I myself do not agree with this interpretation, for a number of reasons. To begin with, if the only part of the passage that seems truly odd on the pen of Paul is the last sentence, then it would make better sense simply to say that it is this sentence that was added by the hypothetical Christian scribe. There is no reason to doubt the entire passage, just the last few words.
But I do not doubt even these. For one thing, what is the hard evidence that the words were not in the letter of 1 Thessalonians as Paul wrote it? There is none. We do not of course have the original of 1 Thessalonians; we have only later copies made by scribes. But in not a single one of these manuscripts is the line (let alone the paragraph) missing. Every surviving manuscript includes it. If the passage was added sometime after the fall of Jerusalem, say, near the end of the first Christian century or even in the second, when Christians started blaming the fall of Jerusalem on the fact that the Jews had killed Jesus, why is it that none of the manuscripts of 1 Thessalonians that were copied before the insertion was made left any trace on the manuscript record? Why were the older copies not copied at all? I think there needs to be better evidence of a scribal insertion before we are certain that it happened. And recall, we are not talking about the entire paragraph but only the last line.
The other point to stress is that Paul did think the wrath of God was already manifesting itself in this world. A key passage is Romans 1:18–32, where Paul states unequivocally, “For the wrath of God is being revealed from heaven on all human ungodliness and unrighteousness, among those who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth.” When Paul says that God’s wrath is “being revealed,” he does not simply mean that it is there to be seen in some ethereal way. He means it is being manifested, powerfully made present. God’s wrath is even now being directed against all godless and unrighteous behavior. In this passage in Romans Paul is talking about God’s wrath now being directed against pagans who refuse to acknowledge him here at the end of time before Jesus returns from heaven. It would not be at all strange to think that he also thought that God’s wrath was being manifest against those Jewish people who also acted in such ungodly and unrighteous ways. And he has a full list of offenses against which God has responded.
In short, I think that Paul originally wrote 1 Thessalonians 2:14–16. He certainly wrote everything up to verse 16. What this means, then, is that Paul believes that it was the Jews (or the Judeans) who were ultimately responsible for killing Jesus, a view shared by the writers of the Gospels as well, even though it does not sit well with those of us today who are outraged by the wicked use to which such views were put in the history of anti-Semitism.
Finally, Paul is quite emphatic throughout his writings that Jesus was crucified. He never mentions Pontius Pilate or the Romans, but he may have had no need to do so. His readers knew full well what he was talking about. Crucifixion was the form of punishment used by Romans and could be used on criminals sentenced by Roman authorities. Jesus’s crucifixion is one of Paul’s constant themes throughout his letters. One brief summary statement of his view can be found in 1 Corinthians 2:2: “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” Or consider 1 Corinthians 15:3–4, a passage that stresses that this teaching about Christ’s death was the very core of Paul’s message: “For I delivered over to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried.” I will later stress this latter point. Jesus was not only crucified, he was buried. In other words, he died a human death, by execution, at the hands of the Romans, and he really was dead, as evidenced by his burial.
The Teachings of Jesus in Paul
In addition to these data about Jesus’s life and death, Paul mentions on several occasions the teachings he delivered. We have seen two of the sayings of Jesus already from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (11:22–24). Paul indicates that these words were spoken during Jesus’s Last Supper. These sayings are closely paralleled to the words of Jesus recorded years later in Luke’s account of the supper (Luke 22:19–20).
Two other sayings of Jesus in the book of 1 Corinthians also find parallels in the Gospel tradition. The first occurs in Paul’s instructions about the legitimacy of divorce, where he paraphrases a saying of Jesus in urging believers to remain married; that this is a saying tradition going back to Jesus is shown by the fact that at this point Paul stresses that it is not he who is giving this instruction but that it was already given by the Lord himself: “But to those who are married I give this charge—not I, but the Lord—a woman is not to be separated from her husband (but if she is separated, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and a man should not divorce his wife.”
The statement in the parentheses is widely seen as Paul’s own addition to this commandment from Jesus. Editors and translators normally set it off as a separate part of the sentence with parentheses or brackets. The rest is the command that Paul learned from the Lord himself. And as it turns out, there is a close parallel to the command on the lips of Jesus, for example, in the Gospel of Mark: “And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery’” (Mark 10:11–12).
It has sometimes been argued that Jesus could not have said such a thing since in Palestine in his days a woman was not permitted to divorce her husband, and therefore Paul cannot really be quoting a saying of Jesus (since he never said it). For example, G. A. Wells argues that what we have here in Paul is not a quotation of the historical Jesus but a prophecy from heaven that came to a Christian prophet, which Paul understood, then, as having come “from the Lord.”13 I will deal with that larger claim momentarily. But at this stage I want to emphasize a couple of points about this particular saying. The most important is that there is an enormous difference between saying that some authorities in Roman Palestine did not allow women to divorce and saying that women did not divorce. Recent studies have shown that Jewish women in fact did divorce their husbands in Palestine, whatever the authorities may have thought about it, so Jesus’s saying does indeed make perfect sense in its context.14 He thought the practice was not good, and he too did not want to permit it.
