What did Paul know about Jesus?

Recovering the Historical Jesus in Paul

What Paul knew (or didn’t know) about Jesus is one of the most tantalising questions in Jesus research. Paul was not a follower of Jesus during his lifetime – yet his letters tease us with traditions and echoes of tradition which Paul himself ‘received.’

What do those traditions and echoes teach us about the historical Jesus?

In this piece, I stitch them together to weave a life of Jesus according to Paul. Moving through Jesus’ life from birth to death and beyond, I mine Paul’s letters for clues about Jesus. Along the way, I show how Paul allows us a glimpse behind the Gospels.

Jesus’ Background & Family

There is a long-standing debate about Jesus’ pre-existence in Paul.¹ Many scholars argue for Jesus’ pre-existence from the so-called Philippian Hymn (Jesus was ‘in the form of God;’ 2:7); Paul’s application of YHWH language to Jesus;² and 1 Cor. 8:6 (‘there is one Lord Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.’)³

Yet others dispute the personal character of Jesus’ pre-existence. They argue that Jesus is akin to ‘Wisdom’ in his pre-incarnate form, and that Philippians presents Jesus not as a divine being, but as a type of Adam, who was also made in God’s image.⁴

For our purposes here, we will focus on what Paul knew about Jesus’ earthly background. Three points particularly stand out. First, Paul describes Jesus as born ‘of the seed of David according to the flesh’ (Rom. 1:3). This corroborates a point which receives an extended treatment in later texts: that Jesus was Davidide.

The second is that Paul nowhere mentions Jesus’ virginal conception. Given that Jewish descent in the ancient world was patrilineal rather than matrilineal (as it is today), we might assume then that Paul considered Jesus to have had a normal human father.⁵ This was a perfectly normal messianic expectation in Jewish antiquity.

Some have tried to find the virginal conception in Paul’s statement that Jesus was ‘born of a woman.’ Yet this is to press the phrase too far. In the Greek translation of Job, we find the same expression ‘born of a woman.’ There it refers to a mortal human. Paul is emphasising that Jesus was a human born under the Jewish law.

Finally, Paul tells us that Jesus had a ‘brother’ called James (or Jacob, in Greek), whom he had personally met (Gal. 1:19). This confirms a tradition found in Mark, and repeated by Matthew, that Jesus had a brother called James. This is the same James Josephus describes as ‘James, the brother of the so-called Christ’ (Ant. 20.9.1).

Jesus’ Teaching

Paul does not frequently draw on Jesus tradition in his epistles, preferring instead to argue from the Jewish Scriptures, as he was trained. Yet there are a few places in which Paul will quote a ‘word from the Lord’ as found in the Gospels.

One of the places where Paul cites a teaching of Jesus in in 1 Corinthians 7:10-11:

“To the married I give this command—not I but the Lord—that the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does separate, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband)—and that the husband should not divorce his wife.”

This teaching against divorce is also found in the Synoptic gospels.⁶ Notably, this strict position was not the mainstream view of divorce in Second Temple Judaism. It is therefore something which many scholars think takes us back to the historical Jesus.

What is interesting about this passage is that Paul sources this teaching directly from the Lord, in contrast to his own recommendations later (1 Cor. 7:40). This rubs against the notion that Paul had no interest in the historical Jesus, or that he saw ‘the Lord’ merely a conduit for his own Spirit-inspired teaching.

Paul passes down another tradition of Jesus a few chapters later:

“In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.” (1 Cor. 9:14)

This teaching echoes a passage found in the shared material of Matthew and Luke: ‘the labourer deserved to be paid.’ It is therefore natural that some have taken this saying as evidence for Paul’s knowledge of their hypothetical source, ‘Q’.

Yet as I have said elsewhere, I’m not sure if we need to go this far. Paul probably knew material which found its way into Q, but at this stage there is no reason to posit the ‘Q’ material as a corpus. There is nothing about the wording of Paul’s citation which necessitates the existence of the wider body of material known as ‘Q.’

