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> The Spirit of Things: 4 April  2004  - A Letter to Jesus
>
> [This is the print version of story
> http://www.abc.net.au/rn/relig/spirit/stories/s1077194.htm]
>
> Rachael Kohn: Hello, I'm Rachael Kohn and this is The Spirit of
> Things.
>
> CHOIR
>
> Rachael Kohn: It's Holy Week, the time of year for confident
> professions of the faith by Christians. They are the lucky ones,
> untroubled or unaware of the discoveries by New Testament scholars,
> which have cast doubt on the traditional figure of Jesus as the Christ.
> One of them is the internationally renowned New Testament scholar, Gerd
> Ludermann. He decided to go public about his loss of faith, and wrote
> 'A letter to Jesus', which he published in his book, The Great
> Deception.
>
>
> Dear Lord Jesus,
>
> That is how I have addressed you since my childhood, and that is what I
> have said for years as a grace before meals ('Come, Lord Jesus, be
> our guest ...'). I have kept saying another prayer ('Lord Jesus,
> Son of the living God, have mercy on me') every evening as a magical
> formula, although I didn't really know why I was doing so. But it is
> precisely for that reason that calling you 'Lord Jesus' has left
> such a deep impression on me.
>
> I have also still gone on praying to you like this as the Lord Jesus in
> later times out of habit, thoughtlessness and anxiety, although I had
> long known that you were quite different from what my parents, my
> teachers and my pastor gave me to understand.
>
> You've become quite strange to me as a person whom I can address. For
> you didn't say or do most of the things which the Bible tells us that
> you said or did. Moreover you aren't at all the one depicted by the
> Bible and the church tradition. You weren't without sin and you
> aren't God's Son. You didn't at all want to die for the sins of
> the world. And what was particularly painful for me, you didn't
> institute the Eucharist which for years I celebrated every Sunday in
> memory of you.
>
>
> Rachael Kohn: That's an excerpt of 'A Letter to Jesus', which New
> Testament scholar, Gerd Ludemann published in 1998. It plunged him into
> controversy at the University of Gottingen in Germany, which
> immediately acted to remove him from the theological faculty.
>
> His case became a cause celebre among scholars of antiquity around the
> world. Books were published about it, and the prestigious journal,
> Religion, devoted an entire edition to it. Ludemann's case raises
> many questions, especially whether personal faith is necessary to be a
> good scholar. The greatest irony is that the Theological Faculty at
> Gottingen was where the pioneers of the historical study of the Bible
> began in the 19th century.
>
> I visited Gerd in his office in Gottingen. Above his desk hung a
> picture of David Freidrich Strauss who wrote the first Life of Jesus in
> 1835.
>
> Gerd Ludemann welcome to The Spirit of Things.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Thank you very much.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Gerd, as a scholar of the New Testament, and early
> Christianity, you stand firmly in the Protestant tradition of the
> historical critical analysis of the Bible. Now that field is associated
> with great names such as David Friedrich Strauss, Julius Wellhausen,
> and Joachim Jeremias. How would you explain or how would you describe
> the importance of that tradition?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: The tradition is firmly rooted in the Enlightenment and
> the Enlightenment created a completely new world both in terms of
> cosmology and also what is known about antiquity. They didn't believe
> what the sources said but they started to examine the value of the
> sources, and in the pursuit of examining the value of the sources, a
> completely new world emerged, both the world of antiquity and the
> modern world, and Enlightenment created a new standard of knowledge,
> and after that also of living.
>
> Rachael Kohn: What was the impact in terms of the value of the New
> Testament as a revealed text?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: The Reformation thought of the New Testament as the word
> of God, and Martin Luther made a difference between for example the
> letters of James and the letters of Paul, but still he trusted in the
> historical work of the New Testament. Historical criticism started its
> work and claimed that none of the authors that wrote the gospels, and
> those of the letters, are the authors that really wrote them, and that
> of course created a stir so that people were wondering whether one
> could trust the New Testament at all, and that was the crisis for the
> word of God.