At the same time, whether or not Jesus really gave this teaching is not directly relevant to the question we are asking here, so Wells’s objection is immaterial. Mark thought Jesus said some such thing, so Paul stays close to what Jesus is alleged to have said. Moreover, Paul indicates that his source for this teaching is not his own wisdom and insight into familial concord but the Lord himself. It looks exceedingly likely that Paul is basing his exhortation on a tradition about divorce that he knows—or thinks he knows—going back to the historical Jesus.
Something similar can be said of yet another instance in 1 Corinthians where Paul appears to refer to a teaching of Jesus. In chapter 9 he addresses the question of whether apostles have the right to be financially supported by others during their missionary efforts. He thinks they have that right even though he himself does not regularly take advantage of it, and he supports his view by appealing to a teaching of Jesus: “For thus the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14). It has long been recognized that this command from the Lord is still found in our Gospel traditions, in slightly different forms in Matthew and Luke (that is, it comes from Q). Luke’s version is the most apt. Here Jesus is instructing his disciples what to do as they go about spreading the gospel: “Stay in the same house [that you first come to] and eat and drink whatever they provide. For the worker is worthy of his wages” (Luke 10:7).
In both these instances—as with the sayings Paul quotes from the Last Supper tradition—we have close parallels between what Paul says Jesus said (in a quotation or a paraphrase) and what Jesus is recorded elsewhere as having actually said. This makes it clear to most interpreters of Paul that he really
does intend here to quote the teachings of Jesus.
There are no other obvious places where Paul quotes Jesus, although scholars have often found traces of Jesus’s teachings in Paul.15 The big question is why Paul does not quote Jesus more often. This is a thorny issue that will require more sustained reflection at the end of this chapter. For now I need simply to stress the most important point: Paul obviously thought Jesus existed, and he occasionally quoted his teachings.
In several other instances Paul indicates that he is echoing a “word” or “commandment of the Lord.” This happens in his earliest letter, 1 Thessalonians, where he is discussing the future return of Jesus from heaven, when all the dead will be raised and all living believers will join them in a heavenly reunion with the Lord (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18). In this context Paul states, “For this we say to you by a word of the Lord, that we who are living who are left until the coming of the Lord will certainly not precede those who are asleep. For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God; and the dead in Christ will rise first….” For Paul, those who had already died would meet the Lord first, to be immediately followed by those who had not yet died. And he learned this from a “word of the Lord.”
As indicated earlier, the mythicist G. A. Wells argues that the sayings of Jesus in Paul’s writings were given to him not from the traditions about the teachings of the historical Jesus but from prophecies delivered in Paul’s churches, direct revelations from the Lord of heaven. In some instances that may indeed have been the case, and this passage in 1 Thessalonians may be one example of it. The reason for thinking so is that we do not have any record of the historical Jesus saying any such thing about what would happen at his return (though see Matthew 24:3–44). So there are two choices here: either Paul knew of a tradition in which the historical Jesus allegedly did discuss this matter or he learned this teaching through a prophecy in one of his churches.
At the end of the day I think it is impossible to decide between these two options. Jesus no doubt said lots of things—hundreds of things, thousands of things—that are not recorded in the early Gospels. Later many, many other things were attributed to Jesus that he probably did not say (for example, many of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas and later Gospels). Paul may well have heard of sayings of Jesus, such as the one in 1 Thessalonians, that no longer survive otherwise (whether they are sayings Jesus actually said or not). Or he may have learned this information about the second coming from a prophecy. But here we are in a different category from the other sayings of Jesus in Paul’s letters that we considered earlier. When Paul claims that the Lord said something, and we have a record of Jesus saying almost exactly that, it is surely most reasonable to conclude that Paul is referring to something that he believed Jesus actually said.16
Provisional Summary: Paul and Jesus
In sum, Paul does indeed show that he knew Jesus existed, and he reveals that he had at least some information about his life. Mythicists as a rule do not accept any of this information as being relevant to the question of whether Paul actually knew or believed there was a historical Jesus. I will give several of their most common arguments in a moment. Before doing so I want to stress several points by way of summary of what we have seen so far about Paul’s view of the historical Jesus.
