Why Paul never quotes Jesus
Posted: Sat Jan 15, 2022 11:17 pm
Why does Paul never quote Jesus, unambiguously, even in contexts where it would have helped his arguments?
Some people see "Paul's silence" as evidence that Jesus never existed. Others say that it was natural given that the recipients of the letters were familiar with Jesus' sayings or had access to them in some form, so there was no need to repeat them.
There is something strange about Paul's silence, given who he thought Jesus was, yet didn't bother to repeat anything Jesus said at all.
Alternative explanation (from a historicist's perspective):
Perhaps none of the sayings attributed to Jesus are authentic -- and scholars already agree many of them aren't -- simply because Jesus never said anything original, aside from teaching and quoting Hebrew scriptures. So if Paul were to quote Jesus, he would say, "Jesus said that the scriptures say so-and-so," which would be unnecessary.
Paul never quoted Jesus simply because there was nothing to quote. Jesus' teachings were identical to every other apocalyptic figure from his time, teachings that were based entirely on the Hebrew scriptures, which Paul himself used, as did all the other early Christians, to create the apocalyptic/Messianic narrative we're familiar with, regardless of whether Jesus saw himself as the focus of that narrative or his followers reached that conclusion after his death.
In other words, Jesus didn't have any original things to say. He was a leader of a movement who was executed, giving rise to later explanations of his death. That movement's ideology was all based on pre-existing content in the scriptures (Isaiah, Daniel, etc.), not on any original content provided by Jesus himself.
Paul never quoted Jesus because Jesus always just quoted the Hebrew scriptures, nothing more. All the sayings/parables attributed to him were later inventions.
Some people see "Paul's silence" as evidence that Jesus never existed. Others say that it was natural given that the recipients of the letters were familiar with Jesus' sayings or had access to them in some form, so there was no need to repeat them.
There is something strange about Paul's silence, given who he thought Jesus was, yet didn't bother to repeat anything Jesus said at all.
Alternative explanation (from a historicist's perspective):
Perhaps none of the sayings attributed to Jesus are authentic -- and scholars already agree many of them aren't -- simply because Jesus never said anything original, aside from teaching and quoting Hebrew scriptures. So if Paul were to quote Jesus, he would say, "Jesus said that the scriptures say so-and-so," which would be unnecessary.
Paul never quoted Jesus simply because there was nothing to quote. Jesus' teachings were identical to every other apocalyptic figure from his time, teachings that were based entirely on the Hebrew scriptures, which Paul himself used, as did all the other early Christians, to create the apocalyptic/Messianic narrative we're familiar with, regardless of whether Jesus saw himself as the focus of that narrative or his followers reached that conclusion after his death.
In other words, Jesus didn't have any original things to say. He was a leader of a movement who was executed, giving rise to later explanations of his death. That movement's ideology was all based on pre-existing content in the scriptures (Isaiah, Daniel, etc.), not on any original content provided by Jesus himself.
Paul never quoted Jesus because Jesus always just quoted the Hebrew scriptures, nothing more. All the sayings/parables attributed to him were later inventions.