>
> Rachael Kohn: In terms of your own analysis of the New Testament, you
> too have been sifting it for authentic sayings, as opposed to the
> inauthentic sayings of Jesus.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well indeed. First I examined the Resurrection of Jesus,
> because I was told by my church, and by the confession of the church,
> that the risen Lord is the Lord of the universe, and I wrote a book
> about the Resurrection, had to conclude that Jesus didn't rise, that
> his body rotted away and that Resurrection meant the vision of the
> risen one, that is a vision, a dream. And nobody will trust his or her
> dream, so I had to abandon that approach of theology to trust in the
> risen one, and I turned to Jesus, and thought, Well, if he didn't
> rise, there's a possibility that the authority of Jesus' words and
> deeds might be the basis of future faith.
>
> So I was looking for a new way of believing or remaining a believer.
> And I had to conclude that roughly 85% of the words of Jesus actually
> go back to the community that made these words up and don't go back
> to Jesus, which created another crisis. I had to ask Who was Jesus? Why
> should Jesus be the basis for my own religion? Because historical
> investigation showed that Jesus was a Jew and did not go to the
> Gentiles. So basically I had to decide either to follow Jesus and
> become a Jew or to respect Jesus as a Jew of his days and abandon
> Christianity, or at least traditional Christianity, and that's what I
> did.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Let's look at some of the things which you did find in
> the text. For example, your work has often focused on the divergent
> sects in the early Christian period. What did you find there?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: I found that the earliest form of Christianity was sort
> of Ebionite Christianity that later in the 2nd century was considered
> to be heretical.
>
> Rachael Kohn: What do you mean by Ebionite?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Ebionite means that's a translation of the Hebrew
> ebion,the poor, that's an honorific title of the earliest community,
> so they were the poor that Jesus said 'Blessed are the poor because
> you will get the Kingdom of Heaven', or whatever. But that form of
> Christianity was unable to survive, at least to become the majority
> opinion. It was declared heretical and was living on in the various
> sects across the Jordan River.
>
> Rachael Kohn: What was the form that did rise to ascendancy?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well it was a very complicated process. First of all the
> original form of Christianity was replaced by a form of Jacobite or
> James Christianity, the brother of Jesus, can you imagine that, who
> didn't believe in Jesus during his lifetime? Took over, because he
> was a brother of Jesus, and nobody can really explain his rise to
> power. At least he was more powerful than Peter, the first disciple of
> Jesus and he was more powerful and more influential than Paul, the real
> founder of Christianity, and that now answers your question, Paul was
> the one who organised the Gentile mission and a mixture of Gentile
> Christianity and Jewish Christianity then developed into the early
> Catholic church. It's a complicated process, but I would say Paul,
> the founder of Christianity who brought things together and who thought
> it through. Paul, who didn't know Jesus by the way.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Now that combined Jewish and Pauline community is quite
> interesting for the reader of the New Testament, since it contains
> quite a degree of antipathy, hostility toward Jews.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well it had to, because let's try to make a case, a
> strong case for that. In Antioch the Christians or the Jewish
> Christians around Stephen, names like Philip come to our mind, formed a
> community of eight together with Gentiles because they believed that in
> Christ there's new creation and all the differences overcome. So when
> they ate with Gentiles without caring what they ate, they sort of
> abandoned their Jewish mother religion, though if you had asked them
> they would have said, 'f course, we are the true Jews, OK?' So the
> other Jews, also James, the leader of the Jerusalem church, observed
> that and sent people, messengers, warning them not to do it. And Paul
> was part of that process of that group, and Paul was the one who
> thought it through and maintained or thought that Jews should eat with
> Gentiles. So he was the one who put a spin on it.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Where then did the rather vicious critique of Jews
> emerge? Was it from Paul, or was it from Jesus himself?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Not from Jesus, no. He talked to Pharisees and they
> invited him. He may have had some enemies but he was pro-Jewish, he had
> no problems with the law, so Paul was the one, and Paul was dealing
> with his own pathology I think, with his own problems and formulated
> that what he was suffering from. There was his problem with the law
> that he thought that others would have.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Well I guess it begs the question then Where do those
> texts in the Bible come from? How do we read them? How do you discern
> texts that are authentic from those that are inauthentic?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: It depends. Let's talk about the Gospels. There we
> have to make a decision, what is the earliest Gospel, and we have to
> determine that Matthew and Luke were using Mark, so we have to read
> them side by side and try to determine the tendencies of that
> tradition.
