Solo

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.

The Chapter continues to expound Paul’s own eschatological blueprint until the emotionally gripping crescendo of 1 Cr 15:56-58. Not once in the excursus after verse 11, Paul re-references the section of 3-11, alludes to other eschatological scenarios, apostles, or appearances. He gives no hint of it even in the crucial section of 42-50 which builds a resurrectional model in familiar images of Pauline sensing of eternity, and which would call for an explanation of what the “third day” really means in verse 4, or how the “image of the man of heaven” that “we shall bear” in 49 squares with Jesus re-materializing post-mortem for family and friends in 5-7. Why does Paul have to spend thirty eight verses (starting with 20) to elaborate on a scenario which appears to be arguing with the very people among whom he feels to be the last and unworthy ?

Perhaps, there is an answer.

Paul promoted the classical Judaic concept (held by both the Pharisees and the Saducees) of resurrection from the dead which was opposed to the teachings of HJ. HJ taught that the kingdom was attainable on earth, that it lay “within oneself” and could be entered “violently” through his baptism of fire which was also known (originally) as “the raising from the dead” or “resurrection”. To the traditions originating with the preacher of Q, the conservative Judaic ideas ran counter to the revolutionary message of Jesus, best attested by his saying “let the dead bury their dead” which makes it semantically explicit that he considered some dead to be dead only metaphorically. (Geza Vermes said the deadhead metaphor for unspirituality was current in rabbinical Judaism of J’s. time. Further, the themes of redemption from the Pit,/escape from Abaddon, around which the “raising of the dead” rituals would have been built, were common in thanksgiving liturgy at Qumran) In his reply to the Saducees in Mark 12, solving the marital situation in afterlife. Jesus insists that his raising people from the dead has nothing to do with actual dying – he is just transforming his disciples internally, reshaping them to experience his parabolic “kingdom”, i.e. a world which operates on different perceptual and cognitive principles. To the Phariseic Saul, all of this was folly and blasphemy, and he fought against it.

Paul, once he got the inside track on the Spirit, came to see in the destruction of Jesus through madness a supreme act of mercy and wisdom on God’s part who sacrificed his Son, for Paul to preach that all that is flesh must die, but that sin may be cleansed (and death nullified) through repentance, and faith as confession of this act of Redemption. But, while Paul received the wisdom to see that Jesus was internally innocent of any wrong-doing and that his death really was God’s will (as opposed to “nobody’s problem” for the unspiritual) , he did not budge from Saul’s position and remained radically opposed to HJ’s idea of kingdom of heaven on earth (verse 50 !!!). And for that he would know no other Jesus than the one crucified. It is that which Paul was set to expound in 1 Cr 15 when he was interpolated.

After Paul’s death, the two antipodal views of resurrection coalesced in the Christian communities eventually producing the gospel stories of Jesus appearing in flesh to his disciples. But in Paul’s time such an idea of resurrection did not exist. The communities believed in either the HJ’s baptism, and experimented with altered states of consciousness communing with his spirit in the personal experience of his (earthly) resurrection, or sided with Paul who interpreted his ecstasies as Christ’s glorious life in heaven to be conferred on the deserving believers at the time of the return of the Redeemer or their individual deaths, whichever came first. As Paul’s approach assured greater stability of the communities and their collective mental health, it won out in the end, even if at the price of all but obliterating his brilliant, original existential paradox by the gospel Easter phantasists. Small price to pay I suppose in exchanging the world on the brink for a church triumphant.

Comments, please.

Jiri

Ben C Smith

Jiri, one main obstacle to viewing this passage as an interpolation is that it appears to have belonged, at least in some form, to the text as known by Marcion and by the Valentinians. Andrew Criddle comments:

That is very early evidence.

Ben.

