What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection [Paperback]

Gerd Ludemann (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1996

Dissatisfied with what he regarded as evasive answers given by theologians and scholars about the nature of the resurrection of Jesus, Gerd Ludemann subjected the New Testament traditions to a thorough investigation. In particular, Ludemann was concerned with the story of the empty tomb and the subsequent appearance stories first related by Peter. Ludemann reaches surprising and somewhat radical conclusions. This book, written for nonspecialists, presents Ludemann's provocative conclusions. Readers will find a positive, albeit revolutionary, new way of viewing the resurrection.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: German

About the Author

Gerd Ludemann is Professor of New Testament at the University of Gottingen in Germany and Director of the Institute of Early Christian Studies. He taught for several years at Vanderbilt Divinity School and has authored several works of New Testament scholarship, including What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection.

Product Details

• Paperback: 147 pages
• Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press (January 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0664256473
• ISBN-13: 978-0664256470
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,108,605 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why a Bodily, Fleshy Resurrection of Jesus Is a Legend, October 1, 2000

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[e-mail] (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection (Paperback)

This book is designed to be a more popular version of Ludemann's 1994 volume, THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS: HISTORY, EXPERIENCE, AND THEOLOGY. Ludemann presents the same arguments as he did in his 1994 volume, but in a much easier-to-read format. I use WHAT REALLY HAPPENED... as a companion to the 1994 volume.

Just as was the case in his 1994 volume, Ludemann argues that a strictly historical investigation of the New Testament texts does not support apologetic claims: Jesus may not have received an honorable burial, the empty tomb story is legendary, the appearance stories are embellished, etc. Ludemann concluded that "We can no longer take the statements about the resurrection of Jesus literally" (p. 134) and that "the tomb of Jesus was not empty, but full, and his body did not disappear, but rotted away" (p. 135). But Ludemann also concluded that a person could consistently accept the results of his devastating historical investigation and yet remain a Christian. Interestingly, it appears that Ludemann no longer holds this view and, indeed, no longer even claims to be a Christian. (See the introduction to the North American edition of Ludemann's GREAT DECEPTION.)

Like the 1994 book, my only complaint about WHAT REALLY HAPPENED... is the lack of a bibliography and detailed indices (e.g., NT verses, subject, author).

29 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What really happened to Gerd Ludemann, March 26, 2000

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection (Paperback)

This volume is a condensed and somewhat more easily readable version of the case Ludemann presents in _The Resurrection of Jesus_, now apparently not in print. In each volume, he argues on textual grounds that the resurrection of Jesus was in fact not a literally historical event. Readers should be aware that as of his most recent book -- _The Great Deception: What Jesus Really Said and Did_ -- Ludemann, with admirable intellectual honesty, has declared himself to be no longer affiliated with Christianity. Nor will anyone who reads this book have any trouble seeing why. Indeed, the question will be why people who share Ludemann's beliefs continue to remain within the fold.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting, but poorly argued, December 8, 2008

By 

Aaron Snell - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: What Really Happened to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection (Paperback)

I applaud Gerd Lüdemann for recognizing this important point: "The resurrection of Jesus is the central point of the Christian religion." He begins What Really Happened to Jesus with these words, and they are a welcome recognition of the place of the resurrection of Jesus in both the theology and historical origins of Christianity. I also appreciate his desire to understand and not check his mind at the door when it comes to the resurrection, and agree that one should be free to question religious assertions. I even found a few well-made points and interesting, worthwhile ideas and arguments that warrant further thought.

However, my criticism must start with an observation I made time and again as I read the book: the consistent gap between premises and conclusion is *startling*. I was amazed at the poor level of argumentation offered throughout the book, and can count on one hand the number of times where conclusions actually followed (in the sense of logical structure of the arguments, not necessarily the soundness of the premises). Examples of this consistently poor argumentation, as well as other fallacies, errors and problems abound; those I cite here are fairly representative of what you can find in this book.

