In 2008 the Theologische Rundschau published a review of Richard Bauckham's book Jesus and the Eyewitnesses.

The Anglican theologian criticizes the view that characterizes modern scientific Bible criticism that the life story of Jesus was formed by oral traditions of the early church before it was recorded in writing in the Gospels and therefore, as far as the factual core of the event is concerned, was the formation of legends from the beginning.

According to Bauckham, the evangelists worked with eyewitness accounts;

the author of the Gospel of John was even an eyewitness himself.

Patrick Bahners

Feuilleton correspondent in Cologne and responsible for "Humanities".

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The reviewer not only expressed doubts about this theory of text genesis, which was similarly advocated by Joseph Ratzinger in his Jesus book published in the pontificate;

above all, he doubted that, even if true, it represented that of Bauckham and Benedict XVI.

hoped-for secure knowledge of the story before the text.

Eyewitnesses are not a priori particularly reliable or credible in any absolute sense.

For this source-critical basic idea, the reviewer cited a voice from historical science: "As Johannes Fried has shown in a recent study, the category of memory itself must be critically examined to determine the extent to which events are selected and subjectively colored".

A new historical science

The study by the Frankfurt medieval historian is a 500-page book that was published by CH Beck in 2004 and is aimed at both experts and the general public.

Under the title "The Veil of Memory" Fried unfolds "basic features" of a new auxiliary or basic science, the "historical memoir".

He radicalizes the methodological doubt that is the business basis of his subject by expanding the source criticism backwards and extending it to the history of the source production.

Memory is erratic, fragmentary and partisan even before it is put on paper or even spoken about, as a chain of impulses in the brain.

After a large biography of Charlemagne that has been published several times, which exemplifies the feeling of the founder of the medieval empire of living shortly before the Last Judgment, and a history of Christian and post-Christian thinking about the end of the world, Fried turned back in 2019 to the beginnings of these expectations and fears: the testimonies for the life of the itinerant preacher, who had spoken so convincingly about the coming kingdom of God that millions of people still believe two thousand years later that it had already arrived in his person.

Fried's contribution to the life of Jesus research proclaimed a sensation: he doubled the subject of this research by adding a second half to the life of Jesus, the time after the resurrection, which in Fried's narrative was no miracle,

but feels almost everyday.

Jesus rose because he didn't die on the cross, he just lost consciousness.

The title of the book summarizes its result in all its fascinating simplicity: "No Death on Golgotha".

Fried sees the evidence, following an article from a medical journal pointed out to him by a friend, in the lance stab, which ejected blood and water separately.

The weapon is said to have penetrated the gap between the lung membrane and the pleura and thus prevented death by asphyxiation.

An ingenious assumption has probably never been burdened with a greater burden of proof.

With the resurrection, Fried deletes the content of faith from the Christian tradition, on which the identity of Christians depends - in this sense, at least, Christians quote the Apostle Paul.

On the other hand, he also renders irrelevant the opposing liberal or psychological interpretation of the doctrine, which more or less implicitly assumes that the Christian message compensates for the repressed knowledge of the non-resurrection,