Where Did the Idea that Paul Didn't Have a Gospel Come From?

[Stephan Huller]

Epiphanius says that Luke was one of the seventy two (!)

It was Paul who found St. Luke, one of the seventy-two who had been scattered, brought him to repentance, and made him his own follower, both a co-worker in the Gospel and an apostle. And in this way all of the work of preaching the Gospel has been done, down to this time. (Panarion 51.11),

Epiphanius also does not call the Marcionite collection of epistles - 'the apostolikon' (apostolic) - but rather the 'apostle'

This concludes Marcion's arrangement of the remains of the words and their subject which he preserves from Luke's Gospel and The Apostle.

[Stephan Huller]

Muratorian canon:

2.The third book of the gospel, that according to Luke.
3.This Luke, the physician, after the ascension of Christ,
4.when Paul had taken him with him as studied in the law,
5.wrote it down in his own name from
6.opinion. The Lord, however, he did not see
7.in the flesh either, and thus, as he was able to follow up,
8.so he begins to speak even at the nativity of John.

[Stephan Huller]

The Latin prologues:

He was a disciple of the apostles, and afterward followed Paul until his confession, serving the Lord undistractedly, for he neither had any wife nor procreated sons. [A man] of eighty–four* years, he slept in Thebes, the metropolis of Boeotia, full of the holy spirit. He, when the gospels were already written down, that according to Matthew in Judea, but that according to Mark in Italy, instigated by the holy spirit, in parts of Achaea wrote down this gospel, he who was taught not only by the apostle, who was not with the Lord in the flesh, but also by the other apostles, who were with the Lord, even making clear this very thing himself in the preface, that the others were written down before his, and that it was necessary that he accurately expound for the gentile faithful the entire economy in his narrative, lest they, detained by Jewish fables, be held by a sole desire for the law, or lest, seduced by heretical fables and stupid instigations, they slip away from the truth.

and Mark was written very early during Peter's life in Rome:

He was a disciple and interpreter of Peter, whom he followed just as he heard him report. When he was requested at Rome by the brethren, he briefly wrote this gospel in parts of Italy. When Peter heard this, he approved and affirmed it by his own authority for the reading of the church. Truly, after the departure of Peter, this gospel which he himself put together having been taken up, he went away into Egypt and, ordained as the first bishop of Alexandria, announcing Christ, he constituted a church there.

[Stephan Huller]

Irenaeus {Adv. Haer. 3 1), that Mark and Luke wrote after Matthew. According to Eusebius (Hist. Eccles. 6. 28), Origen stated that Luke wrote after Matthew and Mark ; but Clement of Alexandria, according to the same writer said the gospels with genealogies came before Mark.

[Stephan Huller]

But according to the testimony of Irenæus (Adversus hœres. iii. 1, 14), of Origen (in Eusebius’ H. E. vi. 25), and of Tertullian (Adv. Marc. iv. 2), the Apostle Paul exercised a direct influence in the composition of this Gospel. The different accounts of the Fathers of the ancient Church may be so harmonized, that Paul was not only the enlightener (illuminator) of Luke during the progress of his work, but that, when completed, it received his approbation. [http://biblehub.com/commentaries/lange/luke/]

[Stephan Huller]

Marcion quoted Paul's statement in Gal l:8f. — "But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed. As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed" — a verse that was widely believed to refer to an actual written gospel in Paul's possession. http://books.google.com/books?id=5KkF2q ... 22&f=false

[Stephan Huller]

It sounds like a reference to a written Gospel when Paul (First Timothy 5:18) quotes "Scripture" as saying that "the worker is worth his wages," a reference which is easily traced to Matthew 10:10 or Luke 10:7 (and is untraceable otherwise). http://books.google.com/books?id=8UjFAZ ... ew&f=false

As such even though the Pastorals were not written by Paul whoever did write them (Polycarp according to von Campenhausen) assumed that Paul knew the/a written gospel. http://books.google.com/books?id=RbGDws ... 22&f=false

[Stephan Huller]

If the fact that the Pauline epistles do not explicitly reference the gospel of Luke or any canonical gospel is proof that the author did not know one, does the same argument also apply for 1 John? In other words, because 1 John doesn't reference a written gospel was 'John' unaware of the gospel of John?

[Clive]

Galatians 1 12 For I would have you know, brethren, that the gospel which was preached by me is not according to man. 12For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 13For you have heard of my former manner of life in Judaism, how I used to persecute the church of God beyond measure and tried to destroy it;…
Cross References
1 Corinthians 2:10
these are the things God has revealed to us by his Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God.

1 Corinthians 11:23
For I received from the Lord what I also passed on to you: The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread,

http://biblehub.com/galatians/1-12.htm

[TedM]

exactly. not from a book. no need for a book.