>
> For example, anything that's very hostile to Jews is most likely a
> product of the community after 70, OK? But something which is very
> offensive, something which a later community would never ascribe to
> Jesus is most likely going back to Jesus. When being with prostitutes
> for example, no Christian would have invented that. By a very cautious
> and careful study of the documents of the gospel, we most likely arrive
> at a judgement as to the development of the traditions, and to what
> Jesus really said and did. That's the Gospels. When I go to Paul, we
> have 13 Pauline letters, we should read them side by side, study the
> language and result is that only 7 of these letters go back to Paul.
> All the others are using a very different language.
>
> Now we have 7 authentic letters and now we have to get a sequence, a
> chronological sequence for these letters, and here scholarship has
> arrived at the solution that 1 Thessalonians is the earliest extant
> letter, and the last letter well it's probably Romans. But in that
> case I'm not so sure. So it's a great discovery which everybody who
> has some time to read can hope for, and the history of historical
> critical scholarship of the last 250 years is a very exciting one.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Well indeed. Where is that scholarship being pushed ahead
> most? Is it still in Germany or has the laurel been passed to America
> and the Jesus Seminar?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well my suspicion is that historical critical
> scholarship right now is not very active, because the churches have a
> hard time to live with it.
>
> The people that I teach will not be good pastors unless they forget
> everything, most everything that I told them, because come on, the
> church, you think that the word of God is being preached and now
> somebody is learning in my cause, that most of what they preach about,
> Jesus really didn't say, and I've seen no pastor who is telling his
> or her community when he says, or she says, 'Jesus is not really
> Jesus, it's Jesus made up by Early Christians'. So historical
> scholarship or straightforward critical historical scholarship, leads
> to confusion in the church, and there we have a big, big problem. For
> that reason, new ways of looking at texts are more sympathetic to
> churches. So I think historical critical scholarship is in a deep
> crisis right now.
>
> Rachael Kohn: That's interesting because the Jesus Seminar is very
> well known for its critical work on trying to discern the authentic
> sayings of Jesus. Bob Funk has been heading that ship, as it were, and
> they awarded you with a very special prize in 1999, the David Friedrich
> Strauss Medal; does that symbolise something of the merging of German
> scholarship with contemporary American scholarship in this regard?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well I was very proud to be awarded that medal, but
> I'm also a Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, but I hold a minority
> opinion.
>
> Most of the Jesus Seminar fellows think that Jesus was not an
> apocalyptic teacher, so they think that Jesus was a great wisdom
> teacher, and that helps them to actually preach Jesus, because you can
> go to the pulpit and say Jesus was a great teacher. My opinion is, as a
> minority opinion but as a majority opinion among international
> scholars, that Jesus expected a Kingdom of God to happen during his own
> lifetime, and that he, well, he deceived himself. And I think somebody
> who deceived himself and deceived his disciples cannot be the basis of
> worship.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Wasn't that the view that Albert Schweitzer also wrote
> in his Life of Jesus?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Exactly, and I think basically Albert Schweitzer is
> right, but that is creating a problem for the community of believers. I
> mean the mainstream Protestant churches, I'm not talking about the
> Unitarians, and the Jesus Seminar is teaching a different Jesus, they,
> or they, I mean I like the Jesus Seminar and I'm a member again, but
> their way of teaching or telling people what Jesus said makes it very
> easy to preach about Jesus because she didn't commit self-deception,
> he was a great wisdom teacher.
>
> Rachael Kohn: How else would you describe Jesus' characteristics?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well first of all please keep in mind he was unable to
> write, he was unable to read, he was a boy from the village of Galilee,
> a nature boy or something like that, OK? He was so much in touch with
> people that he was even unable to see that there's some other
> intellects who would ask him some very embarrassing questions. See he
> was totally in his religion, a very original person, sympathetic, able
> to draw a great crowd, but who talked to God as his father, which would
> be a very strange way, because I would say whoever calls God his or her
> own father, cannot be taken seriously.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Well many people seem to have.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: It's just so self-centred. I mean how in the world can
> you take it seriously that somebody called God, his or her own father?
