Sir – So the Philip Pullman poison pen strikes again! Not content with taking an oblique swipe at God in His Dark Materials, he now launches a direct attack on the Son of God with his latest work of fiction, the provocatively titled The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, cynically timed to be launched at Easter, the most sacred Christian festival.

What Pullman attempts to show, that Jesus was merely a good man but not divine, is nothing new. Such claims have been made and refuted periodically throughout the last two millennia. Pullman attempts a new slant by suggesting that St Paul was responsible for influencing the Gospel writers to elevate Christ to the status of deity, a claim without a shred of evidence, as serious Biblical scholars agree.

Anyone seeking the truth would do well to read The Case for the Real Jesus by Lee Strobel. A hard-hitting investigative crime reporter for The Chicago Tribune, Strobel, once an avowed atheist, put his professional skills to work on a number of issues relating to the Christian faith, and after a series of exhaustive interviews with experts in history, archaeology, medicine, Hebrew and Roman customs, etc, he arrived at the firm conclusion that Jesus was exactly the person the Bible says he is.

No doubt Philip Pullman’s book will be a “jolly good read” in the same way that The Da Vinci Code and other novels on the same bandwagon are, but I very much doubt that in 2,000 years’ time it will still be being read daily by millions, with the same life-enhancing and transforming effects as the Bible continues to have.

Lee Graham Oxford