Johnny Skeptic

The following is not copyrighted:

http://www.inu.net/skeptic/paulsig.html

The Mystery of Paul's Ignorance

Louis W. Cable

Paul's writing is no better than the jargon of a conjurer who picks up phrases he does not understand to confound the credulous people who come to have their fortune told. (Thomas Paine)


Let us consider the question of Paul's ignorance, perhaps the most perplexing problem confronting the defenders of the historical Jesus. The Apostle Paul, often referred to as the founder of Christianity, seems to have been totally unaware of any details of Jesus' life and teachings as they are presented in the New Testament gospels. Nowhere does Paul equate his hero, Jesus Christ, with a virgin born miracle worker from Nazareth recently put to death in Judea. Certainly it is not unreasonable to expect that somewhere among his extensive writings he would have betrayed some knowledge of the circumstances surrounding these most important events had they actually occurred.

Paul's dates are not definitely known, but he must have lived from somewhere around 53 to around 674. Although these dates may not be exact, the traditional dates of Jesus’ ministry (27-30) fall well within them. When Jesus was supposed to have been active in his ministry, Paul was a grown man in his early to mid twenties living and working in Jerusalem. He was a Jew, a member of the tribe of Benjamin (Romans 11:1). He claims to have studied under the famous rabbinical teacher, Gamaliel, and to have been closely associated with the political and religious leaders of that day (Acts 22:3-5). During that time Jerusalem was a city of approximately 120,000 population5, not significantly large. He surely must have heard of Jesus, the miracle worker. In Matthew 4:24 we learn that Jesus' fame as a healer had spread "throughout all of Syria." How could he have missed Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem which, according to Matthew 21:1-10, attracted great multitudes6. How could he not have heard about Jesus’ cleansing of the temple which incurred the wrath of the chief priest (Matthew 21:12-16)? As an enforcer of the law, how could Paul not have known of Jesus’ betrayal by Judas Iscariot, the trial, and/or the crucifixion with its attendant anomalies such as darkness at noon and earthquakes? Why didn't he mention the resurrection of the saints (Matthew 27:52-53) or the amputation by Peter of the right ear of Malchus, the chief priest's slave (John 18:10,) and its miraculous reattachment by Jesus (Luke 22:51)? Surely Paul would have encountered Jesus sometime during those years so crucial to what was later to become the Christian religion. In Luke 24:18 Cleopas, one of the two travelers the resurrected Jesus encountered on the road to Emmaus, says that everybody in Jerusalem knew about Jesus. Yet, not a single reference to these important, even astounding, events appears anywhere in the authentic Pauline epistles. As far as the record goes, the only encounter Paul ever had with Jesus was that famous incident which allegedly occurred on the road to Damascus.

The Book of Acts records three separate accounts of Paul’s conversion to Christianity. None of these accounts agrees fully with the other two. For example, in Acts 9:7 Paul says that the men with him "heard the voice." But in Acts 22:9 he says they "did not hear the voice." The other contradiction lies in the manner in which Paul claims to have received his instructions. According to the first two accounts, Jesus didn't say very much. He directed Paul to go into the city where he would be told what he must do (Acts 9:6 and 22:10). However, in his defense before King Agrippa (Acts 26:12-18) Paul tells a different story. Here he says that Jesus instructed him in great detail right there on the spot. So, did Paul (or the writer of Acts of the Apostles) deliberately lie?

Paul tells in II Cor. 11:32-33 how he made a daring escape from the agents of King Aretas who were out to arrest him. This establishes a reliable extra-biblical time line because Aretas, King of the Nabataeans, is a historical person known to have died in the year 407. Therefore, Paul’s conversion and the beginning of his career as an evangelist had to have taken place sometime in the late 30s, less than ten years after the alleged crucifixion. He should have been personally acquainted with many people who had had direct contact with Jesus. For example, he went to Jerusalem where he spent fifteen days with Cephas (Peter) (Galatians 1:18), whom Jesus had personally selected to be his earthly successor (Matthew 16:18-19). Surely they discussed the life of Jesus, and his teachings.

Those Pauline epistles considered to be genuine were written between 50 and 60. They predate the gospels and are among the earliest extant Christian writings. For that reason one would expect them to contain a wealth of details about Jesus' life and teachings, details confirming the gospel accounts. But this is far from the case. Concerning the alleged virgin birth Paul never mentions Mary. He says only that, Jesus was born of a woman, born under the law (Galatians 4:4). The time, place and circumstances of Jesus’ alleged miraculous conception and birth, recorded in such great detail in the gospels of Matthew and Luke, are never mentioned. Paul says not one word about Joseph, Jesus’ surrogate father who figures so prominently in the birth narratives. Also, Paul apparently never heard of John the Baptist who not only baptized Jesus, but who is said to have been instrumental in the fulfillment of certain Old Testament prophecies allegedly confirming Jesus as the long awaited messiah.

