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Loading...A lot of people (at least in my experience) think that Paul is the one who should be considered the “founder” of Christianity – that he is the one who took Jesus’ simple preaching about the coming kingdom of God and altered and expanded it into a complicated doctrine of sin and redemption, being the first of Jesus’ followers to maintain that it was the death and resurrection of Jesus that brought about salvation. In my previous post I tried to show that this can’t be the case, because Paul was persecuting Christians already before he had converted, and these were certainly people who believed in Jesus’ death and resurrection.
There is a second reason for thinking that Paul is not the one who invented the idea that Jesus’ death was some kind of atoning sacrifice for sins. That’s because Paul explicitly tells us that he learned it from others.
Those of you who are Bible Quiz Whizzes may be thinking about a passage in Galatians where Paul seems to say the opposite, that he didn’t get his gospel message from anyone before him but straight from Jesus himself (when he appeared to Paul at his conversion). I’ll deal with that passage in my next post, since I don’t think it says what people often claim it says. But first….
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Very good !! I had not considered that his statement in Corinthians could be a creed or statement of early Christian faith. It is quite clear that he handed down pre-existing beliefs in the new churches.
Before I finished reading today’s post I was planning to respond with a “what about…?” Paul’s statement in Galations, but you beat me to the punch. I will await tomorrow’s post on that !!
(Sometime I would also like your thoughts on the Didiche, presumably an early training document for new Christians).
Thank you for this post. It is very helpful to me in my understanding of Paul’s message.
To me this question is like “who discovered America?” We now know that Scandinavians were here before Columbus, but we don’t celebrate Scandinavian Day. We still (or some of us) celebrate Columbus Day. The ancients might have known the world wasn’t flat, but Columbus was the one who showed it to the world with certainty. It seems to me that Paul might have received the teaching that Jesus died in atonement of sins, but Paul was the only one whose writings still survive. We don’t know that anyone else rationalized this out the way he did. The ones who came before him were practicing an exclusive Christ myth Judeocentric religion and their beliefs do not survive in writing. For all we know they had a complicated belief system from which Paul cherry picked a few choice ideas. Paul was the one who opened up the Christ myth to the rest of the world and we have only his word for how that happened.
In your opinion, how did Paul persecute other Christians before his conversion?
I’ll be getting to that in a few days!
As an historian you are touching on something I find fascinating yet frustrating–how this religion of the Book got started before any writings we have available to us today. What exactly were the oral traditions in circulation before Paul’s letters? Even as a beginner I see these problems with Judas. In the gospels Jesus is going to put all twelve on thrones, Paul has Jesus appearing to the twelve, yet Judas betrays Jesus and dies before any of this could happen.
I’m sorry I haven’t read your book yet on this, but is there literature where scholars discuss this pre-literary oral tradition and its affect on Paul/gospel traditions? How might it have really affected Paul, as I don’t believe in visions?
I deal with the issue a bit in How Jesus Became God. But I’m not sure what you mean about not believing in visions. Visions happen all the time, millions every day. The only question is whether they are veridical or not (whether something is really there or if the person is seeing things. People do!)
Maybe he means that the claimed visions are dreams so it’s not really there. Paul may have dreamed about going to the third heaven but he didn’t really go any where.
Or maybe he doesn’t believe *Paul’s claims* of having had visions!
Paul quotes the Corinthian Creed and writes: “That Christ died for our sins IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES. And that he was buried; That he was raised on the third day IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” What “SCRIPTURES” is Paul referring to here? Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 would fit nicely here – or would you have another suggestion?
Yes, I wish we knew what he had in mind. Right: later Christians turned to passages such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22:1 and the other psalms that talk about an innocent person suffering even to death. Who knows if that’s what Paul (or the person who came up with the creed) had in mind!
The beginning, atonement part of the Corinthian creed which says “Christ died for our sins IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE SCRIPTURES,” seems to match up nicely with Isaiah 53:5 that says “with his stripes we are healed.”
Paul records no narrative details of Jesus’ death except “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures.” Maybe the reason for this is that there were no known narrative details of the passion when Paul was writing. Mark records that all the disciples fled when Jesus was arrested. Maybe the followers of Jesus stayed away during the events of the crucifixion because they were worried about getting arrested too. Maybe Paul said “according to scriptures” because the first followers of Jesus just assumed he must have been fulfilling scriptures in his final day. Maybe Mark saw this and so crafted his passion narrative to reflect Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53.
Isaiah 53 figures prominently in the Acts 8 Philip/Ethiopian eunuch story, but it looks as though Isaiah 53 gets some kind of reference from every NT gospel. So perhaps this may have been the cornerstone OT scriptures that the suffering servant concept got built on top of by the earliest Christians. Taken in isolation, it does seem to align very well with the core imagery that Christianity began to portray around Jesus. One can scarecly blame later Christians for thinking it’s a set of verses tailor written for them. Plus, Christians have that well-known apologetic concept that such phrophetic passages from the OT have a dual fullfillment – one for the times they were written and a latter as pertaining to the eventual appearance of Jesus. (In this view God is evidently regarded as smart enough to weave history in such a way that these OT passages can get recycled – i.e., history doesn’t necessarily repeat, but it does tend to rhyme.)
