CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 10
Paul and the Jerusalem Tradition
1. Paul goes up to Jerusalem
The news of paul’s conversion must have reached Jerusalem long before he himself arrived there. But it was hardly credible. The Ethiopian could more easily change his skin or the leopard its spots than the arch-persecutor become a believer. Might it not be part of a deep-laid plot to gain acceptance within the Christian fellowship so as to deal it a more effective death-blow? The simple-minded and warm-hearted disciples of Damascus might welcome him impulsively as one of themselves, but if he came to Jerusalem it would be best to keep him at arm’s length until his bona fides could be established beyond any doubt.
According to Luke, it was Barnabas whose good offices brought Paul and the leaders of the Jerusalem church together. Although Paul says nothing of this, it is antecedently probable that someone acted as mediator, and all that we know of Barnabas suggests that he was the very man to act in this way. Barnabas first appears in Luke’s narrative as an outstandingly generous contributor to the common fund set up in the primitive Jerusalem church; he is said to have been given this sobriquet by the apostles (in addition to his personal name Joseph) because of his encouraging character.1 And throughout the apostolic record, Barnabas lived up to this reputation: wherever he found a person or a cause needing to be encouraged, he supplied all the encouragement he could. How he was able to assure himself that Paul’s conversion was genuine we are not told, but he was probably in touch with those believing Hellenists who sought refuge in Damascus; he may even have been with them for some time. At any rate his interposition on Paul’s behalf in Jerusalem is completely in character. When Paul sorely needed a friend in Damascus, Ananias filled this rôle, and equally now Barnabas befriended him when he stood in similar need in Jerusalem. His old friends would now repudiate him as a renegade, and new friends could be made only with difficulty in the community which he had harried so ruthlessly. Luke’s introduction of Barnabas here is too particular for it to be regarded as simply part of his generalizing summary of Paul’s present visit to Jerusalem; he draws on precise information when he says that “Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles” (Acts 9:27).
Not to all the apostles, indeed: where Luke generalizes, Paul is specific, and makes it plain that he met only two of them. “I went up to Jerusalem to get to know Cephas”, he says, “and remained with him fifteen days; but I saw none of the other apostles except James the Lord’s brother” (Galatians 1:18 f.). Then he adds a solemn asseveration of the accuracy of his narrative: “In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!” (Galatians 1:20). Evidently some variant account of Paul’s movements and contacts about this time was circulating among his Galatian friends,2 and he swears that his own account is the true one.
2. Paul meets Peter and James
Cephas—the Aramaic Kēphā (“rock” or “stone”) equipped with the Greek termination–s—is Paul’s regular designation for the apostle who is better known to us as Peter (i.e. Petros, the Greek equivalent of Aramaic Kēphā). The purpose of Paul’s going to Jerusalem on this occasion was to make the acquaintance of the leading apostle—and not merely to make his acquaintance but to inquire of him (for this is the force of the verb historēsai which he uses).3 For Peter was a primary informant on matters which it was now important that Paul should know—the details of Jesus’ ministry and the “tradition” of teaching which derived from him. There is in some quarters considerable resistance to the idea that Paul was interested in acquiring information of this kind, but even if Paul had no such interest (which is incredible), what would Peter talk about during those fifteen days? Peter could impart to Paul much information of the kind he sought, more indeed than James could, but there was one thing, he insists, which neither Peter nor James did or could impart to him, and that was his apostolic commission, which he had already received direct from the risen Lord on the Damascus road. His object in going up to Jerusalem was to establish bonds of fellowship with the leaders of the mother church and obtain from them information which could be obtained nowhere else.
Whatever else he obtained by way of information, he himself indicates in another place two facts at least which he learned. We have already quoted the list of Jesus’ resurrection appearances of which Paul reminds his Corinthian readers.4 In that list two individuals are mentioned by name as having seen the risen Christ, and two only: “he appeared to Cephas” and “he appeared to James” (1 Corinthians 15:5, 7). It is no mere coincidence that these should be the only two apostles whom Paul claims to have seen during his first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion.
The resurrection appearance to Peter is independently attested in Luke 24:34. The appearance to James reappears, with what are probably legendary embellishments, in the Gospel according to the Hebrews,5 but the tradition thus embellished is quite probably not derived from Paul.