Echoes of Jesus’ Teaching

In addition to places where Paul cites a teaching of Jesus, scholars have long found echoes of Jesus’ teaching in his letters. Uncontrolled estimates of how many allusions there are reach over a thousand, but there is a much shorter list on firmer ground.

Some of the more promising allusions occur towards the end of Romans. For instance, Rom. 12:14, ‘Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse curse them,’ looks very close to Luke 6:2, ‘Bless those who curse you; pray for those who persecute you.’

This probably goes back to something Jesus himself taught. For a start, both texts use the word eulogeō in the distinctive Jewish sense of blessing rather than speaking well of someone. Moreover, the idea of returning blessing for cursing is found nowhere in Scripture, and the term for cursing is found nowhere in Paul.

Another widely accepted ‘echo’ of Jesus’ teaching is found in Romans 14:14: ‘I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing (οὐδέν) is profane (κοινόν) in itself.’ This appears to echo Jesus’ teaching in Mark 7:15: ‘there is nothing outside a person a person… which is able to defile him.’

To be sure, the practice of declaring all foods may not have meant for Mark what it did for Paul.⁷ For Paul, it meant that Gentiles did not have to keep kosher, yet it seems that Jesus’ disciples did continue to eat according to Jewish food-laws (Acts 10:9-16. Nevertheless, we find here an application of Jesus’ teaching for a later time.

It is interesting to consider why Paul would echo Jesus’ teaching as much as he cites it. One possibility is that he has so internalised the Jesus traditions he has that they have become a part of his own thinking. In this way, Paul would be treating the Jesus tradition in a similar way to Scripture: sometimes he cites it, sometimes he echoes it.

Yet there is perhaps also a social dynamic at work in Paul’s echoes of Jesus’ teaching. It is notable that the echoes appear in his letter to the Church in Rome, whom he had never met. By echoing Jesus teaching, Paul may therefore be forming a social bond – an ironic ‘nod’ – to the teaching which the Church had received in its formation.⁸

The Twelve

We have already seen that Paul was likely aware of a missionary discourse found in Q. But who were Jesus’ disciples? Paul knows of Peter, James and John, whom he refers to as the ‘three pillars’ of the Church. Yet interestingly, Paul also refers to a group known as ‘The Twelve’, whom he describes in relation to an appearance of Jesus.

The most probable idea is that this group, distinct from those Paul calls ‘the apostles’, was a symbolic inner ring which followed Jesus. But why Twelve? Twelve was the original number of the tribes of Israel, but in the Assyrian invasion, ten of the northern tribes were thought to be ‘lost.’ It was only in the messianic age that the Twelve tribes were expected to come together again.

Why then did Jesus form a group called ‘The Twelve’? It is probably because he believed himself to be the figure who was reconstituting the people of Israel. Around his own person, he had gathered twelve disciples, who would sit on the twelve thrones of Judah. A glimpse of Jesus’ vision is already found in Paul’s reference to the Twelve.

Jesus’ Miracles?

One of the most striking omissions in Paul’s knowledge of Jesus miracle-worker. The gospels are full of miracles – more so than comparable ancient texts. Yet Paul does not cite any instance of miracles, despite apparently being a miracle worker himself.

What is going on here? I find it highly improbable that Paul did not know anything about Jesus’ miracle-working ministry, even if he does not cite specific examples. Two factors persuade me of this conclusion:

The first is that Jesus’ ministry of healing and exorcism is well-attested in the gospels. Since Paul had met both Peter and James (Galatians 1), and was exercising his own ministry of healing, it seems likely that Paul knew about Jesus’ ministry and saw his own miracle-working as a continuation of Jesus’ own ministry.⁹

The second is that Paul seems to have known a form of the missionary discourse, shared by Matthew and Luke. And the missionary discourse presents the apostles as carrying out Jesus’ own ministry of healing. It assumes that the ‘good news’ would be manifest in miracles – and this is the same assumption we find in Paul.

The Last Supper

One of the most divisive passages in Paul concerns the last supper:

23 For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus on the night when 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 also he took the cup, after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

One of the big debates about this passage is where Paul got this material. Some think that he received it in an act of ‘divination’ –  a supernatural experience. On this view, when Paul says, ‘I received it from the Lord,’ it is what he privately received.

