Peter Kirby wrote: ↑Sun Jan 16, 2022 12:34 am
Philologus wrote: ↑Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:17 pm
Why does Paul never quote Jesus, unambiguously, even in contexts where it would have helped his arguments?
1 Corinthians 7
10 And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband: 11 But and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife.
Thanks for bringing up those two examples. Before commenting on them, I'll say that, compared to the sheer wealth of Jesus' parables, sayings and teachings that we have elsewhere, the fact that Paul barely managed to mention those two
possible quotes does very little to explain the mystery in my opinion.
Nevertheless, the two counterexamples are weak in my view. Beginning with the first one:
1- This passage seems more consistent with Paul's general theme of discouraging marriage altogether than Jesus' supposed new teachings regarding divorce and relevant Jewish laws regarding divorce.
2- The quote itself seems like a strange way to quote someone. Why didn't Paul say, "As Jesus said," instead of saying, "Not I, but the Lord"? The phrasing indicates that he's communicating an original idea, not quoting an existing one that people would have been familiar with. It kind of hints at the thought being a revelation that Paul received, not a quotation that other people heard Jesus say, and so he needed to go out of his way to explicitly disambiguate his personal thoughts from revelations he was sharing.
3- Given (1) and (2), it appears to be more likely that the anti-divorce narrative in later traditions actually derived from Paul, if anything, and built on it. Rather than being a guideline for believers to follow (as it first was), it later became an overturning of Mosaic law and a sin.
4- Even if we assume that that passage from Paul is in fact a direct quote from the earthly Jesus, it actually does not necessarily constitute an original teaching, but is rather more consistent with an apocalyptic leader who thought there was not much time for marriage and divorce. The language in Paul does not have the same legalistic phrasing of overturning a law and equating violators with adulterers. So it can be argued that this counterexample is not really a counterexample at all.
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, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.
I also view this as a weak counterexample. It does not constitute an original teaching of Jesus but, if we assume its authenticity, is nothing more than a soon-to-be-martyred leader saying his last words to his followers. My argument was not that Jesus literally never said
anything. I meant to say that he never taught anything new. His significance to his early followers had absolutely nothing to do with any new teachings, but rather his role in an apocalyptic movement that ended with him being executed. As such, the idea of Jesus being a wisdom teacher who had many clever things to teach and routinely impressed his audience and humiliated his opponents seems like a wholesale invention by later generations.