Yes, the big problem — long recognized — is that even though Isa 53 gets alluded to a lot in the NT, the portions that get mentioned are *never* the ones that indicate the Servant suffered for others! Hard to figure that one out….
Hi!
Paul does state very clearly that he got his Gospel form others before him in this passage of 1 Corinthians, but even in Galatians this seems very clear to me. Regardless of whom Paul thinks he got his Gospel from, it already existed before him. In Galatians 2 Paul explicitly says that he presented to the apostles the gospel he preaches to the Gentiles and there is no mention of debates or opposition. On the contrary, Paul states that not only was he recognized as someone entrusted to preach the gospel but also that the apostles added nothing and all he was asked to do was to continue to remember the poor. Paul was being endorsed by the apostles. Again, that is not compatible with a situation where Paul is the one trying to convince them of a theology that they didn’t already believe. And, finally, when Paul accuses Peter of hypocrisy, he is precisely saying that Peter is doing something contrary of what he (Peter) preaches. So Peter must have preached what Paul emphasizes: salvation is a matter of believing in the death and resurrection of Christ and not by following the law. Right?
Thanks!
Right!
The only nuance I would provide is that Paul did think that his gospel (the good news) that gentiles too could be followers of Jesus without keeping the Jewish law came straight to him from Jesus, as I’ll try to explain in a post soon!
Today we think of someone who claims to have received a message from a dead person, whether through a vision/dream or some other avenue, as probably having some kind of problem such as a mental issue. Why should we think any different of Paul?
Mainly because he didn’t share our worldview.
Except that, as Bart explains elsewhere, it wasn’t (as Christians today believe) that believing in him meant you were free from the wages of your sins. What Bart writes is that “salvation,” in Paul, meant “the deliverance Jesus’ followers would experience when the rest of the world was destroyed at the second coming.”
As for the earlier part of your post, I don’t think we are justified in reading Paul’s negotiations with the Jerusalem Council as history.
Bart, you helped recently by pointing out to me that Paul did not mean by “salvation” what Christians mean today–that is, release from the wages of sin through belief in the sacrificial death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. You wrote that he meant was “the deliverance Jesus’ followers would experience when the rest of the world was destroyed at the second coming.” Certainly, THAT kind of salvation is almost implied by his death and resurrection, given Jewish beliefs about the dead rising, etc. I’d have to re-read Paul to confirm all this for myself.
Still, all that is within and would not be seen as blasphemous within the Jewish context of the day. Would you agree that what WOULD have seemed heretical would have been believing not just that the risen Christ was the first fruit but that one had to believe that, believe in him as such, if one is to be saved?
That, and the idea that a crucified man in any sense could be God’s messiah.
Of course, one of your books, Bart, points out that “a crucified man” was a stumbling block for Paul himself because any man that was executed by being hung on a tree fell directly under God’s curse per an OT scripture.
Is that the problem that Paul went to Arabia for three years to grapple with? Trying to get past this OT scriptural obstacle, so to speak? No doubt the literal implications of such scriptures held a great deal of power in the mind of a Pharisee such as Paul. So he had to work out some kind of solution to this dilemma that would be suitable to a rigorous pharisaical mindset…
When Paul says he went to Arabia he doesn’t indicate that it was in order to grapple with any problems. He almost certainly means the Nabataean community, and he may have gone there to evangelize them.
I had missed that nuance in your explanation of Paul’s view of salvation. I surprise myself sometimes with what I miss when I’m reading. Does Paul tell us what he thought would become of those who were not saved? Would they live forever in torment or would they cease to exist?
NO, he doesn’t say.
I am a fan of both yours and Robert M Price (can’t wait for the debate in October, already bought a VIP ticket), and have been curious about 1 Corinthians 15:3-6 for a while now.
It seems like most scholars take this as being genuine, but Dr. Price does make some arguments that I find convincing that it is a later interpolation (1 Cor 15:3-11).
I have not yet been convinced either way on the issue, but I do think that there are good reasons to suspect that it could possibly be an interpolation.
I can’t wait to see how you address Galatians and am curious of if you have heard of Dr. Price’s arguments?
If not, here is an article about it:
http://www.depts.drew.edu/jhc/rp1cor15.html
Yeah, I’m afraid I find that completely unconvincing!
Do you know of any good responses to Dr. Price’s article?
I have seen WLC’s, but that is really poor.
I don’t know of any NT scholars who thought they needed to respond. But you could write him and ask.
Where can I get more info. about the Price debate? Will it be streamed live?
