Did Jesus Exist? - The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth by Bart Ehrman (read book .TXT) 📕

that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and that he was buried.” I will later stress this latter point. Jesus was not only crucified, he was buried. In other words, he died a human death, by execution, at the hands of the Romans, and he really was dead, as evidenced by his burial.

The Teachings of Jesus in Paul

In addition to these data about Jesus’s life and death, Paul mentions on several occasions the teachings he delivered. We have seen two of the sayings of Jesus already from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians (11:22–24). Paul indicates that these words were spoken during Jesus’s Last Supper. These sayings are closely paralleled to the words of Jesus recorded years later in Luke’s account of the supper (Luke 22:19–20).

Two other sayings of Jesus in the book of 1 Corinthians also find parallels in the Gospel tradition. The first occurs in Paul’s instructions about the legitimacy of divorce, where he paraphrases a saying of Jesus in urging believers to remain married; that this is a saying tradition going back to Jesus is shown by the fact that at this point Paul stresses that it is not he who is giving this instruction but that it was already given by the Lord himself: “But to those who are married I give this charge—not I, but the Lord—a woman is not to be separated from her husband (but if she is separated, let her remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and a man should not divorce his wife.”

The statement in the parentheses is widely seen as Paul’s own addition to this commandment from Jesus. Editors and translators normally set it off as a separate part of the sentence with parentheses or brackets. The rest is the command that Paul learned from the Lord himself. And as it turns out, there is a close parallel to the command on the lips of Jesus, for example, in the Gospel of Mark: “And [Jesus] said to them, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery’” (Mark 10:11–12).

It has sometimes been argued that Jesus could not have said such a thing since in Palestine in his days a woman was not permitted to divorce her husband, and therefore Paul cannot really be quoting a saying of Jesus (since he never said it). For example, G. A. Wells argues that what we have here in Paul is not a quotation of the historical Jesus but a prophecy from heaven that came to a Christian prophet, which Paul understood, then, as having come “from the Lord.”13 I will deal with that larger claim momentarily. But at this stage I want to emphasize a couple of points about this particular saying. The most important is that there is an enormous difference between saying that some authorities in Roman Palestine did not allow women to divorce and saying that women did not divorce. Recent studies have shown that Jewish women in fact did divorce their husbands in Palestine, whatever the authorities may have thought about it, so Jesus’s saying does indeed make perfect sense in its context.14 He thought the practice was not good, and he too did not want to permit it.

At the same time, whether or not Jesus really gave this teaching is not directly relevant to the question we are asking here, so Wells’s objection is immaterial. Mark thought Jesus said some such thing, so Paul stays close to what Jesus is alleged to have said. Moreover, Paul indicates that his source for this teaching is not his own wisdom and insight into familial concord but the Lord himself. It looks exceedingly likely that Paul is basing his exhortation on a tradition about divorce that he knows—or thinks he knows—going back to the historical Jesus.

Something similar can be said of yet another instance in 1 Corinthians where Paul appears to refer to a teaching of Jesus. In chapter 9 he addresses the question of whether apostles have the right to be financially supported by others during their missionary efforts. He thinks they have that right even though he himself does not regularly take advantage of it, and he supports his view by appealing to a teaching of Jesus: “For thus the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the Gospel should get their living from the gospel” (1 Corinthians 9:14). It has long been recognized that this command from the Lord is still found in our Gospel traditions, in slightly different forms in Matthew and Luke (that is, it comes from Q). Luke’s version is the most apt. Here Jesus is instructing his disciples what to do as they go about spreading the gospel: “Stay in the same house [that you first come to] and eat and drink whatever they provide. For the worker is worthy of his wages” (Luke 10:7).

In both these instances—as with the sayings Paul quotes from the Last Supper tradition—we have close parallels between what Paul says Jesus said (in a quotation or a paraphrase) and what Jesus is recorded elsewhere as having actually said. This makes it clear to most interpreters of Paul that he really does intend here to quote the teachings of Jesus.

There are no other obvious places where Paul quotes Jesus, although scholars have often found traces of Jesus’s teachings in Paul.15 The big question is why Paul does not quote Jesus more often. This is a thorny issue that will require more sustained reflection at the end of this chapter. For now I need simply to stress the most important point: Paul obviously thought Jesus existed, and he occasionally quoted his teachings.

In several other instances Paul indicates that he is echoing a “word” or “commandment of the Lord.” This happens in his earliest letter, 1 Thessalonians, where he is discussing the future return of Jesus from heaven, when all the dead will be raised and all living believers will join