In Romans 1:3 Paul tells us without proof that Jesus was in fact a direct descendant of King David. Paul's writings predate the gospels of Matthew and Luke by some twenty five to thirty years. He was a contemporary of Jesus yet he obviously never heard of the virgin birth touted as one of Christianity's most important miracles. The only conclusion we are left with is that the virgin birth of Jesus is a fantasy concoction of the writers of Matthew and Luke inserted in their gospels probably for the purpose of converting Pagans.

In Matthew 23 Jesus bitterly denounces the scribes and the Pharisees, accusing them of being nothing more than a bunch of lying hypocrites out to get him. Apparently Paul was unaware of this because when testifying before the chief priest and the Council he proudly proclaims, "Brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee" (Acts 23:6).

First Corinthians 15:45 begins with the familiar words, "So it is written" and goes on to say, "the first man, Adam, was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." Here Paul claims to quote scripture that is nonexistent. There is no mention anywhere else in the Bible of a second Adam. This second Adam, according to Paul, is none other than Jesus, a spirit who, according to 1 Cor. 15:47, came directly from heaven. This Pauline passage contradicts the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke as well as Gelatins 4:4.

In Philippians 3:10-11 Paul declares with great emotion, "That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead." Yet when he returns to Jerusalem it is merely to visit Peter, as mentioned above. He never expresses the slightest desire to see Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace, Nazareth, his home town, the sites of his preaching, the upper room where he is supposed to have held the fabled Last Supper, nor Calvary where the ultimate sacrifice was allegedly made. Most astonishing of all, however, is that there is not one hint of a pilgrimage to the tomb in which the resurrection, the center piece of Paul’s theology, is supposed to have taken place.

Paul makes no references to Jesus' ethical and moral teachings in situations where it would have been in his best interest to have done so8. He, in fact, contradicts some of them. For example, Paul held that gentile Christians need not obey Jewish law to be saved (Gal. 3:8-9 and 5:6). Evidently he was unaware that this was a direct contradiction of the teachings of Jesus on this matter (Matthew 5:17-19). Furthermore when Paul does make such ethical pronouncements as "Bless those who persecute you" (Romans 12:14), he does not cite the authority of Jesus (Matthew 5:10-12). We can only conclude that he never heard of the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus’ prescription for Christian living.

First Corinthians 13 (NRSV) has been dubbed, "Paul's Hymn to Love." Throughout this short chapter he does indeed wax eloquent over that important emotion. The chapter concludes with Paul summing it all up as follows, "And now faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." Why at this point in his pontification didn't Paul cite the many love pronouncements of Jesus particularly John 13:34? Here Jesus issues the well known new commandment, "That you love one another." Was Paul unaware of it?

When Paul, in Romans 8:26, says "we do not know how to pray as we should," does this mean he was unaware that Jesus taught the Lord’s prayer to his disciples (Matthew 6:9, Luke 11:2)? Did Paul not know of Jesus’ prayer against temptation (Mark 14:35-36 and parallels) or the famous farewell prayer (John 17:1-16)? In 2 Cor. 12:12 Paul states, "The signs of a true apostle were performed among you . . . by signs and wonders and miracles." Surely Paul would have cited Jesus' miracles at this point, had he been aware of them. We can only surmise that Paul had no knowledge of the life and teachings of Jesus as they are presented in the gospels. Considering his temporal proximity to these events this makes absolutely no sense.

Paul’s brief rendition of the resurrection appears in I Corinthians 15:3-8: For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, 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. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. This bare list stands as the earliest extant reference to a resurrection tradition. But there are big problems. First, Paul refers to scripture that is non-existent. No one has yet been able to locate it. Second, "the twelve" apparently refers to the apostles and has to include Judas Iscariot. Here again Paul, a contemporary of Jesus, shows no awareness of Judas and the important events surrounding his alleged treachery and death. Third, who were the "more than five hundred"? They are never identified nor are there any eyewitness reports from any of them, and there is no mention of them anywhere in the gospels. So what it comes down to is that it’s Paul’s word and his alone.