Just google it and you’ll get the info you need.
Yes, that seems right to me. I would like to know if what Jesus said to Paul in the vision that Paul got of him on the road to Damascus is true, or was it made up by Luke or by the organized church to prop up what they wanted people to believe.
I suppose we’ll never know!
Is there any evidence, other than the narratives in Acts, that Paul’s persecution of followers of Jesus involved any threat of bodily harm? When he says he persecuted the church, could he be exaggerating? Skilled rhetorician that he was, could his “persecution” have been no more than seeking out opportunities to debate them vigorously and obnoxiously, perhaps more like some of the fundamentalists who presume to knock down straw-man “claims that Bart Ehrman will make when he presents his case,” than going around with arrest warrants to serve against anyone who preached that Jesus had been raised from the dead?
Yup, there’s evidence in Paul himself in 2 Cor. 11. He doesn’t seem to be exaggerating — he rather seems to be distressed by the guilt about it.
To which of the other early variants of Christianity does this creed apply just as well as to the proto-orthodox? If it applies to most just as well, then Paul could have been the founder of the proto-orthodox variant of Christianity.
This brief creed would probably apply to most early Christian groups, with the exception of communities such as the one behind the Gospel of Thomas, which claimed it was Jesus’ *teachings* that brought salvation, not his death and resurrection. I may answer the question more fully in a weekly readers’ mailbag.
hello Bart
Many times you said that the messiah that jews were expecting was not to be killed by his enemy he was rather king figure who will crash his enemies , but in this post you agree with Paul that the messiah will die for the sins as scriptures said , which scriptures ? if jews scriptures foretold that the messiah will die for the sins of the people and be raised from the dead then why they have rejected jesus because he seems to fulful the scriptures
thanks
Yes, I wish we knew what he had in mind. Later Christians turned to passages such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22:1 and the other psalms that talk about an innocent person suffering even to death.
There are two [main] different ideas about this.
1) Appealing to the scriptures is done post hoc. Jesus died and they needed to reconcile it, so they reinterpreted scriptures in a way not done before to justify it.
2) There really were some interpretations of scripture, even if unpopular or relatively unknown, where the Messiah would die for people’s sin.
This is, of course, presupposing that the Scriptures in question are Jewish scriptures. While this is what most would assume, I do think that it is very likely that there existed “Christian” writings before Paul and that he may have considered them “Scripture”.
I was impressed when I read your critique of I Corinthians 15:3-6 in Did Jesus Exist… Others use this same verse to argue for a pre-Christian suffering, dying messiah idea circulating through Judea at the time. But how do you square this one passage with all the other crazy stuff that Paul is saying? The passage may be the very earliest Christian creed, I am with you on that. That Christ died for our sins does not really necessarily mean that the earliest Christians thought that they had to accept Jesus as their savior to gain eternal life. I don’t really know what it meant, I’m not that smart. I have a gut feeling that Paul is not sane. The line in the passage that really intrigues me is Cephas and the twelve.
I don’t question Paul’s sanity myself. But he clearly was living in a different age from ours with a completely different understanding of the world! (See tomorrow’s post on a related topic)
I understand that Paul lived in a different age with a different understanding of the world but it seems that most of the people that came in contact with Paul had issues with him. Maybe they were the sane ones! Even Jesus’ closest follower who by today’s standards appear to be delusional had issues with Paul.
Paul claims to be a strict Jew, does a 180 on his religious beliefs, claims that his message is from a dead man through dreams and believes that he went on trips to cosmic heavens.
Would most people in the first century think this sounds a little crazy?
No, probalby not.
I imagine Paul as the guy I worked with who was schizophrenic…my own personal perspective… He really believed in the visions that he saw, and was telling everybody about them. Marty could have started a religion in antiquity! In todays world, he is just another nut job… And this goes straight to your point that it was indeed another age, where people were ripe for crazy ideas. Paul’s letters are the earliest evidence that we have. How do we know that all the later writings weren’t based on Paul’s delusions? How do we know that Paul didn’t grasp onto some fledgling Jewish belief that was taking off at the time, and made the rest up…or had visions that he truly believed? I suppose we never will… But we should keep in mind that anything Paul says might be a delusion…including Cephas and the twelve…
Dr. Ehrman, the profession from 1 Cor 15:3-5 is tough to deconstruct, because it appears to be based on Isaiah 53, but whether it’s the LXX or the Hebrew Isaiah is the question. Now Isaiah 53 in the Hebrew has three different words for trangressions, sins and iniquities; the first (transgression) is pesh’a, which can also mean an infraction or criminal act, while the second (sin) is khedte, which means something more akin to sin or to pollute, and the last (iniquity) is ‘awon, which means something like petulence or ill-manner. All three carry the implication of violating a rule.
