Robert said

Porphyry said

If parelabon in I Cor 15:3 specifically means received as oral tradition from men (and not from the risen Lord), then I think we have a big inconsistency in Paul. 

In Gal, yes, his immediate concern is circumcision, but in ch. 1 he is reiterating his apostolic credentials in general (even if an angel preach another gospel, don’t have it), and in so doing he is really emphatic that his Gospel, what he has preached, he learned directly from Christ and he is emphatic that he did not learn it from men (most specifically not from the apostles in Jerusalem). I take this to mean his whole “gospel”, not merely his teaching on circumcision. 

So going back then, if the resurrection–which he insists is the lynchpin of his whole kerygma–is something he received from the Jerusalem church, then what he said in Gal 1 isn’t true: he did not get his gospel directly from the risen Christ but from men. In fact, what he himself says is of first importance, what he calls the “gospel” he proclaimed (I cor 15:1) is actually something he would have gotten from human testimony. I think it is critical to note that what he says he received (in v3)  isn’t just a list of persons to whom the risen Jesus appeared (indeed the list of post-resurrection appearances only appears in v. 6, which is edited as a new sentence, so it isn’t even obvious to me that that should be taken as part of what he starts v. 3 saying he received); What he does explicitly say he received includes the very claim that Jesus was crucified for our sins according to the Scriptures and buried and rose on the third day according to the Scriptures. That seems to me absolutely to contradict what he says in Gal. 1. 

In Gal 1 his “gospel” is something he got directly from Christ, not from men, and that is the basis of his apostleship and absolute authority (Which he then uses to settle the circumcision question). In I Cor 15, if parelabon means what you say it does (and I’m not in a position to argue the lexicography), then he is saying exactly the opposite: all the key elements of the gospel he preached are things the received from men. 

To make him not be outright contradicting himself. we’d have to postulate that Paul is claiming to have two different gospels. One, which he preached to the Galatians, was the good news that gentiles don’t need to be circumcised, and that gospel he got from the Lord directly. The second, which he preach as of first importance to the Corinthians, included Jesus dying for our sins and rising from the dead in accordance with the scriptures, and that good news he receive as oral tradition from men. 

… I realized, by the way, that the first appearances (to Peter and the twelve) were part of what Paul says he received–but i think the larger argument stands, mutatis mutandis.

I don’t think there’s a huge inconsistency. In both 1 Cor 15 and Gal 1-2, the essence of the gospel is the same, as is Paul’s justification of his role as an apostle preaching the gospel.

In Galatians, Paul is sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead (1,1). The gospel is not of human origin, nor did Paul receive it from a human, nor was he taught it, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ (1,11-12). When God, who had set Paul apart before he was born, called him through his grace, he was pleased to reveal his Son through him so that he might proclaim him among the gentiles (1,15-16). This is roughly equivalent to what Paul says in 1 Corinthians, where he indicates that he is an apostle because Jesus appeared to him, last of all, as to one untimely born and he admits that he is the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because he persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God he is what he is (15,8-10), an apostle, ie, one who has seen the Lord (9,1).

The core content of the gospel in 1 Corinthians is that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures … How much of this was revealed to Paul in his own direct experience of the risen Christ and his interpretation of this? As you’ve already started to notice, we do not imagine that the risen Christ revealed to Paul that he had previously appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then to more than five hundred brothers at one time, then to James, then to all of the apostles before him? Jesus told Paul all of this. How much of this is a direct revelation from Jesus and how much of this is traditional? How much of these claims would Paul have already known even when he was persecuting the church? However much he knew, as a persecutor, none of it was the gospel for him until the Lord appeared to him personally.

I think the essence of the gospel seems to be that Jesus was raised from the realm of the dead, which Paul experienced himself, but a key element, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures (1 Cor 15,3) is also repeated in at the beginning of Galatians where Paul affirms that the Lord Jesus Christ  gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father (1,3-4) who raised him from the dead (1,1). The rest of Galatians is nothing but a reflection on a consequential corollary of this component of the gospel. If it is Jesus’ death and resurrection that saves us from our sins and the coming wrath, why do Paul’s gentile converts need to become Jewish? That would be a distortion of the gospel (1,7). The fact that gentiles are not required to be circumcised is literally part of “the truth of the gospel” (2,3-6), more specifically the gospel for the uncircumcised (2,7). That’s why Paul confronted Cephas for “not walking consistently with the truth of the gospel (2,14). Paul makes this consequential corollary explicit in the immediately following context: “we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law [eg, circumcision] but through faith(fullness) in(of) Jesus Christ. And we have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by (the) faith(fullness) in(of) Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”

Paul does not deny in Galatians that he had learned things apart from his own experience of the risen Lord. He went up to Jerusalem to interrogate Cephas for two weeks (1,18) and many years later he again went back to make sure he had not been running in vain (2,3).