> So he was self-centred, he had to be because he didn't know enough
> about the great word, the wisdom, and he never talked to any
> philosopher who had studied logic.
>
> Rachael Kohn: So the idea of him being a rabbi is not authentic?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: No, he belonged to a low class, he was a carpenter and a
> very original prophetic person but again, he not only called God his
> father but he also thought to know the will of God. I wouldn't call
> him a fanatic but it's very strange that he knows exactly what God
> wanted, come on. Again, I'm just stunned and that just doesn't
> allow me to regard him as my hero, as somebody who could tell me
> anything.
>
> Rachael Kohn: What are the things that he didn't do?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: He didn't go for example to Sepphoris, he could have
> got some education, he didn't engage into serious dialogue with
> Pagans, Gentiles.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Did he institute the Eucharist?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well no, he didn't institute the Eucharist because he
> was a Jew, a teacher, a storyteller, and as a Jew he of course would
> never think that somebody could drink blood or anything. And remember
> that he, according to the Gospels, instituted the Eucharist at a time
> when he wasn't even dead. The Eucharist presupposes his death for us,
> so it's all construction by the Early church. That's very sad.
>
>
> You drove out demons like a magician and saw in this the advent of the
> kingdom of God. You had intimate contact with the devil and finally saw
> him falling like lightning from heaven. You expected the collapse of
> the whole world in the near future, and this was finally to give place
> to the new kingdom of God.
>
> But none of this is any use: you too died, in the prime of life. You
> too drank the cup of death, indeed had to drink it - in a way that
> you didn't foresee. Despite profound experiences with your God, whom
> you called a father to be trusted, and from whom you expected almost
> everything, your hopes for the future also died. They clashed with
> brutal reality. At the latest on the cross you had to learn what it
> means to become a godforsaken victim. And had not your followers, who
> were understandably inspired by you, proclaimed belief in your
> resurrection, all your words and deeds would have been blown away like
> leaves by the wind.
>
>
> Rachael Kohn: That's from 'A Letter to Jesus' by the New Testament
> scholar Gerd Ludemann. When it was published the letter got him into
> trouble with his Theological faculty at the University of Gottingen in
> Germany. But should personal faith have anything to do with one's
> scholarship?
>
> This is The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National, with my guest, Gerd
> Ludemann. He's the author of several books, including the 700-page
> tome, Jesus After Two Thousand Years, and The Great Deception.
>
> CHOIR
>
> Rachael Kohn: Gerd, in your now famous book which I believe was
> published in 1998, in English called The Great Deception, it begins
> with 'A Letter to Jesus' in which you declare your loss of faith.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Oh yes, that was because of that very letter that I
> almost lost my job. The Church of Lower Saxony asked the government to
> fire me and the dispute is still going on at least I was removed from
> the Theological curriculum, and still belonging to the Theological
> faculty but have no academic rights whatsoever, so that very Letter to
> Jesus created a whole stir, and they thought of it as the public
> acknowledgement that I'm no longer a Christian, but they never
> defined what a Christian is, and in fact the press brought that up. So
> the press played a major role in the church taking me to, well, trying
> to fire me. And that's now since 1998, it's five years, and it's
> still before the court, and we will see it will take another five years
> until the Supreme Court will render a final decision.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Your situation has been compared to that of Hans Kung,
> who some years ago was removed from teaching theology at the Catholic
> university of Tubigen because of his views which were at variance with
> the Vatican. Is that comparison a valid one?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: No, he settled with the church and the university, he
> did not take them to court. I didn't settle, I will never settle
> because I'm a Protestant and I'm bringing, or trying to represent
> the best tradition of free Protestantism and Enlightenment, and so
> there's a legacy, I've a legacy to fulfil.
>
> He's a Catholic, there's no legacy to Enlightenment, he remains a
> Catholic, but I have a completely different view, but from a juridical,
> legal standpoint, it's the same thing. The Catholic church objected
> to his teaching, which they can do. It's the law that the church can
> veto and can withdraw an approval. The same was done to me for the
> first time to a Protestant Professor of Theology.
