Paul's Ground-Zero Witness to Resurrection

Here is the first study in the series, Christian Origins, Earliest Christianity in Paul & Acts.  Enjoy! 

The study followed a simple but intriguing trail of evidence in the New Testament about the date of Paul's conversion. It was very early, very close to the time of Jesus. Early enough in fact to make Paul a primary witness to the ground-zero tradition of resurrection appearances!

And here's what's critical about that. Paul was far too steeped in the Old Testament world view--and specifically the hope for national Israel's vindication from her enemies--to think in terms of any purely spiritual or mental resurrection. If the early Christian movement had intended anything ethereal like that, its claims would not have been in the same world as Paul inhabited. Resurrection for him was a divinely orchestrated physical vindication over Israel's earthly enemies, including the dead killed in earlier persecution. (See the book of Daniel.) The fact that primitive Christianity claimed the resurrection had occurred to a crucified Messianic pretender (viz. a failure), and only to him, was certainly a good reason for him to be outraged.

Paul had to have recognized in the primitive Christian movement a real claim to real resurrection to be upset. So, if we trace his conversion back to the earliest years we must hear this claim made at that primitive level.

At Acts 18:1-4 we read that Paul was in Corinth shortly after the Jews had been expelled from Rome under the Emperor Claudius. The expulsion is placed at about the year 49CE by historians, so that places Paul in Corinth in the year 50 to 51. This date is solidly confirmed by information at verses 12-15 of the same chapter. We find out there that Paul was in Corinth while Gallio was governor. From an inscription found at Delphi we know the latter was proconsul in this region from 51-52. Paul stayed in the city for an extended period so it is highly likely he was there in 51, and perhaps 50. It would have taken Paul a good year and a half to walk from Antioch to Corinth (three thousand miles), with stops along the way to evangelize (the "the second missionary journey"). Which gets us back to 50, 49 or even 48.

The second missionary journey begins at Acts 15:36 after the big meeting in Jerusalem described from the beginning of chapter 15 and known as the Council of Jerusalem. There is an indeterminate period for Paul in Antioch subsequent to the meeting ("after some days" at v. 36 probably means at least weeks if not months; see v. 35) so we can be pretty confident of a generally accepted date for this meeting as 48-49, i.e. before the journey. The meeting is absolutely crucial for the early church and Luke places it right at the center of Acts. It's possible Luke idealized the formality of the debate but he shows us James (the brother of the Lord) playing the decisive role, above Peter! And given Luke's clear acknowledgment elsewhere of Peter as leader of the apostles the contradiction has to be historical. In other words James of Jerusalem made a crucial ruling allowing the Gentile mission. And at this point Paul really needed the ruling, to make sure his interpretation of the Christian movement would not be negated from its spiritual base in Jerusalem.

According to Luke Paul was actually present for the ruling, but we don't have to rely just on him. At Galatians 2:1-10 Paul gives us his first hand description of a meeting with James, Cephas (Peter) and John which differs in some details with the description in Acts 15 but in other details is remarkably consistent (especially the core theological motivation; c.f. Acts 15:1, and Galatians 2:4). For our purposes what really grabs the attention is Paul's own note on chronology. At 2:1 he specifies "fourteen years" as the time that passed before this key visit. Passed since when? There is confusion as to whether the fourteen years is after Paul's conversion (1:13-17), or after the Paul's initial visit to Cephas and James three years following his conversion (1:18-19). In any case with these intervening years we have to say at the most conservative Paul was converted fourteen years before 48-49, i.e. 34-35 CE. If we add in the other three years it's also possible he was converted in 31-32

In conclusion therefore we are obliged to say that, depending on when Jesus was crucified (generally agreed to be either 30 or 33CE), Paul was converted between five years or one year after Jesus' death. My own instinct is to add the fourteen and three years together so Paul is converted approximately one to two years after Jesus' death in 30. The NRSV Study Bible in fact adds those two amounts together (p. 2082), probably because the Greek text leans in that direction (it can be read "through fourteen years more").

Which is all a way of placing Paul's narrative at 1 Corinthians 15:1-8 of the resurrection tradition at this extremely early period. What Paul, therefore, is talking about when he says "I passed on to you...what I in turn had received" is a tradition he received some time around 32CE. Some of it would have come from Ananias at Damascus, and the rest from Peter three years later.

The core tradition of a bodily resurrection, therefore, is captured for us by the witness of Paul within a space of one to two years after the date of Jesus' death.