James, with other members of the family of Jesus, does not appear to have been a follower of his before his death; indeed, the family as a whole appears to have viewed Jesus’ public activity with aloofness, not to say hostility. Yet after Jesus’ resurrection his mother and brothers are found in association with the apostles and other disciples. The brothers became figures of note in the church at large, and James in particular occupied an increasingly influential position in the church of Jerusalem. If we look for some explanation of their sudden change in attitude towards Jesus, we can find it in the statement that in resurrection he appeared to James.
Peter and James appear to have been the respective leaders of two distinct groups within the primitive church of Jerusalem. The group led by Peter met in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark: it was to this group that Peter made his way, a few years after this, when he unexpectedly escaped from Herod Agrippa’s prison; and when he took his leave of them he said, “Tell this to James and to the brethren” (Acts 12:17)—meaning presumably the brethren more closely associated with James.
It may be concluded, then, that during Paul’s fifteen days with Peter in Jerusalem he called on James and heard his side of the story. If Peter told him how the risen Lord had appeared not only to himself but also to “the twelve” and again to “more than five hundred brethren at one time”, James told him how he had appeared not only to him but also to “all the apostles”. For Paul, “the apostles” were not restricted to “the twelve”; he counts James as an apostle, according to the most probable sense of Galatians 1:19, “I saw none of the other apostles [apart from Cephas] except James the Lord’s brother”.6 If the qualification of an apostle was to have been commissioned by the risen Christ, then James apparently had the same claim to the designation as Paul himself had.
This series of resurrection appearances, together with the preceding statements “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3 f.), Paul says he “received” by way of tradition, as in turn he delivered it to his converts.7 Tradition was a living and growing thing in the first-century church: the tradition which Paul delivered was fuller than what he received, for he was able to amplify the record of appearances of the risen Lord with his personal testimony: “Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me” (1 Corinthians 15:8).8 This does not exhaust what Paul claims to have received by tradition—the tradition included an account of words and actions of the historical Jesus (pre-eminently his words and actions at the institution of the Lord’s Supper) and some guide-lines and principles of Christian conduct9—but it has special importance as an outline of early Christian preaching, a kerygmatic outline, to use modern theological jargon. Whatever differences might develop between Paul’s preaching and that of the Jerusalem leaders, they were agreed on this: “whether then it was I or they”, he says to the Corinthians at the end of this outline: “so we preach and so you believed” (1 Corinthians 15:11).
3. Revelation and tradition
It was almost certainly during these fifteen days in Jerusalem that Paul received this outline. But this raises the question of the relation between his insistence in Galatians 1:12 that he did not “receive” his gospel from man, since “it came through a revelation of Jesus Christ”, and his statement in 1 Corinthians 15:3 (and elsewhere) that he did “receive” it. The Greek verb rendered “receive” in both places is paralambanō, which implies receiving by tradition, especially when it is accompanied by the correlative verb paradidōmi,10 which implies handing on what one has thus received. Evidently Paul was aware of a sense in which he had not received the gospel by tradition, and a sense in which he had. What, then, was the relation in his mind between the gospel as revelation and the gospel as tradition?
The gospel as revelation was what accomplished his conversion. Others had confessed Jesus as the risen Lord before he did, but it was not their testimony that moved him to make that confession his own. Their testimony moved him rather to oppose them with might and main: it was blasphemy in his ears. The one thing that could have convinced Paul that Jesus was indeed the risen Lord was the Damascus-road revelation: the risen Lord appeared to him in person and introduced himself as Jesus. This was henceforth the heart of his gospel: he owed it to no witness on earth but to that “revelation of Jesus Christ”.11
Wrapped up in that revelation, as Paul proceeded to unpack it, was much that was distinctive of the gospel as he understood and proclaimed it. His concept of the church as the body of Christ, for example, and of individual Christians as members of that body, may go back to the implication of the risen Lord’s complaint: “why do you persecute me?” With this was bound up his understanding of Christian existence “in Christ”—an existence in which social, racial and other barriers within the human family were done away with. Among those barriers none was so important in Paul’s eyes as that between Jew and Gentile. If before his conversion he looked upon it as one that had to be maintained at all costs, after his conversion he devoted himself to demolishing it, doing in practice what had been done in principle by Christ on the cross.12 This insight was implicit in his call to preach Christ among the Gentiles, which was contemporaneous with his conversion. As he himself, a Jew by birth, had received new life in Christ through faith, apart from the works of the law, so they, Gentiles by birth, could similarly receive new life in Christ through faith, apart from the works of the law, and thus enjoy an equal status in the redeemed community with himself and other believing Jews. Through Paul’s ministry in particular “the mystery hidden for ages and generations” was disclosed in all its fulness—the mystery which, as he told the Colossians, was summed up in the message: “Christ in you [in you Gentile believers as well as in Jewish believers], the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:26 f.). In other words, he viewed himself as chosen by heavenly grace in order that the saving purpose of God, conceived in Christ before all worlds, might be made effective in Christ through his ministry, and might in due course be consummated when everything in the universe was reconciled and united in Christ.