A lexical note. It is not merely the use of paralabon that is significant here but the pair of words ‘to receive’ and ‘to pass on’. As Hans Conzelmann notes in his commentary on 1 Cor 11,23:

Paul lays the foundation: the tradition that stems from the Lord himself.[27] παραλαμβάνειν and παραδιδόναι, “to receive” and “to pass on,” are technical terms both in the Greek and in the Jewish world.

(1) In the Greek world they are used for the cultivation of the school tradition.[28] Instructive examples are their occurrence in the context of the mysteries[29] and their use in Gnosticism.[30]

(2) In Judaism παραλαμβάνειν and παραδιδόναι are the equivalents of קִבֵּל מִן‎ and ‏לְ‎ מָסַרx. [31]* The convergence of Greek and Jewish usage is seen in Hellenistic Judaism[32] and in the New Testament.[33]

*This is my favorite (independent) example form the Pirqe Avot, since the actual content of all of the traditions being received and passed on in rabbinic Judaism is actually of divine origin, as it here, from the Lord.

  

Sorry for my delay in responding to this. Just a few preliminary notes and clarifications.

So first, I don’t think Paul in Gal. 1:18 implies that he learned any significant content from Peter. I think the sense of historeo is simply to become acquainted with, to get to know. One could very well say that Paul had heard (from Jesus or elsewhere) about Peter, and went to Jerusalem to get to know him for himself, to meet him. I don’t think we need to take that as meaning, I went to learn from him. 

As to Gal 2:2 I read it  as saying that he is checking his gospel against theirs to confirm his is right. He is not learning something new from them; he is, rather, confirming that what he got is the same as they got (thus confirming the common source of both messages); the rhetorical point is to prove that his revelation is real and equally authoritative by citing the fact that the two independent messages conformed with one another, as though to say, you can know the message I deliver, which I got directly from Jesus, is in fact a message directly from Jesus, because when I compared it in person to what the apostles in Jerusalem, who knew Jesus in the flesh, teach, we agreed we were teaching the same thing. 

As to this: 

As you’ve already started to notice, we do not imagine that the risen Christ revealed to Paul that he had previously appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then to more than five hundred brothers at one time, then to James, then to all of the apostles before him? Jesus told Paul all of this. How much of this is a direct revelation from Jesus and how much of this is traditional? How much of these claims would Paul have already known even when he was persecuting the church?

I think it is conceivable that Paul means to say (whether it is a credible claim or not is another issue) that he learned to whom Jesus appeared from Jesus himself (“I first appeared to Peter . . . “); Paul presents himself as having fairly routine conversations with Jesus, so it isn’t inconceivable that during their regularly scheduled chin-wags Jesus either revealed these details or at least personally confirmed the truth of claims Paul had already heard. Perhaps Paul heard the claims elsewhere, but it was Jesus’s confirmation of those claims that made them credible and authoritative. 

And to this, 

Paul does not deny in Galatians that he had learned things apart from his own experience of the risen Lord. He went up to Jerusalem to interrogate Cephas for two weeks (1,18) and many years later he again went back to make sure he had not been running in vain (2,3).

He may not deny that he learned anything from men, but I think he does emphatically deny that he learned the gospel that he preached form mere men (Gal 1:11-12). And I think that what we get in I Cor 15:3-5 is explicitly the gospel that he preached to the Corinthians (cf. v1). 

So coming to this,
 

It is not merely the use of paralabon that is significant here but the pair of words ‘to receive’ and ‘to pass on. . . . the actual content of all of the traditions being received and passed on in rabbinic Judaism is actually of divine origin, as it here, from the Lord

Let’s just grant that parelabon in conjunction with paredoka is sometimes used to mean to hand on as tradition from one human to another, even though the remote source was God himself. But does that mean it can’t mean handing on what was received directly from God/Jesus himself? Isn’t that sort of the essence of a claim of apostleship. I hand on what I received . . . from the Lord? 

My point is that if we say paralambano in coordination with paradidomi exclusively means handed on from one mere man to another as part of a human tradition (albeit with a divine remote source) then we have serious problems in 1 Cor 15:3-4, because among the things he says he handed over as he received are things that belong the the very core of his gospel which he says (in Gal 1) he got from the Lord and emphatically not from men. It must be able to be taken in either sense (received from man or received from a superhuman source).