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R e v i e w
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This Rock
Volume 15, Number 10
 December 2004 
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It’s All about Power
In The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry, Gerd Lüdemann brings us the finest that modern biblical scholarship offers us: not a mere questioning of Christ’s Resurrection but a complete denial of it.
Although Lüdemann’s work is steeped in biblical exegesis, it doesn’t take a scholar to see that many of his assertions are highly dubious. For instance, he unquestioningly accepts the modern notion that the Gospel of Mark is the source-text for all the other Gospels and, therefore, the discrepancies among the other Gospels were made by later Christians in order to advance their own sinister agendas. "Both Matthew and Luke—and probably also John—are dependent on Mark’s report. That means that only the Markan narrative can be used in establishing facts" (246). (For a critique of this claim, see chapter 8 of Nothing but the Truth by Karl Keating and The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg, both available from Catholic Answers.)
Lüdemann excludes from consideration any writings from the Church Fathers, pointing out that even the Gospel narratives of the Resurrection are not firsthand accounts. But he has no qualms about the historical reliability of the apocryphal gospels. He affords the same credibility to the Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of the Hebrews as he does to the four traditional Gospels. In fact, he takes a passage from the Gospel of Peter as proof that the reports of the risen Christ must have happened in Galilee and not Jerusalem.
But in order to make his case that Christ never rose from the dead, Lüdemann must deal with the various accounts of Christ being seen after the Crucifixion. Here, Lüdemann ventures beyond biblical exegesis and into modern psychoanalysis. He explains Peter’s seeing the risen Christ as a hallucination caused by the grief of losing his Master: "[Peter’s] vision is an example of unsuccessful mourning, because it abruptly cuts off the very process of mourning, substituting fantasy for unromantic reality" (171–2). And Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus? It was nothing more than a power grab: "By transforming this Jesus into a mythic Christ-Redeemer, Paul could become the Apostle-in-Chief of a new program of salvation with a culture-wide appeal" (177).
But what about Christ appearing to Doubting Thomas in John 20? "Since the evangelist [John] has created this narrative to dramatize the same motif of doubt we find in other resurrection stories, its historical value is nil" (129). And what of Christ’s appearance to "more than five hundred brethren" (1 Cor. 15:6)? Here, "we are dealing not with historical fact, but psychological phenomena," namely, "mass ecstasy" (85).
And, of course, "Once we understand that visions commonly arise from the frustrations, the hopes, and even yearning for power on the part of both individuals and groups, we are able to examine history as well as human motivation in a more revealing light" (53–4). It’s all about power, isn’t it?
And so on it goes, with Lüdemann explaining away the various accounts of the risen Christ, never even considering the possibility that these events actually may have happened. Thus, Lüdemann’s argument consists of highly problematic assumptions about biblical exegesis coupled with fanciful speculations about the motivations of the people involved. So despite his conclusion that "we can no longer be Christians even if we wanted to be" (212), none of his premises are convincing except to those who are so biased against Christianity that they cannot be objective about it.
Lüdemann’s Achilles heel is that he deals only with the Easter narratives of the Gospels and ignores the rest of Jesus’ three-year ministry. What are we to make of the raising of Lazarus and the son of the widow of Nain? Lüdemann is silent. He probably would have us believe that Jesus was able to raise others from the dead, but he could not save himself. And let’s not forget Christ’s numerous promises that those who believe in him will have eternal life. Apparently, Jesus’ followers would be resurrected, but he himself would not. And what about Christ’s predictions of his own passion, death, and resurrection? He must have been wrong about that.
As for Lüdemann’s motives for advancing his thesis, he clearly has an axe to grind with traditional Christian belief, hoping to liberate himself from "the notion that death is a punishment for my sin" and "the undertow of fear" (220).
Lüdemann’s anti-Christian bias is so intense that even if Christ were to appear to him and allow him to put his fingers in his wounds, Lüdemann likely would argue with the risen Christ. "Jesus had no idea of dying for the sins of the world," Lüdemann concludes. "He looked for the kingdom of God, but the church arrived instead" (249). Lüdemann obviously thinks that we Christians are of all men most to be pitied, but somehow the feeling is mutual.
—James Kidd
The Resurrection of Christ: A Historical Inquiry
By Gerd Lüdemann
Prometheus Books
250 pages
$26.00
ISBN: 1591022452
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