Gerd Lüdemann

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Gerd Lüdemann (July 5, 1946 – May 23, 2021) was a German scholar who studied the New Testament and early Christianity. He taught in Canada at McMaster University (1977–1979) and in the United States at Vanderbilt Divinity School (1979–1982). In 1983 he became the head of New Testament Studies at the University of Göttingen in Germany, and in 1999 his chair was changed to History and Literature of Early Christianity, where he worked until his retirement in 2011.

Lüdemann was born in Visselhövede, Lower Saxony. His mother was religious, and he became a born-again Christian in 1963, but he later lost his faith. He studied at Göttingen (1966–1971) and earned his doctorate in 1974 on Simonian Gnosis. He spent a year as a postdoctoral fellow at Duke University (1974–75) and then completed his habilitation in Göttingen in 1977 on Paulus, der Heidenapostel. He also taught at the Volkshochschule and served as an assistant to Georg Strecker (1975–1977).

Lüdemann received the Heisenberg Scholarship for full-time research (1980–1983). He published The Great Deception in 1999, arguing that only a small portion of Jesus’ sayings are original. He was involved with the Jesus Seminar and debated William Lane Craig about Jesus’ resurrection in 1997 and 2002. After retiring from Göttingen in 2011, he was a visiting scholar at Vanderbilt Divinity School. He died on May 23, 2021, after several years of illness.