This is possible. We know that Paul did have private revelations (see 2 Cor. 12:2), and he does not explicitly cite a chain of tradition. The content of the revelation is also somewhat post-hoc, since it is a reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ death.

Yet I am more inclined to think he did not receive this in a revelation. His language of ‘receiving’ and ‘passing on’ anticipates rabbinic language for the handing down of human traditions. More importantly, this does not seem to be the kind of material one receives in a mystical experience, locating a supper ‘on the night he was betrayed.’

Still, this passage raises further questions. What, for example, does Paul mean by ‘the night Jesus was betrayed’. Reading this tradition with the gospels in mind, it would seem that Paul knows about Judas’ betrayal of Jesus. Yet Paul elsewhere uses the same word ‘betrayed’ to refer to God’s ‘handing over’ of Jesus to death (Rom. 4:25; 8:22).

There is also a question on the timing of the last supper. In the Synoptics, the last supper is a Passover meal, while in John it is shorn of its passover setting. But what was it for Paul? Elsewhere in 1 Corinthians, Paul describes Jesus as our ‘paschal lamb’ (5:7) yet it is difficult to make much of this as a chronological reference, since both the Synoptics and John attach Jesus’ death the passover in their own ways.

One clue might be found in Jesus’ interpretation of the elements of the meal: the bread and the wine. This was already a part of Passover practice, and so might suggest a passover setting. Yet this too is undetermined. Notably, the word that Paul uses for bread is artos, which does not have any special connotation of unleavened bread.

Jesus’ Crucifixion

Paul tells us that Jesus was crucified, but he focuses more on the meaning of Jesus’ death than its historical circumstances. He acknowledges that the idea of a crucified messiah would be ‘a stumbling block to the Jews and foolishness to the Greeks’ (1 Cor. 1:22), accurately representing how his contemporaries saw Jesus’ crucifixion.

Why was Jesus put to death? Paul does not give us details, but he places responsibility with ‘the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out’ (1 Thess. 14-15). Here the phrase ‘the Jews’ refers to the Judaean authorities or Jews persecuting the Jesus movement in Judaea, rather than a whole racial group.

Elsewhere, Paul places Jesus’ crucifixion at the hands of ‘the rulers of this age’ (1 Cor. 2:8). The term ‘ruler’ (archōn) is typically used in reference to political rulers. Paul therefore sees the Romans as well as the Judeans as involved with Jesus’ death.

Jesus’ Burial

It was not uncommon for crucifixion victims to be left on a cross without burial. Part of the shame of crucifixion was precisely this; that their victims were left unburied. Yet remarkably, Paul indicates that this was not the case for Jesus: he tells us that Jesus was ‘buried’ (1 Cor. 15:4) and his rhetoric on baptism also assumes Jesus’ burial.

It may be tempting to see this as a corroboration of the gospel account of Jesus’ burial by Joseph of Arimathea. Yet we have to be careful. Unfortunately, as one scholar notes, “Paul’s vanilla statement [about the burial] does not of course tell us anything about the type of burial imagined.”¹⁰

Was Jesus buried by Joseph in his private tomb, as the gospels describe? Or was his body placed in a criminal’s grave, of the sort the Sanhedrin might have owned? Some might suppose that Paul was envisaging the latter, given that he could have used the empty tomb as his apologetic. Yet it is difficult make much of this silence.

Jesus’ Resurrection

After Jesus’ death and burial, Paul tells us that Jesus ‘appeared’ to his disciples. The most instructive passage is 1 Corinthians 15:3-5, which can be set out like a formula:

‘³ For I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received:

that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures ⁴

and that he was buried

and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures ⁵

and that he appeared to Cephas,

then to the twelve.’

⁶ Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died.⁷

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

Scholars commonly identify this as an early formula or creed. This is due to its repetitive language (‘in accordance with the scriptures’ / ‘and that…’ / ‘then to…’ ), the presence of certain Aramaic features (e.g. Peter is called Cephas), as well as the rabbinic-sounding language for the ‘passing on’ and ‘receiving’ of a tradition (v.3).