Now the LXX (Isa. 53:5) translates the Hebrew pesh’a (“trangression”) as anomias, which I assume means literally without laws or lawless. And the LXX translates both the Hebrew khedte (“sin”) and ‘awon (“iniquity”) as amartias (which I’m guessing has something to do with a lack of witnesses? My Greek is not so good). Anyway, Paul uses the latter Greek word, amartion, in 1 Cor 15:3, which suggests he means either sins or iniquities, or khedte or ‘awon. So Paul is probably referencing the line “he was crushed because of our iniquities (amartias)”. The word in the Hebrew translated as crushed is m’doka, which means literally to put down, or figuratively to defeat. Meanwhile, the Hebrew/Aramaic for died is “met”, which has the same initial as m’doka.
Moreover, I should point out that we have two three-line verses, which looks suspiciously like the three-line apothegms that Jesus is wont to use.
So knowing this would it be possible to reconstruct the original profession in the semitic (Aramaic or Hebrew)? Let’s see.
הוא מת מעוונותינו
He died from our sins/iniquities
כמו שכתוב
As written
ונקבר
And was interred
והוא התעורר בשלישי
And he was risen up/woken up on the third [day]
כמו שכתוב
As written
ונראה
And appeared/was seen
Yes, of course, Paul and his readers would know the passage in the Greek translation.
The issue of early creeds is covered quite well in your “How Jesus Became God”‘ book and was very helpful to understand.
I have recently been reading some odd things:
1. The Book of Mormon which describes Jesus appearing to Mormons in America.
2. Some information about Jesus going to Japan during the “lost years” and then returning to Israel where His brother was crucified and Jesus then returned to Japan where he died and was buried in Aomori at the age of 106.
3. A book entitled “Jesus in India” which describes Jesus during the “lost years” being educated by gurus in India,
If you add to these three, stories in the extra-canonical Gospels, then there sure is a lot of mythology floating around making it harder than ever to separate myth from history even using historical criteria. It certainly makes you wonder about a lot of it…..
Given the state of creedal development represented here and a Christian presence substantial enough outside Judea to warrant Paul’s zeal and anti-Christian activity, is it possible that Jesus was crucified several years before ce 30? Or is it possible that Jesus’ followers had already “colonized” the Greek-speaking world before the resurrection and were receptive to a quick conversion from Jewish sect to new religion?
The earliest date would be 27 CE, since that’s when Pontius Pilate became governor.
Did Paul find the teachings of Jesus during his earthly ministry irrelevant? In my view, and I may be off base, focusing on the death and resurrection of Jesus as the core message of Christian faith seems to ignore or at least render the teachings of Jesus himself irrelevant. Is there any any indication that Paul knew of Jesus is earthly teachings? Or did the stories develop orally after Paul’s theology was formed? Also, since there was a Christian church already extant while Paul was persecuting it did they also render the teachings of Jesus irrelevant by making Jesus’s death and resurrection of the central doctrine of Christianity?
I have a discussion of just htese issues in my book The New Testament: A Historical Introduction…., in a chapter called “Did the Tradition Miscarry?” Fascinating questions with a range of possible answers!
I don’t have the ability to read this passage in Corinthians in Greek, so I wouldn’t be able to detect any nuances even if they bit me on my posterior.
What I wonder about is whether the “in accordance with the scriptures” lines could have been Paul’s own personal insertions into what he received and was passing along?
It would seem to me that in those early years, whoever ferreted out from the OT writings that Jesus “died for our sins, was buried and raised on the third day”, must have had to have been one scholarly-smart cookie. It also must have been reasonably difficult for any common folk to be able to access scrolls at a local synagogue in order to locate and identify potential scriptures supporting these creedal claims.
Yes, I wish we knew what passages Paul (or the author of the creed) had in mind. Later Christians turned to passages such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22:1 and the other psalms that talk about an innocent person suffering even to death. Jews and Christians would have known the Scriptures from hearing them read, repeatedly, during their worship services.
Side note re: Paul, Romans, and the name Junia: apparently there really *was* a masculine name Junius, in Roman times.
“It’s a bit like reading snippets of people’s emails,” says MOLA archaeologist Sophie Jackson, who supervised the excavation of the Bloomberg site. “My personal favorite was one that reads simply: ‘You will give this to Junius, the cooper, opposite the house of Catullus …’ That’s all that was legible, but it really captured my imagination: Some wealthy man named Catullus with a big landmark house and Junius the cooper, living across the street …”
This is from a report of the discovery of a trove of 405 ancient Roman writing tablets unearthed during the construction of the new European headquarters for Bloomberg LP in the City of London.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2016/05/ancient-rome-London-Londinum-Bloomberg-archaeology-Boudicca-archaeology/
It doesn’t excuse modern translators changing the name Junia to Junius but … sadly removes an argument against the practice.
Hello again!
“Christ died for our sins….” according to which Scriptures specifically? Do you know? Thanks!
