Dear Sunhild and Gerlind,

Your uncle has been busy for a whole evening with his bright little niece's questions. I can already see that in the end a complete "religionbook" will come out of it!

Your next question will probably be, "Who is the Lord Jesus?" This is a historical subject that the scholars themselves argue about. Some might say he was a very bright carpenter's son who was a student of the local scribes in the temple at Jerusalem. Perhaps he lost his mind and thought he was the son of a god, and that this god spoke through him. Others may think that he was an Essene underground fighter, who had tried to overthrow the Roman masters in Palestine. Still others might believe that he was just a legendary figure made up by the orthodox Jew, Saul of Tarsus (Paul the christian), and that Saul merely mixed all the current stories about redeemers into one, and then claimed that this story was true. All the people who believed in miracles really wanted to believe this story, especially those unhappy people who were living in slavery under the Romans.

All we really know about for sure is the rise of the christian church, and with that, fate took its course! The Roman Empire collapsed. The church split into several opposing divisions: Catholic, Orthodox , Copt , Armenian , even Islam.

Non-christians were forced to convert to christianity. Then, there were the crusades, the cruel persecutions of "heretics", the inquisitions, the witch hunts, decades of bloody religious wars, sect against sect. And now, we have Marxism.

That should be enough of that!

With love from

your uncle