I spent several posts explicating Paul’s understanding of his gospel, that by Christ’s death and resurrection a person is put into a restored relationship with God. He had several ways of explaining how it worked (the “judicial” model; the “participationist” model; and the other models I described). But in all of these ways, it was Jesus’ death and resurrection that mattered. It was not keeping the Jewish law. It was not knowing or following Jesus’ teaching. It was not Jesus’ miracles. It was not … anything else. It was Jesus’ death and resurrection. I then summarized in my previous post, the teaching of Jesus himself, about the coming Son of Man and the need to prepare by keeping the Law of God, as revealed in the Torah, as summarized in the commandments to love God above all else and to love one’s neighbor as oneself. Do these represent the same religion? I see this as one of the most fundamental and important questions in all of early Christianity. I’m not asking if Paul invented Christianity, [...]

In my last post I started giving the principal options, as I see them, for why Paul did not mention more about the historical Jesus.  Below are two other leading options.  As I’ve indicated, there are probably others, and if some occur to you, feel free to comment! ****************************** Option Two: Paul knew more of the traditions of Jesus, but considered them irrelevant to his mission. This option relates closely to the one preceding, with a major difference. In this case, Paul did not himself teach his congregations many of the traditions about Jesus that he knew, nor did he refer to them extensively either in person or in writing -- not because he had no occasion to (since he clearly did) but because he chose not to. Why would he choose not to? Perhaps because he considered the traditions about Jesus' words and deeds to be irrelevant to his message of Jesus' death and resurrection. Support for this view can come from a passage like 1 Cor 2:2, where Paul insists that the only [...]

To this point I have enumerated everything that Paul explicitly says about what Jesus said, did, and experienced during his earthly life.  The driving question is the one that I turn to now and in the next post.  Why didn’t Paul tell us *more*?  I’ve long been fascinated by this question, and even though I’ve thought about it for well over thirty years, I’ve never decided on what I really think. There are just too many counter-arguments for every perspective that I’ve heard or thought of!  In these two posts I want to lay out three of the main options. If you think of others that need to be aired, feel free to make a comment. I have taken the following from my textbook The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings. ****************************** Paul of course has a lot to say about the importance of Jesus, especially the importance of his death and resurrection and his imminent return from heaven. But in terms of historical information, what I've listed above [i.e., in [...]

I have been talking about Paul’s knowledge of the historical Jesus, and yesterday began a discussion of what Paul clearly knew about Jesus’ teachings.   That’s where I will pick up here.  Again, I have taken the discussion from my book Did Jesus Exist?, so the orientation of what I have to say is toward showing that Paul provides solid (and for my mind, virtually incontrovertible) evidence that Jesus was not simply “made up” but was an actual historical figure – an issue that, for most people in the universe of intelligent humans, is not much of an issue, but which is disputed by that tiny yet oh-so-vocal group of “mythicists” about which I have said some things before.  In any event, there are a few more interesting aspects of the question of Paul’s use of Jesus’ teachings, as follows: ****************************** There are no other obvious places where Paul quotes Jesus, although scholars have often found traces of Jesus’ teachings in Paul.  The big question is why Paul does not quote Jesus more often.  That is [...]

So far I have been discussing what Paul says about the historical Jesus in his surviving seven letters.  For the next couple of posts I’ll indicate what he says about the teaching of Jesus.  Once again there are two observations to make.  The first is that he obviously knew that Jesus taught some things.  The other is that it is a bit surprising that he doesn’t tell us more.  I will be dealing with that second issue soon, when I discuss why Paul doesn’t give us more information about the historical Jesus (there are several options).  The following discussion is taken from my book Did Jesus Exist, which was meant to deal more with the first issue: the fact that Paul quotes Jesus on occasion shows at the least that Paul knew Jesus existed (as do the other data that he mentions about Jesus’ life). ****************************** The Teachings of Jesus in Paul In addition to these data about Jesus’ life and death, Paul mentions on several occasions the teachings he delivered.  We have seen two [...]

In my last post I began to enumerate the things that Paul said about Jesus.  *Most* of what he says about Jesus has to do with the significance of his death and resurrection.  But what if we wanted to know about the *life* of Jesus – the things that Jesus said, did, and experienced between his birth and his death?  Paul doesn’t tell us a ton, as has frequently been noted.  But he does tell us some.  In addition to what I laid out in the previous post, there are the following bits of information, again taken from my fuller analysis in Did Jesus Exist? ****************************** Paul knows that Jesus was a teacher, because he quotes several of his sayings.  I will deal with these later [in my next post].  For now it is worth noting that two of the sayings of Jesus that Paul quotes were delivered, he tells us, at the Last Supper on the very night that Jesus was handed over to the authorities to face his fate. For I received from [...]