Yes, I wish we knew what he had in mind. Later Christians turned to passages such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22:1 and the other psalms that talk about an innocent person suffering even to death.
Though it is not factually accurate, as you well point out, I have often felt Christianity seems founded on Paul rather than Jesus. Even though Paul didn’t invent what he wrote, he’s still the one who was published (can we say those teachings founded?) In my experience the writing in Romans seems to have influenced most what is today mainstream Christianity. And it felt refreshing to read this blog because it has driven me crazy for years that the teachings of Jesus got somehow trumped by Paul’s. I’ve often wondered: How come no one seems to notice Jesus didn’t say a single time in the Gospels: ‘and when after three days I rise, forever more people need to believe in it in order to be saved’ ? (Also seems like in parts of Romans Paul defines “righteousness” in old school Jesus ways of who you are/works, and then in other parts it becomes belief in Jesus).
–just another layman’s voice in the wilderness, thanking you Bart for continuing your nourishing blogs that help some of us be more educated than could otherwise hope for
I would recommend the book “Mark, Canonizer of Paul” by Tom Dykstra. He isn’t an “expert” in the field, but he isn’t an amateur either. He does overstate some of his arguments, but I do find the overall thesis quite convincing. It argues that gMark is essentially a retelling of the story of Paul.
If true, then with gMark being the source for gMatt and gLuke, and the idea that gJohn “cannibalized” the synoptics, then modern Christianity is very Paul inspired, though it might not be considered “founded on Paul”.
I’ve always thought that Jesus and Paul were preaching different things. Jesus was speaking to the Jewish nation not to anyone else. Paul doesn’t look to the earthly Jesus but to the resurrected Jesus where there is no Jew or Greek. I think that if we try and combine the two all we get is muddle.
Teresa x
How is your back?
Much better! The chicken soup made all the difference!
Human beings, for Kant (according to Heidegger), are fundamentally moral (in a way that is grounded by human freedom). Human ethical action operates in agreement with what Kant calls the Categorical Imperative. The Categorical Imperative says ” Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” This does not mean “If you want to be ethical, then do “x,” because that would be a “Hypothetical Imperative” (if-then). Rather, it means that the very foundation of the human Self, in its actions, are ethical because the self is “free” from artificial constraints, and “freely submits” itself to the Categorical Imperative as a rule. Kant illustrates this for humans in relation to animals. Whereas we shouldn’t get mad at a dog for chewing up the couch (since the animal doesn’t know any better), if a person takes out a knife and cuts up our couch, we will probably sue them. The difference is that, unlike animals, it is imprinted on humans as an innate idea that our actions, good, bad, and neutral, are linked to us in a way that we are responsible for them. This is somewhat analogous to what the apostle Paul says about The Law being written on the heart of the gentiles. Paul writes “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves, in that they show the work of the Law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness and their thoughts alternately accusing or else defending them, on the day when, according to my gospel, God will judge the secrets of men through Christ Jesus (Romans 2:15).”
I agree that, in simple terms, most people are good at heart. But I don’t think we were “made” that way. I think our propensity to treat our neighbors better came about through social evolution. Through time, most people just learned what ways of behaving works better if people are to get along.
To 1 Cor 15:1-8 and Paul’s resurrection chapter: It is not clear in 1 Cor 15:3 to whom Paul refers to when he states ‘that which I also received’. He does not mention from whom exactly he ‘received’. It may not mean that he ‘received’ it from the other apostles. By saying that he transmits what ‘he also received’ he might refer to the visionary revelations (Gal 1:12) of Jesus Christ, which not only others ‘received’, but he also. This would fit with what follows in 1 Cor 15:5-8. In verse 1 Paul reminds the Corinthians that he declared to him the gospel (the euaggelion, ‘good news’, not a theological creed but something which is really good news), and they ‘received’ it, Greek ‘paralambano’, took it in, received with the mind, understood it. It is through this understanding, through the ‘good news’, that people are ‘saved’, in Greek ‘sozo’, healed, made whole (not in the future but already now). This ‘good news’ has become apparent, made clear, through Jesus’ resurrection.
When Paul in 1 Cor 15:5-8 states that Jesus was ‘seen’ (some Bible translations have ‘Jesus appeared’) he uses the Greek ‘optanomai’, which is otherwise only used one more time in Rom 15:21. ‘Optanomai’ is used quite a bit in the NT Gospels, for example Mt 5:8 “Blessed are the poor in heart, for they shall ‘see’, ‘optanomai’, God”. The meaning is more ‘behold’, rather than ‘physically see’. In 1 Cor 9:1 Paul claims: “Am I not an apostle? .. Have I not seen Jesus Christ our Lord?” The Greek for ‘seen’ here is ‘horao’, which also means ‘to see with the mind’. In Mark 16:9-20 (the added verses) it is interesting to note that the word used for ‘appeared’, that Jesus ‘appeared’ to Mary Magdalene, and that he ‘appeared’ to the other disciples is the Greek ‘phaino’ and ‘phaneroo’, which means ‘bring forth into the light, cause to shine, become manifest, appear to the mind’. Was Jesus seen in a vision, as Mary Magdalene claims the Lord appeared to her in a vision in the Gospel of Mary? Or as he appeared to Ananias, in a vision? Or was he raised with a spiritual body and it was this Jesus that ‘appeared’ to the disciples? Why would then not the Greek word for physically seeing, for seeing with the eyes, be used?
