Why Paul never quotes Jesus

[spin]

Given that Paul is our earliest writer on the subject of Jesus, you must not retroject ideas from later works to bring Paul into their fold. Relevance in tradition only goes foward, not backward. We must look at Paul's Jewish cultural background to contextualise and understand him. That's why we look at the LXX, intertestamental works and the works of Philo to develop a picture of Paul. It is out of these that Paul's thought bloomed.

I understand your point, and I agree with what you mean, but if the topic is the number of times Paul quotes Jesus, then examining contemporaries and near-contemporaries who wrote letters where Jesus might have been expected to have been quoted must also be useful. Looking at the LXX, intertestamental works and the works of Philo in that regard will be short work! Though obviously they are useful in other contexts.

The problem is that often whenever the topic is "Why did Paul...?", the comparison point is the Gospels. When Paul is put into context with other early writings, the content of Paul isn't so odd or unexpected.

What other early writings though? Beside the older contemporary Philo I don't know what other writings you are referring to. Can you date any works to Paul's era, which I presume is pre-Jewish war, given his free access to Jerusalem implied in Galatians.

And one has to decide how much of Paul's letters is his work and how much is later incrustations, remembering the title of J.C. O'Neill's essay "Paul wrote some of all, but not all of any". Adding to Paul's work helped to bring him into the fold. Consider the Petrine inclusion in Gal 2:7b-8: after Paul talks about the uniqueness of the one gospel, the one he was given by revelation, we learn in Gal 2:7b-8 that there is a gospel to the circumcised, that of the apostle Peter, and one to the uncircumcised, that of Paul. This is the only Pauline passage that mentions Peter. Paul generally uses Cephas, so people make ad hoc excuses for Peter's appearance here. Paul's work preserved by Christian scribes is fair game for orthodox improvement.

Fair point. Why didn't the Christian scribes add quotes from the Gospel Jesus into Paul, in your opinion?

I'd say the inclusion of the Lucan last supper in the midst of Paul's criticism of the Corinthians for abusing his association feast in 1 Cor 11:23-27 is a quote added into Paul. But then, there is no reason to think that additions need only be from the gospels. What about the weird hair covering passage in 1 Cor 11:2-16? Many scholars have considered various passage to be additions. There's a long list in Wm O. Walker's essay "Interpolations in the Pauline Letters" (The Pauline Canon, ed. Stanley Porter, 2004 -- which also includes the J.C. O'Neill paper I mentioned earlier.)

That there wasn't much gospel material just means that it wasn't generally necessary. The gospels existed by then so why not just refer to them. The problem with Paul was that he seemed to be a lone penman and needed to lose his uniqueness and make way for the apostolic tradition to counter second century inroads by other Christianities, such as the Marcionites and Valentinians. Acts helped in this regarding, ie situating Paul into developed Christianity. I hope some of this answers your following question.

Do you think they thought that Paul's writings didn't need that particular kind of improvement?

[GakuseiDon]

You are a historicist, in that you apply some notion of historicity to what you consider relevant sources to argue that Jesus participated in life on earth.

That's right. My position is that a historical Jesus is the best explanation for the texts that we see in earliest Christianity. But I've always maintained that the texts can't be used to reconstruct an accurate picture of that Jesus, so that the statement "a historical Jesus existed" is an all but empty one.

I understand from what Paul says that he believed Jesus participated in life on earth. What you do here and what Paul does is quite different. In fact most people through the ages have believed like Paul that Jesus had an earthly life. There is no analytical interaction with historical sources involved in that belief. Yes, a lot of people bandy about "historical Jesus" as a modern mantra without understanding it, at best using it in contrast to the magic Jesus notion. It is a misuse. Historical Jesus requires some notion of source-based analysis, rather than simple belief.

We don't really know where Paul got his information from other than scriptures and visions, because he doesn't tell us. All we have are hints. If reconstructions of time and place are anything to go by, Paul must have had resources not available to us today. But thats an assumption. I'm happy to make those assumptions for myself, but I understand my assumptions don't make for evidence for anyone else.

The problem is that often whenever the topic is "Why did Paul...?", the comparison point is the Gospels. When Paul is put into context with other early writings, the content of Paul isn't so odd or unexpected.

What other early writings though? Beside the older contemporary Philo I don't know what other writings you are referring to. Can you date any works to Paul's era, which I presume is pre-Jewish war, given his free access to Jerusalem implied in Galatians.

No. By necessity, it is in comparison with those letters that are the earliest (which is hard to determine in itself) but which almost certainly post-date Paul. Better if they were contemporaries with Paul, but we have what we have.

Fair point. Why didn't the Christian scribes add quotes from the Gospel Jesus into Paul, in your opinion?

I'd say the inclusion of the Lucan last supper in the midst of Paul's criticism of the Corinthians for abusing his association feast in 1 Cor 11:23-27 is a quote added into Paul. But then, there is no reason to think that additions need only be from the gospels. What about the weird hair covering passage in 1 Cor 11:2-16? Many scholars have considered various passage to be additions. There's a long list in Wm O. Walker's essay "Interpolations in the Pauline Letters" (The Pauline Canon, ed. Stanley Porter, 2004 -- which also includes the J.C. O'Neill paper I mentioned earlier.)

That there wasn't much gospel material just means that it wasn't generally necessary. The gospels existed by then so why not just refer to them. The problem with Paul was that he seemed to be a lone penman and needed to lose his uniqueness and make way for the apostolic tradition to counter second century inroads by other Christianities, such as the Marcionites and Valentinians. Acts helped in this regarding, ie situating Paul into developed Christianity. I hope some of this answers your following question.

Yes, thank you. Interesting as always. There isn't much I can disagree on, not that I'm claiming to have the knowledge to either agree or disagree!

The question of what interpolations are placed into Paul and why is an area I'd like to look into at some point. They seem to be a link between the Christianity of Paul's time and the later Christianity that came out of proto-orthodoxy. Thanks spin.

[davidmartin]

This is more falllacy -

what i am saying is that his letters document the historicity of the movement in the time they were written and his letters are not abstract arbitrary constructs but genuine relics and drawing something concrete from them is possible. I don't understand your objection. I'm only interested in what actually happened

It's circular 'reasoning' [and more]. Do better or gtfo

MrMacSon doesn't want to talk about stuff if it doesn't fit his own beliefs, but this is called a 'forum' for a reason. enjoy the sound of the word ... forum ... it sounds good doesn't it? Yes because we both can say what we think is true, and debate it. My point is that the Pauline epistles document a historical Pauline movement as the most logical explanation for what they are, because no-one could have invented such a bizarre character otherwise