G. A. Wells points out that Paul is not alone in his silence concerning the alleged earthly life of Jesus as it is portrayed in the gospels. Also silent in regard to this question are all of the earliest extant Christian writings as well as the extant writings of all first century Jewish historians. References to the biography of Jesus as depicted in the gospels does begin to not appear in Christian writings until the beginning of the first century after the gospels had become current. It becomes obvious therefore that it was the gospels themselves that provided the source for these writings. (See Are the Gospels True? on this web site.)

The first paragraph of this essay ends with a question - Why? Why was the Apostle Paul ignorant of the life of Jesus as it is presented in the gospels? Well, the answer is obvious. The gospels are fiction, and Jesus’ "life" had not been invented when Paul lived and wrote.

For more information on Paul see The Pauline Epistles and Would You Buy a Used Car From St. Paul? on this website.


1 Compiled by Louis W. Cable.

2 The Age of Reason.

3 All dates are common era (CE) unless otherwise indicated.

4 Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary, under Biographical Entries.

5 Encyclopedia Judaica - population and area of Jerusalem during the time of Pontius Pilate (26-36).

6 In the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia "multitude" is defined as a number too great to count.

7 Brownrigg, Ronald - Who’s Who in the New Testament - Holt, Rinehart and Wenston, 1971 - page 34.

8 Wells, G. A., 1999. The Jesus Myth, page 69.

9 Mack, Burton L., Who Wrote the New Testament? pgs. 206 - 207.

10 Wells, G. A. , Can We Trust the New Testament?, Open Court, 2004, pages 50-51.

Mr. Jaggers

Paul was a fraud.

Solo

Thanks, Ben. That is certainly a useful information. However it does not address my points.

It could very well be that the gloss was an early one, and handed down to M/V.

One of the interesting aspects of the passage is the issue of the church traditions which are represented in it. Evidently, I need to get my hands on Harnack who according to Conzelmann argued the formulaic import by Paul in 3-5 came from two church traditions. Conzelman himself accepts that the 3-8section is taken from church traditions and shows "non-Pauline linguistic usage". Conzelman also points out the similarity between (4) ωφθη Κηφα
and (Luke 24:34) ηγερθη....και ωφθη Σιμονι, which he cautiously terms, "variant tradition". Outside of this passage, I guess you know, Paul uses the verb οπτανομαι only once in Romans quoting Isaiah, in a completely different semantic context.

C.K. Barrett (whom I consulted this time on the matter, to avoid being chided by Earl :wave: ) has some hilarious things to say on the passage. I want to recount them here just to make clear why I tend to avoid a certain type of theologian.

"It is surprising to find specific reference to the fact that he was buried...If he was buried he must have been really dead; if he was buried, the resurrection must have been a reanimation of a corpse. Paul does not go on to narrate the discovery, reported in the gospels, of the empty tomb. This may mean ( since 1 Cor. XV. represents a tradition earlier than any of the gospels) that the story of the empty tomb is a late construction, based on the conviction, itself grounded in the appearances, that Jesus was alive. On the other hand, it may be urged that this inference, if made, was valid: if he was buried, and was subsequently seen alive outside his grave, the grave must have been empty, and may well have been seen to be empty."
(CKB, A commentary on the 1st Epistle to the Cor., London 1968, pp 339-340)

"After this he appeared to the Twelve. This is the only place where Paul refers to the Twelve - a fairly clear indication that he is here quoting a formula he did not himself make up, and that the notion of a group of twelve special disciples, is pre-Pauline and therefore very early....[they] appear to have served as witnesses who could prove the continuity between Jesus of Nazareth and the risen Lord, but not to have been significant figures in the church, at least after the earliest period. The gospels contain accounts of appearances to the Twelve (or more precisely the Eleven, Judas Iscariot being removed from the original number......)" ibid. 342

"It is true that Paul's word (τω εκτρωματι) describes not a process ( an untimely birth) but a result of the process...yet the result is the result of the process, and as such the time element is not unimportant. At first, the word seems inappropriate; as Christian and apostle, Paul came into being not early but late. It could however be said that in comparison with the other apostles who had accompanied Jesus during his ministry he had been born without the due period of gestation" ibid. 344

etc, etc....