>
> What happened to Kung is happening almost every year in Germany, when
> Professors get married, when they write something, we have eight or
> nine Professors of Catholic theology who are not so known as Kung is,
> but I'm the first Protestant Professor of Theology and hopefully the
> last who has difficulties.
>
> Rachael Kohn: But Gerd, some would see it as perfectly sensible that a
> Christian theological faculty would remove someone who publicly
> declares a lack of faith in the Christian God.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: I disagree. We have a theological faculty that is paid
> for by the State. The church is not paying a penny for this faculty. So
> I'm an employee of the State. The only reason for removing me would
> be I think if I informed the students incorrectly as to what the church
> believes.
>
> I will always teach my students what the church believes on the basis
> of confession and introduce them to Christianity and I think you can
> compare to a situation of a non-Marxist teaching at a Marxist seminary.
> And I think a non-Marxist in some cases can be a better scholar on
> Marxism than a Marxist is. This has to do with education and
> scholarship, not with belief.
>
> I think belief of a faith is something else. The only thing that people
> could accuse me of is that as a citizen of Germany, of democracy, I
> have an opinion about things, and when students ask me 'Are you a
> believer for example? Do you believe that Jesus will come back at the
> end of time on the clouds of heaven?' I have to say 'No.' 'Do
> you believe that you will rise after death, will be with Jesus?' I
> have to say 'No.' And the hypocrisy in all of this is that in most
> cases my colleagues and others would also deny Jesus coming back on the
> clouds of heaven etc. So I'm pretty certain that what I am doing is
> the right thing to do.
>
> Rachael Kohn: But didn't the man who invented virtually invented
> historical criticism of the Bible, Julius Wellhausen, change faculties
> in 1882 when he realised he didn't want to train students to become
> ministers. Isn't that option open to you?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: That would have been open to me, though the
> philosophical faculty did not want me. In my case, the President of the
> University made his decision, he would have liked to transfer me to the
> Philosophical Faculty, but they for an unknown reason said No. So I was
> not faced with the possibility.
>
> What I could have done is, I could have tried to become part of the
> Philosophical Faculty, that's what people told me, and a former
> Bishop in fact, tried to talk me into it. But I declined to do so,
> because I'm a New Testament scholar and trained in that tradition. I
> want to be judged on the basis of my scholarly work, analysing the
> Gospels, analysing the Letters of Paul, that's a great tradition,
> which is at stake here, and I want to remain what I was, in the place
> where I was called and what I can do.
>
> So there's no reason for me to go to the Philosophical Faculty
> because in the German system there are no Chairs of New Testament in
> the Philosophical Faculty. Wellhausen's decision was his decision,
> and he remained a Christian person. He prayed after that, even. So
> Wellhausen is a special case, and that was his decision. I didn't
> want to do it.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Doesn't this call into question the relationship
> between theology and scientific knowledge. Isn't theology and the
> kind of historical criticisms that you're doing, in some ways
> antithetical?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Yes I would say it excludes one another. There's a
> dogmatic method and the historical method, and if you ask me I would
> wish that theology turn into a philosophy of religion, or leave the
> university. That would be my suggestion, and get all the empirical,
> historical departments of the Theological Faculty - Old Testament, New
> Testament, History of Religions -together to form a new curriculum, and
> Theology indeed if it is dogmatic Theology, meaning deducing from the
> dogmas of the church, certain truths, it has no legitimate place in the
> university. But the church will always try to keep it there, and it's
> the political power of the church that will keep it there for some time
> to come.
>
> Rachael Kohn: I think that this problem is somewhat solved or addressed
> in many Western universities with the establishment of Religious
> Studies Departments, which owe no allegiance to any particular church.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: But there are no Religious Studies departments in
> Germany, or very few, and if there are Religious Studies Departments
> then the appointment of some of the Professors needs the agreement of
> the church. So we do not have that tradition, and one peculiar aspect
> of the German situation is that religion is taught at the schools.
>
> Article 7 of our basic law says that religion has been taught on the
> basis of the confessions of the various churches, so we need teachers
> of religion. But now what happens is this: there's Catholic religion
> at a school and Protestant religion, and if there are two departments,
> a Catholic faculty and a Protestant faculty in one place, as a Catholic
> you cannot take a course with the Protestants, and the Protestants are
> not allowed to take a course with the Catholics and getting credit for
> it. So the organisation and the power struggle of the church is
> responsible for this idiotic schizophrenic separating of studies that
> belong together. It's a political game, and the less popular the
> church gets, the more they see to it that the teaching of religion is
> not combined.
