Pearson Edexcel Level 3 Advanced GCE in Religious Studies – Anthology
107
idea in her Jesus: The Man, as have the German writers Holger Kersten and E lma r
Gruber wit h t heir The Jesus Conspirac y. Thiering has based her arguments on the
idea t hat t he gospels were all writ t en in a c ode, so t hat virt ually everyt hing in t hem
has t o be re-interpreted in the light of that c ode. Kersten and Gruber have
c ontended that the Vatic an c onspired with radioc arbon dating sc ientists to ensure
that the Turin Shroud was dated to the Middle Ages so that its purported ‘big
sec ret ’, t hat it ‘proves’ t hat Jesus was st ill alive when laid inside it , should not be
allowed t o destroy the Christian faith. Despite the ingeniousness of suc h
arguments, they merit sc ant serious sc rutiny.
T he problem for all hypot heses of t his kind, c ert ainly t hose post ulat ing some form
of resusc itation, was outlined more than a hundred years ago by the c ont roversial
Tübingen lec turer David Strauss, one of those nineteenth-c entury German
theologians who in so many ways cast doubts on the gospel story. As Strauss wrote
in his New Life of Jesus, published in 1865:
It is impossible t hat a being who had st olen half dead out of the sepulc hre,
who c rept about weak and ill, wanting medic al treatment, who required
bandaging, strengthening and indulgenc e... c ould have given the disc iples
the impression that he was a Conqueror over death and the grave, the
Princ e of Life, an impression whic h lay at the bottom of their future ministry.
Suc h a resusc itation... c ould by no possibility have c hanged their sorrow into
enthusiasm, have elevated their reverence into worship!In support of this, and in full favour of the hypothesis that Jesus genuinely rose
from the grave, is the sheer confidence about this that became exhibited by the
previously denying and demoralized disc iple Simon Pet er. T his is evident from his
first post-c ruc ifixion public speec h to the inhabitants of Jerusalem and t heir fellow-
Judaeans reported in the book of Ac ts:
Men of Israel... Jesus the Nazarene was a man commended to you by God...
This man... you took and had c ruc ified by men outside the Law. You killed
him, but God raised him t o life... and all of us are witnesses to that. (Acts 2:
22 –4, 32)Peter went on to speak with similar passion on subsequently addressing non-Jews
in Caesarea:
Now I, and those with me, c an witness to everything he [Jesus] did
throughout the c ountryside of Judaea and in Jerusalem itself; and also to
the fac t that they killed him by hanging him on a tree, yet three days
afterwards God raised him to life and allowed him to be seen, not by the
whole people, but by certain witnesses God had chosen beforehand. Now we
are those witnesses — we have eaten and drunk with him after his
resurrection from the dead ... (Acts 10: 39-42)