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Loading...I am happy to publish two guest posts by Robyn Faith Walsh, Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of Miami, based on her book The Origins of Christian History.
She stakes out some controversial claims here about the Gospels, contrary to what you often hear. What do you think?
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Studies on the so-called origins and development of the Jesus Movement largely focus on the figure of Jesus, his teachings, and biography. This is evident in
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It’s an interesting take, but not really novel except maybe in the scholarly world. Amateur mythicists have said things like this for a long time. But even in the scholarly world, this is similar to the high regard James Tabor holds Paul as the original witness of the resurrected Jesus. Since Paul doesn’t really write much about Jesus, I would conclude that for this premise to be accurate it would have to be based on things Paul didn’t write, but may have said. Doesn’t the very fact that Paul’s letters contain so little about Jesus preclude her position? If we agree that there are at least some original words of Jesus in the gospels, how did they originate with Paul?
I am not trying to argue that major portions of the gospels are from Paul and/or that there is some oral tradition that Paul passed down that the gospel writers reflect. I am only noting that it is curious that certain details– like the Last Supper– make it into the gospels in the same way that Paul presents. Digging a bit deeper (more than I can in this post), there are elements of how Paul and the gospel writers deploy Greek philosophical concepts that suggest a touchstone. Scholars have been debating this issue for many generations– Gustav Volkmar went so far as to suggest that Jesus’ characterization in the gospels was based entirely on Paul in the 19th century. All interesting theories to consider!
Paul appears to quote either a pre-existing hymn or a creed in Philippians, so clearly it would be possible for him to be essentially repeating the last supper section in a similar fashion, and therefore it could easily have been a pre-existing saying used by the gospel writers and just coincidentally used by Paul earlier in a letter. I think that would be a more interesting and fruitful pursuit – to try to know which things Paul was simply repeating. As Freud said (or was it Jung, I can never remember), sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.
Ah ha! I sensed this while I was reading How Jesus Became God. I had asked you. Prof. Ehrman on a blog post comment not too long ago regarding Paul’s influence on the gospels. I will have to check into Prof. Walsh’s book. Thank you for this post!
Thank you!!!!
There are a lot of unsupported assertions in this post, but I look forward to reading whatever actual evidence can be assembled in the next one.
A related issue is to what extent eucharistic practice was influenced by a misreading of Paul. Is it going too far to suggest that the eucharist was invented from a misreading of 1 Cor 11?
I argued in JSNT 2024 that 1 Corinthians was sent to Rome by Fortunatus shortly before First Clement was written. Maybe that chronology can help the analysis.
What makes the scholars say that some of Paul’s letters are the first evidence of the Jesus movement? And when is that dated at?
Paul appears to be writing in the decades after Jesus’ death– while he didn’t know Jesus, he still encounters people like Peter and James. He doesn’t demonstrate any knowledge of the Jewish War or the fall of the Temple, so we think he wrote his letters sometime around, say, 35-65CE.
“One must consider the possibility that the earliest extant biographies about Jesus, his teachings, activities, and the significance of his death were based, at least in part, on our only secure data point: the letters of Paul.”
Being an atheist raised in the most secular country of the Americas, who had never read a verse from the New Testament, one day I came across an article by Earl Doherty, a mythicist who claimed that Jesus never existed. Doherty insisted that Paul, being the first Christian writer, always talked about a ‘heavenly’ Christ and not an earthly Jesus.
So, I carefully read every letter of Paul in the New Testament to test his idea. I quickly realized that Doherty was wrong: Paul indeed speaks about an earthly Jesus; he even met (or claimed he did) his brother James.
But I also became confused because none of the things I knew about Jesus—the nativity, the star leading the Magi, his miracles, speeches, the incident in the temple, his passion, etc.—were in Paul’s letters. I had never read a gospel before, but these were ‘popular’ stories about Jesus that even we, non-Christians, were familiar with.
Yes! My thought is that at least some of the details about Jesus in the gospels must come from Paul but we tend to attribute those overlaps to oral tradition and I’m not convinced that is the best approach!
Exactly! I am hoping to add to our conversation and think more expansively about what might have been at the disposal of the gospel authors.