We may say then, in general, that those aspects in Paul’s ministry which were distinctively his belong to the gospel as revelation, while those elements which he shared with others (apart from his unmediated recognition of Jesus as the Son of God) belong to the gospel as tradition, and in the first instance, to the information he received in Jerusalem when he went up there to make inquiry of Peter in the third year after his conversion.
We have already considered the account of appearances of the risen Christ which he says that he received—evidently on that occasion. But the series of resurrection appearances is preceded by three clauses which he includes in what he received and then delivered to his converts “as of first importance”—(a) “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures”, (b) “that he was buried”, (c) “that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures”. The fact that each of these three clauses, like the fourth which follows (“and that he appeared …”), is introduced by the conjunction “that” indicates that Paul presents them as successive quotations from his source.
(a) Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures. Does the whole of this clause belong to the tradition, or does part of it represent Paul’s interpretation of the tradition? The words “in accordance with the scriptures” certainly correspond to a primitive emphasis in the gospel story, an emphasis which is recognizable in every area of New Testament teaching—in the non-Pauline letters as clearly as in the Pauline, in the speeches of Acts and in all the strands which have been woven together to produce the material of the four Gospels. The earliest Gospel, for example, introduces itself with prophetic quotations and represents Jesus as submitting to his captors with the words, “Let the scriptures be fulfilled” (Mark 1:2f.; 14:49). That Christ died “in accordance with the scriptures” was part of the early apostolic witness. When Peter, in the temple court at Jerusalem, says with reference to the condemnation of Jesus that “what God foretold by the mouth of all his prophets, that his Christ should suffer, he thus fulfilled” (Acts 3:18), his words are summarized in Luke’s idiom but express a primitive belief. If we ask where in the prophetic oracles it was foretold that the Christ was to suffer, an answer is offered by this same speech, which begins with the announcement that “the God of our fathers glorified his servant Jesus” who was disowned by his people—an echo of the fourth Isaianic Servant Song, where the Servant who has been “despised and rejected by men” is “exalted and lifted up” by God (Isaiah 52:13; 53:3; cf. Acts 3:13).13
But what of the statement that Christ died “for our sins”—could that belong to the tradition which Paul received, especially to the Jerusalem tradition? It is pointed out that if the early speeches in Acts reflect the Jerusalem tradition, the expiatory significance of the death of Christ is not a prominent feature in them; in fact the one speech in Acts where it does find expression is Paul’s speech to the elders of the Ephesian church, whom he exhorts “to feed the church of God which he purchased with the blood of his beloved one”(Acts 20:28).14
Now clearly Paul, in writing as he does to the Corinthians, may have reproduced what he received in his own words and with his own emphasis. But his is not the only New Testament tradition to attach expiatory importance to the death of Christ. The writer to the Hebrews portrays Christ as priest and victim in one, who by his self-offering “made purification for sins” (Hebrews 1:3); the readers of 1 Peter are reminded that they were “ransomed … with the precious blood of Christ” (1 Peter 1:18 f.); the readers of 1 John are assured that “the blood of Jesus … cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7), and the seer of Patmos speaks of Christ as “him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (Revelation 1:5).15 Above all, the earliest Gospel reports Jesus as telling his disciples that “the Son of man came … to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45)—a form of words which, in a Jewish context at that time, implies an atonement for their sins, whether or not it echoes the prophet’s language about the Servant who “makes himself an offering for sin”, thus causing “many to be accounted righteous” (Isaiah 53:10 f.).16
Thus, even if those are right who maintain that Luke presents a theologia gloriae rather than a theologia crucis, the wide spread of the theologia crucis in the New Testament writings indicates that it is not peculiar to Paul but is more probably pre-Pauline, going back in fact to Jesus’ own understanding of his death.