So, Ben what do you think about my contention that Paul's target in 1 Cr 15 lecture on resurrection are not some Gnostics that rained from heaven on Corinth (as Schmithal seems to think) but none other than Peter's friends who duly followed the teaching of HJ ? Impossible ?

Jiri

Ben C Smith

True. That is partly because I am pressed for time from other projects, and partly because I believe in authenticating the text first.

I cannot find Paul using οπτανομαι at all. In 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 the word is οραω, aorist passive third person οφθη.

Nothing is impossible.

But IMHO there is no need to think in terms of the later forms of gnosticism here. Paul writes very confusingly about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15, to be sure, but one thing is clear; it is a resurrection of a body (σωμα), and there would be no shortage of Greeks who would find such a concept offensive from the start, no matter how spiritual Paul makes it sound.

Sorry, I lack the time to go further.

Ben.

DramaQ

It seems to me that v12 more logically follows v4. The rest of the letter goes on and on about the need to believe in the resurrection. If would jump out of nowhere if he didn't first mention the core beliefs: died, buried, raised.

It's true that everything from v5 through 11 is a huge diversion from this.

As far as the way by which Paul "received" this: while it's true he holds that it was by a spiritual "encounter" with Christ, isn't it also true that he acknowledges scripture as being the revelatory medium? Which still fits with what he says in v3. (And also explains how Marcion's text would contain 'he rose on the third day'.)

Just noodling…

DQ

Solo

But if they are "core" beliefs, as you say, how come some people of Paul's flock did not believe them ? To my mind, Paul's reference to "gospel" in (1) is to his own message, and this reference seems consistent throughout the chapter, except for the 3-11 section.

Logically, I think it follows that, if I were to receive some revelation directly from God, and expressly said that what I preach does not come through other men (even prophets of God), I would not quote the Bible to prove my case. It is true, Paul sometimes refers to the scriptures (and sometimes to "what is written") in rulings, and expositions of different moral issues, but not - outside this passage - with regards to anything revealing the nature of Christ, or the mystery of his resurrection.
Apart from the issue of interpolation, I think the critical scholarship is in agreement that in the passage, the writer simply echoes then current church traditions. The burning question then is whether in his time such traditions existed, or it was later and through Paul's teachings of Christ crucified and living gloriously in heaven, that the original ideas of HJ on "resurrection" were displaced and modified (but thankfully not removed from the canon), to become the familiar gospel image of Jesus rising bodily from his tomb.

Jiri

Solo

That's fine, Ben. I value your view and am perfectly willing to wait for it.

I made the link using my on-line Concordance tool......my Greek is still quite poor, as you can plainly see - do not hesitate to put me in my place :notworthy:

fascinating subject.....whenever you have the time, Ben. Thanks again.

Jiri

DramaQ

I think you misunderstood my point, and I admit I was a bit unclear. By “core” beliefs I meant Paul’s core beliefs. But more to the point, it was the logical flow of his stating those beliefs that I was referring to.

I am agreeing that the passage seems interpolated. But I think the insertion occurs two sentences later.

By removing verses 3 and 4 along with the rest you get:

I am merely suggesting that v3 and 4 make sense as Paul restating, and thus making his point clear:

This flows logically, does not contradict anything Paul has said elsewhere (that he believes in a Christ that died and was raised), and gives a reason for leading into the last sentence.

It is at v 5 that the big digression occurs.

Oh I don't think I can agree with that. Paul would (and did) use Scripture to back up his case when he could. Why wouldn't he? It would have packed a lot more clout that just his word for it.

Note how he expresses it: "For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures"

The nature of his belief was "received" or revealed to him. The Scriptures back this up. Prove his revelation. He does this in Romans 1:2, too.

DQ