It has been noted that in the context of 1 Cor 15:3-5 the words ‘according to the scripture’ are found nowhere else in Paul’s writings, nor any other reference to ‘the twelve apostles’. I would think there are good grounds to at least consider that the verses may be an orthodox interpolation and not part of the early tradition. That Jesus died ‘for’ our sins, that his death was a blood sacrifice to atone ‘for’ our ‘sins’ (transgressions against the law of God), was the theological interpretation that emerged from the Jewish-cultural-religious-traditional context. It has also been noted that it was only later that Jewish Christians searched the Hebrew scriptures for passages to affirm their claim of Jesus being the ‘expected Messiah’ according to the scriptures (as apparent from the Gospel of Matthew).
I do not think that Paul believed that Jesus’ death was some kind of atoning sacrifice for sins. That Paul did not interpret Jesus from within the Jewish tradition becomes clear by constant and sharp attacks against the ‘Judaizers’, Jewish Christians, who insisted on observing and following Jewish religious traditions (Phil 3:1-9).
So what is ‘the good news’? What is the revolutionary importance of Jesus’ resurrection? It is true that the belief in the bodily resurrection ‘at the end of times’ was (and is) prevalent in the Jewish tradition. This is what Martha believed after her brother Lazarus had died (Jn 11:24). But Jesus corrects her: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me, shall never die.” (Jn 11:25-26). Not ‘die and raised again’, but ‘shall never die’. Like Jesus told the thief who was crucified together with him: “Today you will be with me in Paradise.” (Lk 23:43)
Paul’s ‘good news’ is this, that ‘God revealed His Son in (!) me’ (Gal 1:16), and ‘do you not know yourselves that Jesus Christ is in (!) you?” (2 Cor 13:5) “Do you not know that you are the temple of God and that the Spirit of God dwells in (!) you?” (1 Cor 3:16, 2 Cor 4:6-7) “Or do you not know that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own?” (1 Cor 6:19) “For you are the temple of the living God.” (2 Cor 6:16) “God, who made the world and everything in it… does not dwell in temples made with hands…. He is not far from each one of us; for in Him we live and more and have our being, … for we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:22-28), ‘sons of God’ (in Greek ‘huios theos’, like Jesus was ‘huios theos’) and ‘children of God’, and ‘co-heirs with Christ into the kingdom’. (Rom Chapter 8). The temple of God, our body made of blood and flesh, will die and rot, but the Spirit of God within us is eternal and returns ‘to the Father’ from where it originates. “And so it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life-giving spirit.”” (1 Cor 15:45). Paul believed that through Jesus’ resurrection we were shown by Jesus, the first-born among many brethren, that we are more than a perishable body, that that which gives us life, the power which arranges myriads of atoms into cells and into a body, and which vivifies unconscious particles of matter so that they become ‘living beings’, that power is the life-giving spirit within. It is through Jesus’ resurrection that we may become aware that this life-giving spirit within is more real than our perishable body, and then we can begin to live like ‘spirituals’, focusing on ‘the things of the Spirit’.
Because Jesus was born in Judea, and was Jewish ‘according to the flesh’, it is assumed that he must have followed Jewish traditions, but this is not necessarily so. Jesus was just Jesus, living and teaching out of his own direct experience of ‘oneness with the Father’. It is assumed that because in Judea at the time of Jesus there roamed apocalyptic teachers, that Jesus also was an apocalyptic teacher, but this is not necessarily so. Jesus’ understanding of ‘the kingdom of God’ was not ‘God’s reign imposed on earth through some sort of apocalyptic cataclysmic event.” He taught “the kingdom of God is within (‘entos’, within) you” (Lk 17:21). Is it not possible that the apocalyptic sayings ascribed to Jesus did not originate with him but emerged from the social-religious context of his time? It is striking that in Mark’s ‘apocalyptic’ chapter 13 we find at least five sayings from the Gospel of Thomas, which in GTh had the purpose to communicate a purely spiritual understanding. But in Mark 13 they are used in the context of ‘fire, division, destruction’, probably reflecting the re-interpretation of some of Jesus’ sayings caused by their devastating experience of the Jewish war (66-70 CE). If the meaning of Jesus’ sayings and parables often was not clear even to his disciples, with the traumatic experience of the war people might have said, ‘ah, this is what he meant when he said that’, when it was not what he meant at all.