>
> Rachael Kohn: That's very interesting because while you're pointing
> to the loss of the faith as it were by the general population, didn't
> you also mention to me earlier that there are almost 1,000 students
> studying Theology in this university?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: We had 1700 students in the '70s when I began, less in
> the '80s, and now it's only 33%, much less study Theology. The
> number has dramatically decreased and the churches have lost members,
> and losing it all the time, but there are agreements or treaties
> between State and church, so the Theological faculty is receiving many
> favours from the State because of the power of the church. Again, we
> have Catholic and Protestant faculties, and it will not change unless
> the legal structure of this whole system is abolished, and one of my
> contributions will be to destabilise the system which makes serious
> scholarship impossible in the long run.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Can you just tell me what is the state of your case at
> the moment?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: I have lost the first instance but now I have more
> successful. I succeeded in being admitted to the next court; we have
> three different courts, a lower court, then the higher court and the
> supreme court, so it was quite difficult to convince the judges of the
> next higher court that the case needs to be reconsidered and they in
> fact have admitted that there may be a problem with their earlier
> decision of the other court. So it will probably take a while to get it
> through the three stages of legal system in Germany.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Gerd, what has been the ramifications, what has been the
> impact for you of this punitive measure by the university? Because I
> read that there was some boycotts.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well my doctorate students had to look for another
> Doctor or Father, so I could not help them to get their degree, and I
> lost half of my money that I had. I came to Gottingen in 1983 with a
> Chair in New Testament, and then turned an offer down from the
> University of Bonn in 1993, and my money, or what I had, was increased,
> I lost all of that. So I'm basically back to, well, to somebody who
> is helping me for a couple of hours, but they were unable to cut my
> salary, I've a full salary, which is good because I have a family of
> four children to get through grade school. But students are no longer
> coming to me because they get no credit from me and it's not good for
> them to be associated with me.
>
> The press has written about me and you can imagine once you have a
> certain reputation, nobody will be able remove that. What I have, I
> have senior students, people older than 55, with whom I'm working.
> We're doing workshops and many are coming to these workshops, so my
> emphasis, since I have no students, no regular course, I have to offer
> regular courses, but most of these courses are just not happening or
> taking place because nobody's coming, my emphasis is adult education
> and research. I'm doing a lot of books, but the impact is that I'm
> very isolated, I have very few people to talk to. I have no dialogue
> that's going on. That's a loneliness which is very bitter.
> Sometimes I don't have to talk, I'm not talking, I'm condemned to
> be without speech. I've only my pen to write.
>
> CHOIR
>
> Rachael Kohn: If I can get back to your book The Great Deception, one
> of the strong points in it that you end on is the role of the church in
> promoting an anti-Jewish teaching, and that seems to be one of the
> bitterest pills really for you. And I was thinking about you as a
> German who also spends half the year, or quite frequently spends time
> in American universities. I wonder to what extent being a German who
> has to cope with the impact of the Holocaust in particular, Germany is
> one of the few countries in Europe that has very publicly dealt with,
> or addresses its role in the Holocaust. I wondered to what extent that
> shaped you and your work.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Well I learned about anti-Judaism in the New Testament
> not during my student days here at Gottingen, not even during my
> graduate studies in Gottingen, but in the United States when I was
> Research Assistant of W.D. Davies, and the reading E.P. Sanders' great
> book Paul and Palestinian Judaism helped me to get it into perspective
> and to see it, and also to reorganise my own work, because looking at
> anti-Judaism in the New Testament, has led me ultimately to the
> decision that the Early Church had to be anti-Jewish in order to
> survive, but that anti-Jewish Early Church defined what is Christian.
> And this anti-Judaism of the New Testament I think should make it
> impossible for anybody to call him or herself a Christian.
