A German court has ruled that Jesus Christ does not hold the copyright to a book by a dead American psychologist.
Helen Schucman, who died in 1981, had claimed that Jesus dictated the contents of her book “A Course in Miracles” during “waking dreams”.
A German Christian academy published extracts from the book last year, arguing that Schucman had not claimed to be the author and that the book was in the public domain.
It regarded copyright as not applying to work really done by Jesus.
But Frankfurt judges have ruled the law is on the side of the original publishers.
Authorship attaches to “the actual process of creation”, and this can apply even when an author is in a trance or under hypnosis, the court reasoned.