All Bible quotes are NKJV.
I was wondering why Paul persecuted the Jewish Christ followers. And I confess to being a little unclear/confused as I try to connect the dots for myself (exercising those little gray cells 🙂 .. how do we know that Paul persecuted the Christians because they were preaching the resurrection and not for other reasons? It seems like a big jump. Are you then saying that we really don’t know how Christianity went Christ’s original teaching about the Apocalypse to Christ becoming the embodiment of salvation via his death and resurrection?
I’m going to be going into that soon!
I just had a another look at 1 Cor 15:5, 7, what also strikes is that In 1 Cor 15:5 it says that Jesus, after he rose again, was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve, and again in in 1 Cor 15:7 it says that ‘the was seen by James, then by all the apostles’. Are ‘the apostles not ‘the twelve’? Another thing that is striking, if there had been a discussion going on in early Christianity, if Jesus rose physically in body or spiritually, and such a discussion was if fact going on, why would Paul not be more adamant about stressing Jesus’ bodily resurrection? He never mentioned that Jesus ‘sat with the twelve and ate with them’, or that ‘Thomas touched his wound’. Maybe Jesus did resurrect with a spiritual body, which could appear and disappear and pass through walls, so then we would have another thing, not a physical body of flesh and blood and neither a purely visionary appearance, but some sort of ethereal, spiritual, body. I don’t know. To Paul Jesus clearly appeared in a vision, as he did to Ananias, and Mary Magdalene in her Gospel of Mary (if it were written by her, that is).
I started revising the letters of Paul, first Galatians and then Philippians, and got stuck with Phil 3:20-21 “For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself.” I looked at the Greek “Gar hemon politeuma hyparcho en ouranos ek hos kai apekdechomai soter kyrios iesous christos hos metaschematizo hemon tapeinosis soma eis autos ginomai symmorphos autos doxa soma kata energia autos dynamai kai hypotasso pas heautou”. Is the following translation possible:
For our citizenship/birthright/origin is [hyparcho = to begin under, to come into existence, to come forth, hence to be there. ‘Is’ does not connote a future event, but refers to ‘now’] in heaven from which we also receive [apekdechomai = usually translated as ‘wait for’, but primary meaning is ‘receive, welcome, accept from some source] the saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform [mataschematizo = to transform one’s self into someone, to assume one’s appearance and likeness] our humble [tapeinosis = not rising far from the ground, low estate, i.e. unaware of our birthright] body into himself, becoming [ginomai = becoming, coming into existence, does not connotate future, but becoming ‘now’] in the form of [= symmorphos, with the form by which a child comes after/reflects its parents in that which is intrinsic and essential rather than that which is outward and accidential] his glorious body according to the working of his power and calling/appointing/ordaining all to himself.”
In 1 Cor 1:3 “so that you come short in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ”, the word used here is also apekdechomai. Could it be “so that you come short in no gift, receiving the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ”?
Parousia is commonly translated as ‘coming’, but its primary meaning is ‘presence’. It could perfectly be employed in 2 Cor 7:6-7 or Phil 1:26 as ‘presence’ (cf. Phil 2:12, 2 Cor 10:10). 1 Thes 4:15 “For this we say to you by the word of the Lord that we who are alive [zao = have the true life in God] and remain *until the coming of the Lord* [= eis parousia kyrios] will by no means precede those who are asleep”, the Greek ‘eis parousia kyrios’ could equally be translated to mean that ‘we who have the true life in God and *remain in the presence of the Lord*, [the experience of Christ-in-us].
In 1 Cor 4:5 we read that “therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who will both bring to light the hidden things…”. The Greek word used for ‘come’ is erchomai, which in addition to physically ‘come’ also may mean ‘to appear, to come into being, to be established, to become known’. Thayer’s Greek Lexicon also denotes ‘erchomai’ to mean ‘Christ’s invisible return from heaven, i.e. of the power which through the Holy Spirit he will exert in the souls of his disciples (Jn 14:18-23), of his invisible advent in the death of believers, by which he takes them to himself in heaven (Jn 14:3), to submit one’s self to the power of light (Jn 3:20)’. So ‘erchomai’ does not necessarily refer to a physical coming. When Paul speaks about ‘the coming of Christ’, what he rather refers to is the ‘becoming present’ of Christ in us (Gal 1:16, 2:20, 2 Cor 13:5) and for this he writes that he will ‘labor in birth again until Christ is formed in you.” (Gal 4:19)
1 Corinthians 9:1 seems to be a little contrary to 1 Corinthians 15:6. On the one hand, we seem to have Paul saying that seeing the risen Christ was one of the hallmarks and special gifts from God of being selected to be an apostle (“Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?), while 1 Corinthians 15:6 says “everyone” was seeing the risen Jesus (He appeared to more than five hundred brothers at once)! Perhaps one of the passages is interpolated?
