crime except working magic and
claiming D i vine honor. The
crucifixion is the fact most
referred to...
"For two years, as an advertisement at Christmas time,
the Western Union ran in The
REPORTER a contemporary account
(if au th en tic) beginning:
'There lives at this time in
Judea...a man of singular virtue whose name is Jesus Christ,
whom the barbarians esteem as
a prophet, but whose followers
love and adore as the offspring of the immortal God. He
calls bade the dead from the
grave and heals all sorts of
diseases with a word or touch.
He is a tall man, etc...." A
word picture follows. This account is ascribed to one Publius Lentulus during the reign
of Tiberius Caesar and was
first found in the writings of
Saint Anselm, Archbishop of
Canterbury during the 11th
Century. (Take it or leave it.'
"Of course, I agree with
you about the bad taste of the
public sale of kits for making
crucifixes and some of the
other matters you mention " --
Margery Mansfield, Monterey,
Mass. 4 4

"The thing that impressed
are most about this (Utah Writers') Conference was the way
the three lecturers insisted,
more or less, that you, the

The ABERREE
444
"The limited time
Makes Ye Ed & Pub fret.
The September 'Ab'
I s the best 'Ab' yet." --
John A. Jehle, Philadelphia,
Penn.
(ED. NOTE -- We hope Lines 3
and 4 are as true as are Lines
1 and 2 , John.)
444
"You ought to have us make
a dehypnotizing tape to release you from Hubbard's major
command and technique -- the implanting of a fear of 'hypnosis'. This in itself is a 'held
down 7' which causes many computations to come up in a distorted pattern.
"I find, seemingly without
exception, that persons who
have been exposed to the emotional diatribes of L.Ron Hubbard against `hypnosis' have
been permanently hypnotized
against this most fortunate
word, 'hypnosis'. Even the
eventual rebels remain unable
to deal objectively with any
subject or situation that is
formally labeled as in the area
of hypnosis. I, too, was for a
time completely hypnotized into the notion that I must be
totally and forever against
hypnosis. But, in my case, this
hypnotic command to be against
hypnosis eventually collided
head-on with a conflicting and
far-deeper command received in
the prenatal area: 'Find out
OCTOBER, 1959
tip-and-cumin' writers , should
cherish your neuroses, because,
they say, it is from than that
you derive the power and drive
for your writing. I felt it to
be extremely bad manners to
take issue too openly and too
publicly with than on this
point ; after all , `They' were
the Authority, the Big People;
but I did all I could to undermine this privately and with
individuals. I myself k n o w
that I am a far better writer,
thinker, organizer, and keepat-iter than I was before processing. I'm still neurotic as
all-get-out, but 0! so much
less so -- and all the extra
steam I now have comes from
getting it unlatched from the
neuroses... It used to be that
along about the third or fourth
rejection, 'it', whatever it
happened to be, would g e t
shelved -- sort of covered with
frustration and apathy, so to
speak. Especially if it required any retyping. I an not
yet fond of typing, but I can
do it now without misemotion ...
When I remember the disoriented
way I used to handle my mms.,
I think it's a marvel that as
much was accomplished as was."