>
> So that's a problem, and as you said, German churches have
> acknowledged it, have addressed that problem, but they are still
> Christians, and they try to re-read the New Testament in a way in which
> we shouldn't read it. And so they address it, but they worship and
> adore the same people, like Luther, who was an anti-Semite. So they are
> not drawing the consequence of all of that.
>
> And secondly, the result of anti-Judaism should not be only public
> declaration but the result, the consequences should have been the
> creation of Jewish chairs within Theological faculties. But our legal
> system does not allow to create a Jewish Chair filled by a Jew, because
> the Professor has to be Christian, has to be baptised. Somebody from
> Israel who is an expert on Jesus could not get a Doctorate, not even a
> degree in the Theological faculty because he or she must be baptised. I
> would say that's lip service which is being paid. The real thing
> which should ensure Jewish studies should have been the creation of
> Chairs, but that's not possible.
>
> Rachael Kohn: So what would you see is the future for Christianity? Is
> there one?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: John Shelby Spong has written a book, either
> Christianity will change or it will die, that's what I would say. It
> will die so, I am sceptical, it will not die, it will be the same, so
> I'm not so optimistic. I would say the main question would be Will
> there be a religion at all? My studies have demonstrated I think that
> religion cannot be based on history, not based on facts. Religion is
> based in something else, not the resurrection of Jesus, not in his
> death, it has to be based on something else that something else has to
> be re-addressed and has to be found.
>
> For a time I was translating Gnostic texts and thought for a time that
> sort of new mysticism would be a way to allow one to be religious again
> without losing insights and without denying any scientific knowledge,
> but I'm trying to find it. So I'm looking for the something which
> could ground my faith or my view in religious matters. That's I think
> important, so I'm not a pure rationalist, I'm something else, and I
> think religion under stood in terms of emotions or spirituality is
> something that we should address if we talk about the new religion.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Isn't that precisely what the Jesus Seminar has been
> trying to do in terms of grounding a future for Christianity and the
> sayings of Jesus for example?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: But still I don't know whether that's what they
> wanted. You should ask them. But that's would be still basing one's
> faith on the sayings, on facts, on something which somebody said and
> not basing the faith in experience. I thin we have to talk about
> experience. I would say you could only base your life on something that
> you have experienced, and experience e has to do with the present, not
> with the past.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Does religion necessarily leave its imprint in history?
> Can t ever absent itself from history? It always leaves a legacy, does
> it not, for the next generation.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: When we talk about history we're not only talking
> about two generations, we're talking about millennia, and
> Christianity has certainly left its imprint, but today we're living
> in an age where the world has become very small and the exchange of
> ideas is rapid etc., and our value system, at least my value system is
> based on certain ideas that we have from the Enlightenment and which is
> incorporated into most basic laws of Western democracies.
>
> So that's one of my bases in terms of value. I don't need a
> religion to ensure that, that people are created equal and should have
> the same chance etc. I don't need religion. So I trust that our
> political systems will keep the work on the basic values or the basic
> rights of men intact, so there's an ongoing process, and for example,
> we are now talking about the Constitution for Europe, and you see, we
> have almost the same values, the same laws that are incorporated into
> the Constitution of the United States.
>
> I don't need a religion, I don't even need God for that thing. What
> I need religion for is I think, and I must talk personally, fulfilling
> my desire to go back to my origins, where I'm coming from. That's
> something that cannot be answered by ethics, that's something
> emotional, spirituality, whatever, and I don't think that that type
> of religion that I'm talking about doesn't even need a church, and
> doesn't want to leave an imprint, it's my religion and we can talk
> about it I'm sure it will be addressed again and again, and I don't
> care to leave an imprint for that to an institution. That time I think
> is over because our society is organised the way it is.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Gerd Ludemann, finally, what is the future then for a New
> Testament scholar?
>
> Gerd Ludemann: Investigating and testing the text again and again and
> mainly being in charge of keeping fundamentalism in check. It always
> wants to use the New Testament to be applied to the present, so I think
> that's a very positive function that a New Testament scholar can do,
> keeping fundamentalism in check, and all of us have the desire to get
> new insights, we have new sources, new discoveries for example, the
> Gospel of Thomas, and we want to put the New Testament in perspective,
> and relate the New Testament documents through these newly discovered
> documents, so a New Testament scholar must and will interpret the New
> Testament and the new insights about the environment of the New
> Testament to the public audience, because they want to know.