It’s a good question: would Paul have thought all 500 were apostles? My sense is that being an apostle for Paul involved two things: 1) having seen Jesus after his death (a sine qua non) and 2) having been “sent” by Jesus on a mission to convert others. The word apostle means “one who is sent” so I think the latter is also a sine qua non, and probably Paul thinks the 500 were not all sent by a personal commission.
Paul thought (or so he says) the apocalypse had begun. He calls Jesus the “first fruits (1 Cor 15:23)” of the general resurrection of souls at the end of the age. Paul was waiting for the time when God would intervene in history and bring about the full end of the age for everyone. In the meantime, waiting for this second phase, as I said, Paul thought Christ’s sacrifice had created a massive blood magic spell that, functioning as the Passover and Yom Kippur sacrifices for all time, fulfilled the law and served as atonement. As I said above, Paul is not just calling Christ the Passover Lamb (1 Cor 5:7), but also that we are “unleavened (1 Cor 5:7)” because of Him. This fits in nicely with the Pre Pauline Corinthian Creed/poetry that says Christ “died for our sins (1 Cor 15:3-4). Since these two passages both occur in the same epistle, they seem to reinforce and interpret one another. So Paul taught that the apocalypse had started, and was waiting for the second phase, all the while telling people they should live expectantly, but understanding that they were living under the salvific act where Christ’s sacrifice served as a one-time do-all Yom Kippur/Passover sacrifice.
Dr Erman,
In your expert opinion, does the statement ‘he was raised’ implies the empty tomb as many think, like C.H.Dodd, Gary Habermas and others?
It depends what you mean. I don’t think Paul, for example, who talks about Jesus being raised necessarily meant that he thought Jesus received a decent burial on the day of his crucifixion and then on the third day by Joseph of Arimathea and came out of a tomb; but I think he *does* think that Jesus received some kind of burial and was then physically brought back to life in a glorified body.
I have had many people claim the creed doesn’t explicitly say that there was an empty tomb, it only say “he was raised on the third day…” does this imply an empty tomb in your opinion? As many sceptics i have spoken to want to try and claim the empty tomb, the resurrection appearances are legendary, some even go as far as to claim Paul’s conversion is legendary.
I do not necessarily think Joseph of Arimathea is important to the core claim as such, but is strange why mentioning an official at the Sanhedrin/Council if it wasn’t true.
I think Paul would have thought the tomb was empty, and that is certainly the widespread Christian belief — and has been since the first century. But the words of the creed don’t necessariy mean that. Lots of Christians have, and do, think Jesus was raised spiritually, not physically.
Interesting, do you regard the empty tomb as historical on other grounds apart from the creed?
I don’t think there was an empty tomb. I’m in a small minority, but I lay out my reasons in my book How Jesus Became God; and you can find some discussion here on the blog: just to as word search for Empty Tomb.
Interesting, do you regard the empty tomb as historical on other grounds apart from the creed? From what I have studied it seems the empty tomb is more of a derived fact than something we can know historically, as the empty tomb is pivotal to the Christian faith, it seems inexplicable why they would believe it, if there wasn’t the empty tomb? It isn’t plausible that they (Jesus’s family/women) didn’t remember where the tomb was.
Dr. Ehrman,
When do you believe the creed Paul recites in 1 Cor. 15 originated? I’ve heard claims as early a within 18 months. How is this determined and is there any kind of scholarly consensus on how early this would have dated back to?
Ah, the reason people tend to say that is because they don’t understand a technical term used in scholarship. For many decades now scholars have recognized that 1 Cor. 15:3-5 Paul is quoting a creed that had earlier been in circulation, that he had taught the Corinthians when he was with them. Scholars call that kind of pre-existing material (that is, pre-existing the letter in which it occurs as an independent tradition) a “Pre-Pauline tradition.” They mean that Paul didn’t compose it but it was around before he wsa writing. Some scholars (!) and lots of lay-people don’t understand the phrase (Pre-Pauline tradition) and assume that it means “tradition that was around before Paul became a Christian.” That’s not at *all* what it means. And there is simply no way to know when this creed was devised, except that it had to be before Paul quoted it to the Corinthians sometime in 50s CE.
Dr. Ehrman,
So when people try to date it, how are they even beginning to determine an estimated date (like William Lane Craig when he argues scholars believe it should be dated within 5 years, 3 years, or as early as 18 months of Jesus’ death?)?
They’re makin’ stuff up, so far as I can tell. There are absolutely no grounds — zero — for putting a date on it, other than it is prior to when Paul told it to the Corinthians, some time before he wrote 1 Corinthians. I’m sure if you ask Craig he’ll refer you to a book with many many pages devoted to it, but I’m tellin’ ya, there’s nothin’ there. (I *assume* he knows what “pre-Pauline” means…)