We garner from this that several followers of Jesus had experiences of him after his death – in one occasion, more than five hundred ‘brothers’ experienced something. But we are afforded painfully little insight into the nature of these experiences.

The term opthé (‘he appeared’) is the same word used to refer to visions of the Lord or angels ‘appearing’ in the Jewish Scriptures. This may seem to suggest a less-than-physical experience. In support of this view, some have taken Paul’s view of Jesus’ ‘spiritual body’ (σῶμα πνευματικόν) to be comprised of a pneumatic “stuff.”¹¹

Other scholars stress the physicality or trans-physicality of the resurrection body. They take Paul’s ‘spiritual body’ not to be a body comprised of spirit but rather animated by it.¹² They also note that prevalent conception of resurrection which Paul shared was a corpse brought back to life – the primary meaning of Paul’s lexis.

To discuss the resurrection may seem out of place in a piece on the historical Jesus. Yet is worth noting that Paul himself saw a fundamental continuity between the Jesus who ‘died…’ and who was ‘raised.’¹³ This may have been a continuity likened to a ‘seed’ and a ‘tree’ – with some obvious differences – but it is a continuity nevertheless.

The Historical Jesus in Paul

What then did Paul know about Jesus’ life? For some scholars, Paul had virtually no interest in the historical Jesus. Yet we can garner the following items from Paul:

• Jesus was of Davidic descent according to the flesh

• Jesus had (at least) one brother called Iakõbos or James

• Paul knew someone called Peter/Cephas and another James,

• There was a group called The Twelve and other ‘apostles.’

• Jesus taught that one ought not to get divorced

• Paul knew other teaching material which would find its way into the gospels

• Paul likely knew of Jesus’ activity as a miracle worker

• Jesus spoke of the ‘new covenant’ in his blood before he died

• Jesus died a shameful death by crucifixion

• Jesus was subsequently buried

• A number of groups and individuals experienced Jesus after his death

Still, there is much that Paul does not say about Jesus. Why he does not say more therefore remains an oddity of the evidence. In our next piece on Paul, then, we shall consider some of the explanations scholars have given for this silence.

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1. Two recent discussions include Andrew Perriman, ‘In the Form of (a) God’ The Pre-existence of the Exalted Christ in Paul. Studies in Early Christology (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2022); Michael F. Michael F. and Joel Willitts (eds.) Paul and the Gospels: Christologies, conflicts and convergences. LNTS 411 (London/New York: T & T Clark).

2. See, for example, Chris Tilling, Paul’s Divine Christology (Túbingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012).

3. See Gordon Fee, Pauline Christology: An Exegetical-Theological Study (Peabody, Mass: Hendrickson Publishers, 2007).

4. See Perriman, Form of (a) God.

5. Andrew T. Lincoln, Born of a Virgin? Reconceiving Jesus in the Bible, Tradition and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2013).

6. See Mk. 10:1-9; Mt. 5:32; 19:9; Lk. 16:18.

7. See Logan Williams, “The Stomach Purifies All Foods: Jesus’ Anatomical Argument in Mark 7.18–19” NTS 70 n.3 (2024): 371-391.

8. James D.G. Dunn, “Jesus Tradition in Paul” in Studying the Historical Jesus: Evaluations of the Current State of Jesus Research, eds. Bruce Chilton, Craig A. Evans (Leiden: Brill, 1994), 155-178.

9. See Graham H. Twelftree, Paul and the Miraculous: A Historical Reconstruction (Grand Rapids, MI: BakerAcademic, 2013).

10. Mark Goodacre, “How Empty was the Tomb?,” JSNT 44 n.1 (2011): 134-148 (138n.18).

11. See Dale B. Martin, Dale B. Martin, The Corinthian Body (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995).

12. N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (London: SPCK, 2003).

13. See James Ware, “The Resurrection of Jesus in the Pre-Pauline Formula of 1 Cor 15.3-5,” NTS 60 (2014): 475-498.