Book Review on the book Virgin Birth

Gerd Ludemann is the author of a well-known book namely Virgin Birth: The Real Story of Mary and Her Son Jesus. As mentioned above, this essay basically would present a critical review of this book. The author of this book, Gerd Ludemann works at the University of Gottingen as a Professor of the New Testament. The author of this book has also penned down other master pieces of nearly the same concept such as The Great Deception: And What Jesus Really said and Did, What really happen to Jesus: A Historical Approach to the Resurrection, The Unholy in Holy Scripture: The Dark Side of the Bible.

The book has been written by this German New Testament scholar as an attempt to put forward the historical realities that lie behind the birth of Jesus, who as said was born to a virgin mother namely Mary and the description of the Holy Family by the evangelists. The book is one of its kinds and in it; the author has gone through all of the previous references that were made to Jesus and his birth along with the Holy Family in the writings presented by the early Church and certain rival sources of the Jews.

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In the book under consideration, that is Virgin Birth: The Real Story of Mary and Her Son Jesus, the author has discussed some of the previous stories of Christmas (the birth of Jesus) that are present in the New Testament, reforms the traditions that have been used in them and then moves on to answer or to put forward the main concept of the book, that is the answer to the question of what really happened at the birth of Jesus Christ. The main point of the book is basically to grapple the concept of the birth from a virgin, its validity and the loopholes that are present in the concept while backing it with a number of historical evidences.

Critical Review “It is time to life the veil which—woven from a mixture of dogmatics, piety and fantasy—has lain over the figure of Mary. Mary is better unveiled, because in this way she becomes more credible and more human” --Gerd Ludemann As known to all, the Bible states that Jesus was born to a virgin mother who is a very well-known character in history and religion and her name was Mary. A vast number of anti-Christian groups, in order to tarnish the image of the religion and especially that of Virgin Mary have claimed that as Jesus was born out of wed lock he was illegitimate and Mary, as his mother was a sinner.

In this book, the author argues that the Christian parable of the virgin birth of Jesus, upholds the formations of stigmatization, refusing the right of women to sexual and cultural freewill. His argument is that, instead of taking Mary acutely as a woman of our time and for that reason also taking seriously women in our time, a vast number of churches these days carry on ignoring the repeatedly destructive consequences of the myth of Mary men and women who believe in it.

The author of this book, Gred Ludemann, who is a controversial professor of New Testament at the University of Gottingen, in Germany, in his book, has challenged the traditional teachings of the church related to Jesus and his mother Mary. The book begins with a brief over view of the Catholic and Protestant doctrines on Mary and then moves on to critically goes through all of the verses of the Bible that refer to Mary such as The Gospel of Matthew, The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, The Gospel of John, The Gospel of Thomas etc.

He has done so with the hope of revealing a view of Mary’s thinking which was free of any thoughts or teachings related to the Church. The results presented by the author are very provocative and include a claim by the author stating that due to the fact that Mary gave birth to Jesus out of wedlock, she became the object of a number of lies that were put down to theory and were of great use or served the best interest of the early church, which obviously tarnished her own image and her character as a real human being.

The book is rather stagnant. At times, a reader would perhaps loose interest because of the same thing being repeated over and over again. Although he has made a good attempt by going through all of the texts in a chronological order and that too all of them in three different stages. The first stage is the redaction, the second is the tradition, and last but not the least, the third is history. All three of them are linked to each other, but when read for the first time, this point is extremely hard to understand.

The author has moved on from topic to topic very quickly which makes it even harder for a first time reader in particular to get what the author is trying to prove. The book somehow starts getting better after reaching page number forty, the second chapter namely “Mary in the New Testament and in the Christian Sources outside the New Testament: Redaction, Tradition, History”. As stated previously the book begins with a very brief introduction to a number of Catholic and Protestant doctrines, but they also have been explained in a way which is rather hard to understand at times.

This makes the book seem rather uninteresting to any reader. He has also presented results of all the texts of the previously mentioned doctrines, but after going through nearly half of these results, one is forced to think whether the author is being rather very judgemental adnd if the book is not just a part of his own thoughts. Eventually in the end he has put forward the results of all the catholic and protestant doctrines along with the results of the verses and texts from the Bible, but they also tend to give the idea that the author is very judgemental and is not open to ideas.

The worst aspect of the book however remains the fact that the text on its own is rather complicated and needs to be read twice in order to actually understand where the book is heading. A reader of the first time might remain baffled and complexed about what the author is trying to prove until he or she actually reads it in the end. Conclusion In the light of the above disucssion we can hereby culminate that Virgin Birth: The Real Story of Mary and Her Son Jesus is a well-known book written by Gerd Ludemann who is a scholar of the New Testament at the University of Gottingen.

He has penned-down a vast number of master pieces, which are somehow related to each other. In this book, the author has openly challenged the traditional teachings of the church related to Jesus and his mother Mary, who according to the Bible gave birth to Jesus while remaining a virgin. The book improves as it moves on, but it is rather hard to understand right at the beginning owing to the fact that it is rather complicated. Works Cited Ludemenn, Gred. Virgin Birth: The Real Story of Mary and Her Son Jesus. United States of America. Trinity Press International. ISBN: 1563382431.

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