Mythicists sometimes make a big deal about the fact that there is little about Jesus’ biography in Paul’s writing. But there may be good reasons for why Paul does this.
Paul says his Gospel is:
– “3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: how Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 was buried, rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and was seen by Cephas, and then by the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3-5).”
Paul wanted his readers to focus and stay on message because there were others trying to lure away believers by presenting a different Christ than Paul was:
– “12But I will keep on doing what I am doing, in order to undercut those who want an opportunity to be regarded as our equals in the things they boast about. 13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. (2 Cor 11:12-13)
– “Evidently some people are troubling you and trying to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be under a divine curse! (Gal 1:7-8)
– “Now I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and obstacles that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Turn away from them. (Romans 16:17).”
-“4For if someone comes and proclaims a Jesus other than the One we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit than the One you received, or a different gospel than the one you accepted, you put up with it way too easily.” (2 Cor 11:5)
In this regard, Paul said ““For I decided to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor 2:2).”
I think Paul wasn’t elaborating on Jesus’ biography because he was trying to get his reader to focus and stay on message about Paul’s gospel.
What do others think?
I mentioned elsewhere that
Paul’s gospel is:
“3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: how Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 was buried, rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and was seen by Cephas, and then by the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3-8).”
So, since Paul was always ranting about other apostles that were presenting “another gospel of Christ,” there were Christians back then who did not preach atonement. These may have been Christians long before Paul.
These other apostles, since they were preaching “salvation through works,” would not have believed in the salvic act of Christ’s atonement, let alone the salvic act of a celestial cosmic Christ. Mythicists say that Christianity started with visions of a celestial Christ who taught of his salvic act. There is no reason to think this, because there were clearly Christians before Paul who did not believe in atonement.
I imagine it simply wasn’t a question for early Christians. They presumably knew of early writings like Q which focused on Jesus’s teachings, sayings and miracles with little biographical information. We don’t hear anything about biography until Mark, which was written later, in the shadow of the Roman war. The weight of evidence suggests that Mark embellished on earlier source material with faux-biographical information in order to create a more compelling package suitable for his community–an undertaking in which he was unimaginably successful. Later writers ran with this concept, and such writings turned out to be among the most long-lasting, not incidentally I’m sure. There’s no reason however that the biographical context we largely take for granted had to be an issue for early Christians who were focused on Jesus’s teachings or epic ideas of the kingdom of God or the messiah.
john76 said
Mythicists sometimes make a big deal about the fact that there is little about Jesus’ biography in Paul’s writing. But there may be good reasons for why Paul does this.Paul says his Gospel is:
– “3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: how Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 was buried, rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and was seen by Cephas, and then by the twelve. (1 Corinthians 15:3-5).”Paul wanted his readers to focus and stay on message because there were others trying to lure away believers by presenting a different Christ than Paul was:
– “12But I will keep on doing what I am doing, in order to undercut those who want an opportunity to be regarded as our equals in the things they boast about. 13For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of Christ. (2 Cor 11:12-13)
– “Evidently some people are troubling you and trying to distort the gospel of Christ. 8But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel contrary to the one we preached to you, let him be under a divine curse! (Gal 1:7-8)
– “Now I urge you, brothers, to watch out for those who cause divisions and obstacles that are contrary to the teaching you have learned. Turn away from them. (Romans 16:17).”
-“4For if someone comes and proclaims a Jesus other than the One we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit than the One you received, or a different gospel than the one you accepted, you put up with it way too easily.” (2 Cor 11:5)In this regard, Paul said ““For I decided to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor 2:2).”
I think Paul wasn’t elaborating on Jesus’ biography because he was trying to get his reader to focus and stay on message about Paul’s gospel.
What do others think?
There is absolutely enough in Paul’s authentic letters to confirm the mere existence of a Jewish preacher named Jesus, who got crucified, and whose disciples expected him to return soon to announce the arrival of the Kingdom of God.
The reason he gives few Jesus traditions like in the gospels, is probably that he doesn’t know much. He simply assumes that Jesus mostly adhered to the traditional Jewish ethics and virtues, besides some sort of apocalypticism. Further, he could not compete with the Twelve in this respect, so he specialized in the mysteries of the meaning of the crucifixion, a task in which he felt intellectually superior, and which by way of his vision of Jesus, appealed the most to him.
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