>
> Rachael Kohn: But certainly fundamentalists won't be interested in
> reading your works or taking them seriously if you disown the
> fundamentals of the faith.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: In my own family we have in America my son-in-law for
> example, is going to a church that has fundamental tendencies, or is
> fundamentalistic, and my policy as a father-in-law is to let him ask
> questions...That's his decision and maybe fundamentalism is a
> reminder what Christianity once meant, because Paul also was a
> fundamentalist, and Martin Luther, all of them, believed literally in
> what the text said and something more than that. And from the 1st
> century, understanding of the Biblical text meant understanding and
> literally, but also adding some symbolic dimension to it.
>
> For example, when Luke is telling his story about the ascension, Jesus
> is rising to the clouds, and is disappearing, and he thought that that
> happened. At the same time it has some symbolic, deeper, or more
> symbolic meaning which the fundamentalists don't see. So our
> challenge as living in the post modern world is to recreating and
> changing what Christianity once taught, and that's a big problem. So
> fundamentalists are a reminder of what Christians once believed. So
> that's I think very useful.
>
> Rachael Kohn: Gerd Ludemann, thank you so much for speaking to me on
> The Spirit of Things.
>
> Gerd Ludemann: You're very welcome, Rachael.
>
>
> But if you really should return on the clouds of heaven, I already look
> forward to getting to know you at last. And I am convinced, even if I
> no longer pray to you and no longer believe in you, that I will have
> your sympathy and that you will not annihilate me for my unbelief, as
> according to Bible and creed you really should But until then, as far
> as religion is concerned, there must be a final end to things between
> us - for the reasons which I have mentioned to you.
>
>
> CHOIR
>
> Rachael Kohn: A ray of hope perhaps, from the man who's bared his
> soul in a way many New Testament scholars have dared not. In Germany at
> any rate, they'd lose their jobs.
>
> That's been a conversation with Gerd Ludemann, in his office at the
> University of Gottingen in Germany. If you want to follow up on
> Gerd's work, his books include Jesus after 2,000 Years and The Great
> Deception. A longer list can be found on our website.
>
> The program was produced by me and Geoff Wood, with technical
> production by Judy Rapley.
>
> Readings from The Great Deception were by Robert Alexander.
>
> Next week, it's the Immaculate Perception, how the image of Mary the
> mother of Jesus is being challenged and reconfigured by a leading
> Catholic theologian, Elizabeth Johnson, and how Australian women are
> responding. That's The Spirit of Things with me, Rachael Kohn.
>
> Guests on this program:
> Gerd Ludemann
> made his reputation as Professor of New Testament at the University of
> Gottingen. He was removed from the Theology Faculty at the University
> by reason of the content of his academic writing and lecturing on the
> history and theology of earliest Christianity. He was expelled from his
> post as professor of New Testament and assigned a professorship of the
> history and literature of Early Christianity. His books include
> Resurrection of Jesus and many other studies in the New Testament and
> early Christianity.
>
> Publications:
> Jesus After Two Thousand Years: What He Really Said and Did
> Author: Gerd Ludemann
> Publisher: London: SCM Press, 2000 and Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books,
> 2001
> The Great Deception: And What Jesus Really Said and Did
> Author: Gerd Ludemann
> Publisher: SCM Press, 1998
> Faith, Truth, and Freedom: The Expulsion of Prof. Gerd Ludemann From
> the Theology Faculty at Gottingen University
> Author: Jacob Neusner Ed.
> Publisher: Global Publications, 2002
>
> Further information:
> Gerd Ludemann's Homepage
> http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~gluedem/eng/00con.htm
> The Life of Jesus : A Brief Assessment
> An essay based on the concluding section of Ludemann's book Jesus After
> Two Thousand Years: What He Really Said and Did.
> http://www.bibleinterp.com/articles/Ludemann_Life0fJesus.htm
> Faith, Truth and Freedom
> A symposium on the expulsion of Professor Gerd Ludemann from the
> Theology Faculty at Gottingen University.
> http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~gluedem/eng/perfacefaithtruthandfreedom.htm
>