The pattern Lüdemann's argumentation usually takes is along these lines: one *could* think of/explain the text this way; therefore, they *have* no historical value. Notice the illogic - a certainty cannot follow from mere possibility.

This fallacious pattern of argumentation is aided by a lack of creativity in thinking. Many times a "problem" in the text is proposed and an answer given as the only option available (which only aids him in eliminating meaningful historical yield from the text), when it really isn't hard to see an alternate explanation that allows the text to retain its historical credibility. For example, when critiquing the empty tomb account in Mark, Lüdemann finds the fact that the women bought spices after the Sabbath, or "in the morning before sunrise" as he puts it, indicative of the narrator's lack of historical interest. However, this shouldn't be a problem - sabbath ends at sundown, and they probably bought the spices Saturday evening.

Throughout the book, Lüdemann makes claims without any support whatsoever. For example, he claims that Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Jesus were not originally associated with the burial of Jesus (Mark 15:47) but were inserted there by Mark to make a better transition to Chapter 16. Never is any support for this claim provided. Likewise, he continually makes mere pronouncements, even ones his critics would agree with ("An appearance of Jesus to Peter is certainly historical") without any real support.

Occasionally, Lüdemann even seems to commit an outright self-contradiction. After suggesting an *early* Palestinian origin to the appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene, he then wrote, "It seems historically certain that Mary Magdalene was witness to an appearance of Jesus." However, after a brief (and unrelated) discussion of the identity of Mary, he abruptly concludes, "Nevertheless, the tradition of an appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene is evidently fairly late." (p. 66-67) Not only is this never supported by evidence or argument, it is directly contradicted by his own immediate prior comments!

Several times in this book, Lüdemann utilizes the following fallacious criterion: if something in the text is being used to argue against a rival idea or claim, it cannot be used as historical evidence. This is similar (no pun intended) to the criterion of dissimilarity used by the Jesus Seminar, and is questionable on similar grounds. It unfairly rules out a very real historical possibility - that the New Testament writers were arguing against a rival idea or claim *because it was contrary to what had actually happened*, and they were using historically reliable traditions to do so. To regard these parts of the text with suspicion and scrutinize them is one thing, but to rule them out of evidence at the outset is uncalled for, and not, in my opinion, good historiography. (I was also forced to ask, why exactly are traditions that are supposedly recorded later automatically assumed to be unhistorical? This assumes the dynamics of a non-oral culture, which Mark D. Roberts has shown to be a mistake.)

"None of the stories we have investigated comes from eyewitnesses; they have passed through the hands of a community and/or a theologically trained figure. So the historical yield on the resurrection of Jesus is thus far unsatisfactory." Here we see Lüdemann's overriding criterion for discerning unhistorical material - that there was an intermediary group or individual that transmitted the account. However, if this criterion were applied to all ancient documents claiming to give a historical account, we would have to admit that much of what is taught in history books is based on unsatisfactory historical yield.

After surveying some of the serious problems in argumentation, the verdict for Lüdemann's conclusion - that the appearances of Jesus to various disciples were visions or hallucinations brought on by grief or guilt - does not look good. There have been problems associated with that view that are argued elsewhere in the resurrection literature - such as the observations that hallucinations cannot explain the diversity of appearances, and cannot explain why the disciples came to believe in the *resurrection* of Jesus (concept not in the minds of the disciples). There are other substantive critiques of many of his claims and conclusions, such as the empty tomb being a later invention as a necessary corollary to a bodily resurrection, or his Bultmannian inability to accept a literal resurrection in a scientific age. Rather than reproduce those here, I have chosen to focus on his how well the book is argued, and whether or not he succeeds in supporting his conclusions; for a treatment and critique of those substantive issues, see books by Craig, Habermas, Wright, Bauckham, etc.

Those issues aside, then, it is highly questionable whether Lüdemann has made a significant argument for his conclusions in the first place, given the poor logic evidenced in this book.