In the early speeches of Acts, however, forgiveness of sins is linked with faith in Christ. “To him”, says Peter in the house of Cornelius, “all the prophets bear witness that every one who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (Acts 10:43). If the atoning virtue of his death is not expressly mentioned in such utterances, it is difficult to see how it could be absent from the thought of those who made forgiveness of sins dependent not on repentance in general but specifically on faith in the crucified and exalted Jesus. And when we find Jesus plainly identified with the Isaianic Servant of Yahweh, it is unlikely that those who made this identification did not draw the natural conclusion from the Servant’s bearing “the sin of many” when he “poured out his soul to death”17 (Isaiah 53:12)—the natural conclusion being that this was what Jesus did.
We cannot, then, too readily assume that the phrase “for our sins” is Paul’s epexegetic gloss on the statement that “Christ died” and that it could not have belonged to the tradition which he received.
Some scholars have detected a Semitic (more specifically, an Aramaic) substratum beneath the Greek text of the clause, “Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.”18 Others doubt this, on the highly improbable ground that the Greek phrase “in accordance with the scriptures” has no Aramaic equivalent. Such questions are precarious and unimportant. In whatever language Paul received the tradition, he delivered it to his converts in Greek, and was under no compulsion, when he did so, to reproduce Aramaic idiom or anything of the sort.
One element in the debate about a Semitic substratum is the absence of the Greek definite article before the word “Christ”.19 This really proves nothing one way or the other. Much more significant is the use of the designation “Christ”, whether with or without the article. It reminds us that the gospel from the beginning proclaimed Jesus as Messiah. If a pagan said “Christ died”—as when Tacitus, for example, says “Christ was executed”20 he would be making a simple statement of fact, not a theological affirmation for him “Christ” would be nothing more than an alternative name for Jesus. But for a first-century Jew to say “Christ died” involves an assessment of the person who died, an acknowledgment that Jesus was the Lord’s anointed. This first clause in the tradition, then, enshrines three theological propositions: that Jesus was the Messiah, that he died for his people’s sins, and that this death of his took place in fulfilment of prophetic scripture.
(b) Christ … was buried. This second clause may be an appendix to the first (“Christ died …”) as the fourth clause (“he appeared …”) is appended to the third (“he was raised …”).21 Even so, the fact that the burial is given a clause to itself suggests that it was an independent feature in the tradition. Why should this be so? The fact of burial sometimes receives special mention in order to underline the reality and finality of death. “David both died and was buried”, says Peter on the day of Pentecost, “and his tomb is with us to this day” (Acts 2:29). But more than this is implied in the present context: the burial sets the seal on the death, no doubt, but it also provides the background for the resurrection. The resurrection was the reversal of the death and burial, and Paul’s giving the burial separate mention points to the motif of the empty tomb. “What he has to say about the resurrection of Jesus in 1 Cor. 15”, wrote S. H. Hooke, “clearly implies that he did not believe that the body of the Lord remained in the grave. The absence, however, of any reference to the fact that the grave was empty, shows that he did not regard it as a proof of the resurrection”.22 The emptiness of the tomb in itself might simply mean that the body had been removed. But if the body had still been there, that would have constituted a refutation of the resurrection claim, no matter how confidently the disciples maintained that the risen Lord had appeared to them. Hence the separate clause: “he was buried”.
(c) Christ … was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures. It may be that this third clause makes two distinct statements about the resurrection of Christ: first, that it took place “on the third day”, and second, that it took place “in accordance with the scriptures”.23 If this is so, then we are not obliged to find Old Testament scriptures which could point to resurrection on the third day. Such scriptures have indeed been adduced, but their relevance is doubtful. There is the frequently cited passage in Hosea 6:2, “after two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him”—but it is hardly a natural testimonium of the Messiah’s resurrection. Even less natural as such a testimonium is Isaiah’s assurance to Hezekiah: “on the third day you shall go up to the house of Yahweh” (2 Kings 20:5). As for Jonah, he is not said to have emerged from the fish’s belly “on the third day”, although his remaining there for “three days and three nights” appears as a resurrection testimonium in another and non-Pauline context (Matthew 12:40). The waving of the sheaf of first fruits before God on “the morrow after the sabbath” (Leviticus 23:9–21) may influence Paul’s statement later in the same chapter that “Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20);24 but that is part of Paul’s own exposition of the subject, and “the morrow after the sabbath” was not necessarily “the third day” after Passover (although it may have been so in the year of Jesus’ death and resurrection).