Based only on Paul’s letters, Jesus’ ministry seems to begin with the Last Supper, Paul also speaks about his resurrection and was obsessed with his ‘second coming.’ But there is absolutely nothing about Jesus’ life before his last night.
So, I decided to read the gospels, starting with Mark (considered the first to be written), then Matthew, Luke, and John. That’s when I found the ‘source’ of all the ‘popular’ stories about Jesus. Because of the order in which I read the New Testament books, I saw a pattern: from the almost mute Jesus in Paul, to the miracle worker and ‘parable-telling’ Jesus with few speeches in Mark, and finally to John, with his long, elaborate speeches from Jesus.
As I delved deeper into the study of early Christianity and the New Testament writings, I was never fully convinced by some of the concepts held by mainstream New Testament scholarship, mainly in relation to the dating and provenance of the gospels/Acts, the role of ‘oral tradition’ in their composition, and the dependency among the gospels.
The above article is interesting in its attempt to go back to Paul ‘as a source for the gospels’.
I’m really eager to read the second part!
I really like this idea that Jesus’ ministry begins with the Last Supper in Paul– what an interesting observation!
Thank you!!!!
Paul’s context probably has to be seen more in the light of pro-Rome, in a world where Messianic revolt was reaching its peak. It was only a few years later that the Romans sacked Jerusalem and hundreds of thousands of Jews were killed. Most of his letters are aimed at divesting the Jewish faith of the need of the law, the defining aspect of what the Torah is about. Paul eventually starts allowing the meat of idolaters, encouraging sitting at their tables, in his letters, meaning assimilation with the Gentiles seemed to be his main goal, the “Resurrection” the theology he builds from.
The writer of Acts even fancifully writes that Paul was saved by Roman authorities when in Jerusalem and recounted Paul as a student of the Rabbi Gamaliel and familiar with Hebrew and Aramaic, as well as a deep theologian that puts to rest the Rabbis and Sadducees. He was zealous for the law until he met Jesus “in the sky” on his way to persecute the followers of Jesus and that is when everything changed.
Theology follows politics in many cases.
Interesting posts by Dr. Walsh for sure! Wondering if Bart should treat this book in a future Misquoting Jesus episode? Some responses that came to mind:
– following charrua’s comments, I too found it curious that Paul doesn’t mention a host of stuff that we find in the Gospels: virgin birth, etc. But what I find even more curious, and I don’t know that I have seen this addressed, is that the pseudo-Pauline epistles don’t mention them either. What is going on there?
– “earliest extant biographies about Jesus, his teachings….were based, at least in part, on our only secure data point: the letters of Paul.” So are the letters of Paul then a sort of Q for the later writers?
– “a concrete example of a story about Jesus that, I judge, likely originated with Paul: the so-called Last Supper” – these posts also bring to mind Virgil, writing the Aeneid, writing a foundational myth for Rome.
Interested to hear other thoughts!
I love your first bullet point here– one thing that has also always bugged me is when he says Jesus was buried and how to unpack that!
How can narrative biographies of Jesus be based on the letters of Paul if Paul says next to nothing about the narrative biography of Jesus?
Ah, but he does say a fair amount based on what he claims the risen Christ has said to him!
“It is perplexing that we have largely excluded Paul as a source for the gospels.“
Why is this perplexing? Paul says very little about what Jesus preached & almost nothing about his life. He did not know or hear Jesus during his life. Therefore, his only knowledge of Jesus is based on his claim of supernatural, after-death communications from the “risen” Jesus. So how he be considered a reliable witness to the stories in the gospel?
Largely because there is content in Paul that makes it way into the gospels– he describes the Last Supper, for instance, and says that he received that information from the risen Christ. I would argue that the gospel writers would consider Paul’s vision of the resurrected Jesus telling him about that meal authoritative and they, then, wouldn’t have a problem incorporating it into the gospels. But that’s not how we tend to talk about gospel history. Paul’s description of spirit (pneuma) also corresponds to how it is portrayed in the gospels– so there are many, many touchstones!
Great article! Thank you!
I also enjoyed your presentation in the NINT webinar.
Thank you so much!!! I really appreciate that!