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Paul on Jesus

Tuesday, 12 Feb 2008 at 4:22 pm

Why did the Apostle Paul never quote a single word of Jesus’ sayings?

Tags: Bible, Christianity, Jesus, religion, St. Paul

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19 Comments

Seth R. said,

February 12, 2008 @ 5:06 pm

Maybe because he wasn’t there, and they weren’t written down?
Jonathan Blake said,

February 12, 2008 @ 7:41 pm

I think that’s essentially the truth, but which came first: Pauline Christianity or the Gospel stories? Paul’s epistles (not the ones falsely attributed to him) seem to me to be more of a proto-Christianity which lacks Jesus’ sayings as provided by the later Gospel writers.
mel said,

February 12, 2008 @ 9:35 pm

Believing mel: “because he wasn’t a witness of the mortal Jesus (that was a role for his superiors) and besides, every word he spoke was the word of the immortal Christ”

Disbelieving mel: “because the particular author(s) who manufactured the Pauline letters did not conceptualize the mortal Jesus as sage and philosopher but as actor and role-player — the actions, not the words, were ‘the gospel’”

But ultimately I’m just talking out of my ass in both cases.
Jonathan Blake said,

February 13, 2008 @ 9:40 am

Yeah, I don’t know for sure either. It probably depends on our biases which option we see as more likely, though for the apologetics-minded any possibility that their beliefs are true is good enough for them. To me, this just smells fishy (no pun intended).
Kullervo said,

February 13, 2008 @ 1:36 pm

Interesting though.
Seth R. said,

February 13, 2008 @ 6:58 pm

One of the problem with the apologists is they have a pretty crappy name.

“Apologist.”

The word itself practically waves a white flag.

Even “defender of the faith” suffers from the problem that the best defense is a good offense.
Jonathan Blake said,

February 14, 2008 @ 11:37 am

Defender of the faith isn’t so bad. They can at least play the martyr.

Apologetics—and by that I mean gathering arguments to support a priori beliefs—is a pretty crappy way to learn things. I realize that not all apologists fit this description, but it seems to fit most.
Seth R. said,

February 14, 2008 @ 12:01 pm

At least it’s a structured way of learning things.
Kullervo said,

February 14, 2008 @ 1:57 pm

One interesting thing is that if you take Paul out of the equation, you’re not left with nearly so clear of a picture of what the life of Jesus means. Even if you take the gospels at face value.
Jonathan Blake said,

February 14, 2008 @ 2:27 pm

Interesting point. What you’re left with is some stories about Jesus, a few epistles by followers, and a trippy Apocalypse. A lot of what Christianity believes came from Paul. If we were to rank the importance of the New Testament characters, Paul would come right after Jesus, and not just because he was a prolific writer.
Seth R. said,

February 14, 2008 @ 4:17 pm

I was reading an interesting book on Christian heretics that fingered Paul as the first Christian heretic. It mentioned the fight over whether he was to be accepted as an Apostle, and the disputes between the Church at Antioch (Paul’s faction) and the Church at Jerusalem (headed by Peter, James, and the brother of John – I think…). Gerd Ludeman was the author, I think…
Jonathan Blake said,

February 14, 2008 @ 4:38 pm

Google to the rescue: was it Heretics: The Other Side of Early Christianity by Gerd LÃ¼demann. I would definitely agree that Paul’s Christianity had a different flavor than the rest.
Seth R. said,

February 14, 2008 @ 4:56 pm

Yeah, I only got through the first few chapters before I had to return the book to the library. But quite interesting. Essentially, Peter seemed to view the new religion as essentially an expansion of Judaism – the true Judaism in fact. Paul saw it as a new religion entirely. You see the clash of their views over the circumcision issue, but it went deeper than that.
dpc said,

February 15, 2008 @ 7:02 am

First of all, it should be noted that Paul never quotes any of the sayings attributed to Jesus Christ. That is different than saying that he never quoted the actual sayings of Jesus Christ. If Paul was a contemporary of Peter and other Christians who actually knew Jesus, it would have been odd if he wasn’t at least familiar with some of his sayings and incorporated them into his works. If Jesus had written a book that Paul never quotes, that would be different, however.

Secondly, considering that the Pauline Epistles contained in the Bible do not necessarily reflect everything that Paul wrote, it’s possible that his other writings contained such sayings and were ultimately omitted as being either redundant or not valuable commentary. You also have to consider the persecution that early Christians endured. The existent Pauline Epistles may be the “Condensed Version” because you can only hide so many incriminating texts and anything that was repetitive was excised. I’m sure we can come up with a number of different theories.

To be sure, Ockham’s Razor seems to indicate that the easiest explanation is the best explanation (which indicates that Paul took Mithraic teachings and substituted Jesus in the place of Mithras or Osiris), but I feel that the razor only applies to logic and not to history.

If anything, I see these kinds of issues as faith-affirming. If it was really was just a mishmash of syncretic teachings that became a unified whole, it seems to be guided by divine influence rather than luck.
Seth R. said,

February 15, 2008 @ 8:11 am

Yeah, if there is one thing that I learned studying history, it’s that the improbable happens, a lot. Regularly.
Jonathan Blake said,

February 15, 2008 @ 11:59 am

dpc,

What you see as divine influence, I perceive as the influence of our better nature. The God hypothesis seems superfluous to me. In the end, I assert that we can’t be sure, so even if there is a God, he can’t expect us to act (falsely) as if we were certain. I’m content to treat the New Testament as myth.
Jonathan Blake said,

February 15, 2008 @ 12:15 pm

Aside from that, the consensus among scholars is that the first Christian writings were some of Paul’s epistles, then the surmised Q document, then the Gospel of Mark.

With that in mind, it seems that Pauline Christianity was outside the mainstream of the earliest Christianity, developed by Paul in ignorance of the Gospels. Whether that was because the stories weren’t made up yet, or that he hadn’t spent enough time in the mainstream to become familiar with them, Paul did his own thing.

The Wikipedia article on Pauline Christianity is an interesting read.
dpc said,

February 25, 2008 @ 12:39 pm

Whether that was because the stories weren’t made up yet, or that he hadn’t spent enough time in the mainstream to become familiar with them, Paul did his own thing.

Or it could be that Paul decided to emphasize certain aspects of Christianity over other aspects. The Gospel of John fails to mention several important incidents that occur in the other three Gospels, yet it would be hard to argue that John had his own brand of Christianity that he was peddling. But it’s always interesting to see how religions develop and cohere. I see it is a divine process.

As far as divine influence versus the influence of our better nature, I’m not sure what you mean by the latter. Is that a term used in humanistic thinking? If it is, it doesn’t appear too far removed by what I mean as divine influence.
Jonathan Blake said,

February 25, 2008 @ 12:50 pm

The Gospel of John represents another thread to me: Gnostic Christianity. Jesus as the Word, Jesus’ confidential teachings to the apostles, emanation from God, unity with God, etc. all sound like Gnosticism. I’m actually surprised it was included in the canon. John’s Gospel is my favorite book in the New Testament.

The term “divine influence” connotes supernatural intervention to me. I think of our human nature in purely naturalistic terms.