If the third day be dissociated from the phrase “in accordance with the scriptures”, then we are less restricted in identifying those Old Testament passages to which the tradition may have made appeal. If the fourth Servant Song provided a testimonium for the death of Christ, it could also have provided a testimonium for his resurrection (as it clearly does for his exaltation): the Servant who “was cut off out of the land of the living” is promised that he will “prolong his days” and “see light25 after the travail of his soul” (Isaiah 53:8, 10 f.). Then there are other testimonia adduced in the speeches of Acts: for example, “thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades, nor let thy holy one see corruption” (Psalm 16:10, quoted in Acts 2:27; 13:35). This expression of confidence, ascribed to David, is seen in the apostolic preaching to have found its fulfilment in Messiah, the son of David, by whose resurrection God made good to his people “the holy and sure blessings of David” (Acts 13:34, quoting Isaiah 55:3).26 Such testimonia, depending for their relevance on the identification of Jesus as the son of David, might be expected to figure in the Jerusalem tradition.
The statement that it was “on the third day” that Christ rose is based not on any Old Testament scripture but on historical fact. Such an expression as “after three days” (not to speak of “three days and three nights”), used in predictions of the resurrection before the event (e.g. in Mark 8:31), might have the general sense of “in a short time”; but after the event we regularly find it dated “on the third day”, because it was actually on the third day that the tomb was found empty and Jesus first appeared in resurrection to Peter and others. It was these appearances that certified that he was risen: “The early Christians did not believe in the resurrection of Christ because they could not find his dead body. They believed because they did find a living Christ.”27
Jerusalem commends itself as the fountain-head of the tradition which Paul says he received. Nothing that he might be told in Damascus or anywhere else could compare in authority with what Peter and James could provide. To the end of his active life, whatever tensions might develop between him and the Jerusalem leaders, Jerusalem remained in Paul’s eyes the headquarters of the faith; the church in that city was the mother-church and was to be esteemed as such. It was to the disciples in Jerusalem that the Spirit of Christ was first given after his exaltation, and if Paul received the same Spirit in Damascus, that bound him the more closely to the original Spirit-baptized community. His receiving of the Spirit was one aspect of the revelation which dawned upon him on the Damascus road and during the days immediately following, but in the fellowship of the Spirit he gladly assimilated the tradition delivered to him in Jerusalem by those who were apostles before him.
When all this has been said, however, about the gospel as revelation and the gospel as tradition, it should be added that for Paul the gospel was more than a body of affirmations or factual data. The gospel was also for him, it has been said, “an on-going entity ‘in’ which one can ‘be’ or ‘stand’ ” (cf. 1 Corinthians 15:1), God’s powerful agency for the salvation of believers (cf. Romans 1:16); it was “the field of God’s activity as it touches man’s life”;28 it was God’s comprehensive plan for the redemption of all creation (cf. Rom. 8:19–23); it was the Christ-event in its total outreach. Within this gospel’s field of force Paul himself stood; to its service he knew himself called and consecrated;29 in its saving dynamism he participated, and this participation carried its own reward with it (cf. 1 Corinthians 9:16–23).
4. Paul leaves for Syria and Cilicia
When the fifteen days in Jerusalem were up, Paul departed, he says, for “the regions of Syria and Cilicia” (Galatians 1:21)—that is, for his native territory (the united province of Syria-Cilicia). Luke gives us further details: short as his visit was, Paul’s life was threatened by the Hellenists, presumably his old associates who had formerly mounted the attack on Stephen and others and who now regarded their lost leader as a traitor to the cause. Paul did not remain in hiding in Peter’s lodging during his visit to Jerusalem. It is in the context of this visit that we should most naturally place his visit to the temple referred to in Acts 22:17–21, when the risen Lord appeared to him again and confirmed afresh that his vocation was to the Gentiles, not to his fellow-Jews in Jerusalem.30 Perhaps his return to Jerusalem as a Christian filled Paul with a burning desire to witness to his former companions, but he was assured that he was the last person to whose testimony they would listen, For his own safety, then, his new friends took him down to Caesarea and saw him on board a ship bound for Tarsus (Acts 9:29 f.).
This detail, like the earlier reference to Barnabas, does not appear to be part of Luke’s generalizing summary here. At any rate, when Paul’s new friends saw the sail of his ship disappearing beneath the horizon, they probably breathed a sigh of relief and returned to Jerusalem with a sense of relaxation. Paul in his persecuting days had been a thorn in their flesh, but they were to learn that Paul the Christian also could be a disturbing presence, and trouble was liable to break out every time he visited Jerusalem. For the present, however, as Luke says, “the church … had peace” (Acts 9:31).31