The passage of 1 Cor 15:3-11 has been cited recently several times on BCH as evidence of Paul’s knowledge of, and reference to, dominical sayings on resurrection.

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,
4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in
accordance with the scriptures,
5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.
6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.
8 Least of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
9 For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
10 But by the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of
them, though it was not I, but the grace of God which is with me.
11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

Commenting on the dismissal of the passage as a later insert by R.M. Price and J.C. O’Neill, G.A. Wells pointed out (The Jesus Myth, p.278) that although the verses are present in all extant manuscripts, none of them are earlier than the 3rd century. Also, he argued ably, that lack of evidence of manuscript tampering cannot be invoked selectively to set aside a hypothesis of interpolation, recalling Haenchen’s view that chapter 21 of John’s gospel is not considered to be by the same author as the preceeding twenty by critical scholarship, even though there is no known manuscript variance present there.

So, if not the presence of 1 Cor 15 without the passage, what is the evidence of interpolation in it and how strong is the case that it is a “later credal summary not written by Paul” ?

I think the internal evidence is quite strong that Paul did not write the passage, as it contradicts a number of crucial elements in Paul’s posture and beliefs.

1. Paul’s view of himself vis-ê-vis other apostolic authorities is internally consistent, and uncompromising everywhere elsewhere in his letters. This passage is at loggerheads with that expressed view.
2. Paul’s belief in his commission from God, and its directness, which is absolutely central to his faith, is compromised by the passage.
3. the original pericope of 1:15 by Paul ignores the insert, and
4. the passage uses a resurrectional concepts which are likely anachronistic to Paul


Ad 1) From my point of view, Paul built a very strong and invariant set of beliefs around his mission, his relationship with the church and other apostolic figures. His relation to other leaders of the movement can be summarized as “humble to Christ, haughty to men”. It comes the strongest in Galatians, where the agonistic apostle declares his gospel to be a monopoly from God and threatens everyone who contradicts him with hell (Gal 5:10). But even when he is calm, cool and collected, and writes a clever diatribe, as in 1 Cr 9, he makes his no bones about his own moral superiority. That the Paul who says (in 1 Cr 9:15) “I would rather die than have any one deprive me of my ground of boasting” would a few paragraphs down in the letter, place himself at the bottom of the apostolic heap, and agree that he is the least worthy, is something beyond my humble wits. And humble as my wits may be, they still observe that Paul does not consider his former self persecuting the church to have been a cause for penance and seeing himself as inferior to other men in anything touching on Christ. Quite the contrary, Gal 1:13-14, and Phl 3:6 strongly hint that Paul believed Saul’s zeal in persecuting the church attested to his moral fibre, and the change of heart in the matter was entirely God’s will.
Verse 11 introduces another idea alien to Paul’s habitual thought ways. Paul was very “territorial” when it came to his mission to the Gentiles, and so the point of indifference as to who preaches to the flock he addresses is frankly unbelievable to me. Compare for example with the statement made in the chapter immediately preceeding, 1 Cr 14:37, or 2 Cr 11:4-5, or Gal 3:1, 5:10, or Rom 11:13-14, 15:17-21, or 2 Th 2:15.

Ad 2) Paul’s letters continually advertise his spiritual independence, and his direct relationship with God. As I indicated elsewhere on BCH, I consider it axiomatic that his visionary experiences and revelations about Jesus Christ relate to a late onset of acute bipolarity (relatively late, Swedenborg’s came in mid fifties). Psychologically then, they would provide a hugely prominent internal psychosomatic data against which his beliefs operated. As Paul was a man of low social standing but high dominance, the belief that he was commissioned by God directly had also a big compensatory function. It was something that distinguished Paul from other men and fed his self-esteem. Paul’s viewed himself as someone set apart by God before he was born, one who received (in due time) important revelations about God’s plan for humanity. There is no indication in Gal 1:15 that anything was wrong with God’s timing of Paul’s commission. So it is that verse which clashes head on with 1 Cr 15:8 which sees Paul as being born ‘ektromati’, i.e. in a deficient (or abortive) manner time-wise relative to the visions of other dignitaries. For the same reason, the double reference to “scriptures” in (3 & 4) appears to be a clumsy attempt at being Paul. As Price observed (through reference in op.cit. above) it contradicts directly Paul’s assertion in Gal 1:16 that God revealed his Son in him (en emoi – i.e. directly as a bodily experience – about which more some other time) in order that he might preach him among the Gentiles. By contrast, the wording in 1 Cr 15 replaces the interpreted content of his personal ecstasies and revelations with a vague reference to holy writs, with what looks like intent on the part of the writer to show that Paul knows the gospel expansions extant at a later point and underwrites them. Unfortunately for the inserter, the gloss occurs exactly in a place where Paul appeals to his flock to take his version of Christ’s resurrection - on faith alone !

Ad 3&4) The logical sequencing of the original 1 Cr 15 Paul’s pericope seems to ignore the insert. The verse 12 logically follows verse 2, in concretizing the proposition that faith is in vain without Paul’s gospel, if its central tenet, the resurrection of Christ from the dead is not believed. Paul goes on to raise the ante by suggesting that if he preaches Christ as risen from the dead and he wasn’t, not only the faith of his flock is in vain but that Paul himself is an impostor who misrepresents God, stressing again that without Christ rising, the believers are still in their sins. Then Paul changes his rhetoric and begins asserting that Jesus Christ is “in fact”(nuni) raised, offering as proof the presumed union with him of those in the congregation who have died before parousia. In doing so, Paul strangely duplicates the effort of the insert which claims a scriptural proof of Christ’s rising supplemented by the witness of a multitude.