Why Does Paul Say So Little about Jesus?

Explaining a Pauline Lacuna

Why does Paul say so little about the historical Jesus?

Or to put this question more pointedly: why are many of the gospel episodes of Jesus’ life – his parables, miracles, virginal conception and empty tomb – missing from our earliest sources? Do these lacuna signal that Paul lacked interest in Jesus as he lived and walked in first century Palestine? Might it suggest that those episodes were later inventions? Or are there other factors at play?

In this piece, I assess four common explanations of Paul’s silence. I suggest that the silence is suggestive, but not in the way that some scholars have supposed.

1. Paul had no concern for the historical Jesus

In the early to mid-twentieth century, it was common for scholars to argue that Paul had a principled objection to the historical Jesus. To find support for this view, they needed to look no further than Paul’s own words in 2 Corinthians 5:16

‘From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh (kata sarka), we regard him thus no longer.’

Rudolf Bultmann, perhaps the most prolific scholar of the last century, interpreted this verse to mean that Paul had no interest in an earthly Jesus. This was simply not his concern: for Paul, what mattered was Jesus as the risen Lord. He writes,

“The Christos kata sarka is Christ as he can be encountered in the world, before his death and resurrection. He should no longer be viewed as such.”¹

This reading was very convenient for Bultmann’s existentialist interpretation of Jesus. For Bultmann, what mattered was not Jesus the first-century Galilean Jew, but the Christ who confronts us in the proclamation of the Gospel. At most, it was important for Bultmann that there was a Jesus – the dass-ness (‘that-ness’) of Jesus. Yet beyond this, Jesus’ significance was how an individual might respond to him in the present.

Yet is this really what Paul meant when he said that we should not consider Jesus ‘according to the flesh’? That Jesus’ ministry was of no importance? Two factors serve to dismantle this reading, which no longer has traction among scholars.

The first problem is grammatical. When Paul uses kata sarka (according to the flesh) to qualify a person or noun, he always uses it after their name. We might think of Paul’s statement that Jesus is the ‘Son of David according to the flesh’ (Rom. 1:3). Yet here the nouns ‘no one’ and ‘Christ’ come before kata sarka. The expression is therefore being used as adverbially, qualifying the manner in which Christ (and others) are known.²

What then could it mean to ‘know’ Jesus ‘according to the flesh’? Paul does not specify exactly, but it likely means to know Jesus according to a sinful or a worldly perspective. The Jesus Paul knew, for example, from the perspective of someone pursuing the early Jesus movement, was different to his view post-conversion.

This reading is confirmed by Paul’s wider line of reasoning. Paul says that ‘we regard no one according to the flesh.’ If we follow Bultmann’s reading, we would take this mean that Paul no longer considered the earthly life of any individual. Yet this is flatly contradicted by the concern Paul displays for individuals throughout his epistles.

Finally, the idea that Paul had no interest in the historical Jesus is contradicted by the traditions Paul does share in parts of his letters. As I have noted in my piece, What did Paul Know about Jesus? there are a litany of items we can amass from his epistles. These include Jesus’ teaching on divorce, his Davidic lineage, the fact that he had brothers, including one called James, as well as echoes of teaching found also in the gospels.

2. Paul received his revelation from heaven alone

2 Cor. 5:12 may not serve the interpretation that Paul had no interest in the historical Jesus. Yet this not only the only place in Paul’s letters which could support this view.

In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, Paul states that he received his gospel directly, rather than through men. If Paul is referring to the entirety of the gospel message, this would suggest that the content of his gospel was not derived from the Jesus tradition mediated by his disciples, but was received from the risen Jesus. The passage reads:

‘For I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin; for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ’ (Gal. 1:12).

The question is: what is Paul referring to when he describes ‘the gospel’ which he proclaimed? Is he saying that h

is gospel has nothing to do with the historical Jesus?

I find this reading unlikely for a few reasons. First of all, the key issue at stake in Paul’s letter to the Galatians are Jewish-Gentile relations. Paul took the view that Gentiles did not need to adopt the Jewish law but were justified apart from it. Yet he is threatened by some Jews who were prescribing the law on Gentile ‘Christians.’

Paul’s response to this ‘falling away from grace’, as he calls it, is to emphasise the revelation he received from God. He is claiming here that he personally received ‘the gospel he proclaimed’ from the Lord himself. Anyone who tells the Galatians that they should adopt the law is therefore abandoning God’s instruction according to Paul.

In my view, then, when Paul says that he received ‘the gospel’ directly from the Lord, he is referring specifically to his revelation of the gospel: that Gentiles are justified by Jesus, not by becoming partakers in the ‘works of the law’ but through faith itself. In other words, they do not need to make themselves Jewish to be saved by the Messiah.

That Paul is not referring to the bare facts of the gospel is supported by several factors. To begin with, Paul would have already known certain aspects of the life of the historical Jesus. He was pursuing the early Jesus movement as a Pharisee, and therefore he would already have had a good idea of what Jesus’ followers believed.

Secondly, whatever Paul was teaching was apparently not at odds with the earliest followers of Jesus. Paul went on to meet Peter and James and reports that they came to an agreement (2:8-9): he would go to Gentiles, Peter would go to the Jews. Presumably, as C.H. Dodd once quipped, when Paul met Jesus’ disciples, they did not spend all of their time talking about the weather. They would have talked about Jesus.

Finally, we know from elsewhere that Paul did receive several traditions about Jesus from humans. Most notably, in 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, Paul talks about handing on a formula ‘of first importance’ that he had also received. This language of ‘handing’ on and ‘receiving’ is used for rabbinic tradition, and the formula concerns people he had met (Peter and James.) Paul refers to all of this information as ‘the gospel'.

Collectively, this gives me the impression that when Paul is talking about ‘the gospel proclaimed by me’, he is specifically referring to his mission to the Gentiles. A mission which did not require them to take upon the Jewish law. He was not claiming that everything he received was from the risen Jesus, separate from Jesus’ own followers.