Paul obviously did not write a Gospel about Jesus, and he did not include enormous numbers of traditions about Jesus in his writings. This strikes many readers of the New Testament as odd. Why doesn’t Paul tell us more about Jesus? You would think it would matter to him. I will address this question at greater length later, as it is one of the points insisted on by many mythicists, who think that if Paul had known there was a historical Jesus, he would have told us a lot more about him. At this stage I want to emphasize two things. The first is that we have to remember that the writings we have from Paul were letters that he directed to his churches (and to the church of Rome, which he did not found). He is writing these letters to deal with problems that had arisen in them. His letters are not meant to spell out everything that he knew or thought about God, Christ, the Spirit, the church, the human condition, and so forth. He addressed problems that his churches were facing. I myself have written hundreds of letters dealing with religious issues over the past thirty-five years. It would be, oh, so easy to collect seven of these letters and not find a single saying of Jesus quoted or a single reference to anything he is thought to have done or experienced. Does that mean I don’t know that Jesus existed?
My second point is that what Paul does tell us makes it very clear that he knew or at least believed that Jesus had lived as a historical person some years earlier. Paul mentions that Jesus was born; that he was a Jew, a direct descendant of King David; that he had brothers, one of them named James; that he had a ministry to Jews; that he had twelve disciples; that he was a teacher; that he anticipated his own death; that he had the Last Supper on the night he was handed over; that he was killed at the instigation of Jews in Judea; and that he died by crucifixion. He also refers on several occasions to Jesus’s teachings. Paul certainly knew that Jesus existed, and he knew some things about him.
I should stress in addition that Paul indicates on several occasions that the traditions about Jesus are ones that he himself inherited from those who came before him. This is clearly implied when he says that he “handed over” what he had earlier “received,” technical language in antiquity for passing on traditions and teachings among Jewish rabbis. Even where Paul does not state that he is handing on received tradition, there are places where it is clear he is doing so. I have mentioned, for example, Romans 1:3–4, an ancient adoptionistic creed about Jesus that indicates he “became” the son of God only when he was raised from the dead. This creed was not written by Paul: it uses words and phrases not otherwise found in Paul (for example, spirit of holiness) and contains concepts otherwise alien to Paul (that Jesus was made the Son of God at the resurrection). He is using, then, an earlier creed that was in circulation before his writing.
Where did Paul get all this received tradition, from whom, and most important, when? Paul himself gives us some hints. He indicates in Galatians 1 that originally, before his conversion, he had been a fierce persecutor of the church of Christ, but then on the basis of some kind of mysterious revelation he came to see that Jesus really was the Son of God, and he converted. After three years, he tells us, he made a trip to Jerusalem, and there he spent fifteen days with Cephas and James. Cephas was one of Jesus’s twelve disciples, and James was his brother. I will stress the importance of this fact in the next chapter. For now I simply want to point out that this visit is one of the most likely places where Paul learned all the received traditions that he refers to and even the received traditions that we otherwise suspect are in his writings that he does not name as such. And when would this have been?
Since Paul sometimes provides a time frame (“three years later” or “after fifteen years”), it is possible to put together a rough chronology of Paul’s life. To give us a rock-solid start, we can say that Paul must have been converted sometime after the death of Jesus around 30 CE and sometime before 40 CE. The latter date is based on the fact that in 2 Corinthians 11:32 Paul indicates that King Aretas of the Nabateans was determined to prosecute Paul for being a Christian. Aretas died around the year 40. So Paul converted sometime in the 30s CE. When scholars crunch all the numbers that Paul mentions, it appears that he must have converted early in the 30s, say, the year 32 or 33, just two or three years after the death of Jesus.
This means that if Paul went to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and James three years after his conversion, he would have seen them, and received the traditions that he later gives in his letters, around the middle of the decade, say the year 35 or 36. The traditions he inherited, of course, were older than that and so must date to just a couple of years or so after Jesus’s death.
All this makes it as clear as day that Jesus was known to have lived and di
ed almost immediately after the traditional date of his death. We do not have to wait for the Gospel of Mark around 70 CE to hear about the historical Jesus, as mythicists are fond of claiming. This evidence from Paul dovetails perfectly with what we found from the Gospel traditions, whose oral sources almost certainly also go all the way back into the 30s to Roman Palestine. Paul too shows that just a few years after Jesus’s life his followers were talking about the things he said, did, and experienced as a Jewish teacher in Palestine who was crucified by the Romans at the instigation of the Jewish authorities. This is a powerful confluence of evidence: the sources of the Gospels and the accounts of our earliest Christian author. It is hard to explain this confluence apart from the view that Jesus certainly existed.
Mythicist Counterarguments
Some scholars, as I mentioned, have devoted their lives to studying the life and letters of Paul. I personally know scores of scholars who have spent twenty, thirty, forty, or more years of their lives working to understand Paul. Some of these are fundamentalists, some are theologically moderate Christians, some are extremely liberal Christians, and some are agnostics or atheists. Not one of them, to my knowledge, thinks that Paul did not believe there was a historical Jesus. The evidence is simply too obvious and straightforward. Many mythicists, however, claim that this scholarly consensus is wrong, and they have some interesting arguments to show it. Even though I don’t buy them, I think these arguments need to be addressed seriously.
Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth Page 13
