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Scholars differ widely as to what Paul actually knew about Jesus. Remember, it was a time of anticipation, and it was the yearning for the coming of Israel’s long-awaited Messiah that aroused hopes in Paul’s time. The Dead Sea Scrolls of Qumran, with their emphasis on the imminence of the coming of both a priestly and a political Messiah, along with the esoteric writings preserved in Psalm of Solomon and 1 Enoch were in the air. The Baptist’s appearance, along with Jesus’, seemed to set the stage. Indeed, the time was right for the appearance of the king whom the Solomon passage hails as “the son of David . . . the Lord Messiah” (Pss. Sol. 17). In that light, it is not surprising that Paul rarely mentions the historical Jesus by name. His concerns are for the Messiah, who has come to initiate the kingdom, who will come again to fulfill it, and who is God’s Son, descended from the house of David. It is this person, this reality, this event that absorbs Paul’s interest rather than the Jesus of Nazareth, whose story had yet to be written. For Paul, the good news is about “Christ Jesus,” or “Jesus Christ our Lord,” crucified and raised from the dead, whose meaning must be seized, proclaimed, and expounded.

Paul rarely refers to “Jesus” by name, although in 2 Corinthians he does mention the name of “Jesus” at least five times, but only in reference to his death and resurrection. Otherwise, in something of an inverse proportion, Paul refers to Jesus as the “Christ” no less than two-hundred-and-forty-one times. In contrast, the Gospels mention the name “Christ” only five times: three in John’s Gospel and twice in Mark’s. For Paul, Christ has already superseded the historical Jesus in terms of the role he plays in enabling followers to become “new creations” in the kingdom of God. This should give pause to any reader from the start, for it emphasizes Paul’s estimate of Jesus as the divinely revealed Redeemer sent from God to rescue and liberate all humankind, rather than focusing on the historical Jesus and his unique message concerning the in-breaking of God’s kingdom. Such is the role of the Universal Christ over the individual in all of his or her individuality. Paul makes it clear: “From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (2 Cor 5:16–17).

This is not to say that Paul knew only of Jesus’ death and resurrection. Undoubtedly he gleaned significant information from a variety of encounters with Jesus’ followers. F. F. Bruce argues that Paul was familiar with a number of Jesus’ statements, which he possibly acquired while Paul was in Antioch or during his fifteen-day visit in Jerusalem with Peter. In his book Paul, Apostle of the Heart Set Free, Bruce references no less than five major subject headings echoing sayings attributed to Jesus. Paul uses these “quotes” to support the authority of his own message. Bruce catalogs these five areas as divorce and marriage, the laborer’s just wages, the approval of the eating of Gentile foods, tribute to whom tribute is due, and various forms of the Golden Rule concerning the repayment of evil with good.

In accordance with each subject above, Bruce cites the following verses, first in Paul’s letters and then in their gospel form: (1) 1 Cor 7:10, Mark 10:11; (2) 1 Cor 9:14, Luke 10:7; (3) 1 Cor 10:27, Luke 10:8; (4) Rom 13:7, Mark 12:13; and (5) Gal 6:1–2, Rom 12:14, and 12:21, with Matt 18:15, Luke 6:27–28, and Mark 12:28f.23

It would behoove us, however, to keep in mind that Paul’s knowledge of any of Jesus’ sayings circulated in oral form (including what he learned from his visit with Peter), or possibly in some earlier drafts of Q. Paul’s letters predate the appearance of the gospels, even Mark’s, which the early church believed was based on Peter’s sermons. In fairness to Paul, there is no way he could have known multiple sayings of Jesus’. The movement was in its infancy and, unlike Israel’s fascination with Ezra’s Torah, which its rabbis had committed to memory in the form of the Tradition of the Elders, Jesus’ sayings were still undergoing a sifting-out process regarding authentic words and deeds versus claims and truth. Q would represent just one of these collections, Paul’s references to “tradition” (1 Cor 11:23) would make up a second, and the 114 sayings in the Gospel of Thomas would represent a third (provided the latter were even circulating).

What makes it difficult to reconstruct what Paul knew of the Jesus movement or of the historical Jesus is due in part to present-day historians’ doubts concerning the veracity of Luke’s Acts. Nowhere does Luke mention any of Paul’s letters, nor does he call into question the significant rift that was widening between the Hellenistic followers of Christ and Jerusalem’s more staid Hebraic disciples. Luke knew about the rift, but he chose not to dramatize it. Today’s consensus wagers that although Luke knew of the pending break, he smoothed it over since it had faded into history, at least by the point in time from which Luke was writing (somewhere close to 80–90 CE, by contemporary assessment). Thus, it is problematic and subjective to recreate Paul’s firsthand knowledge of the Jesus movement, its historical trajectory, events, “miracles,” or Jesus’ actual words. Contrary to Bruce, Bornkamm focuses more on Paul’s role as an interpreter of Christ as Redeemer than as an expounder of Jesus’ actual words or message.24

Nevertheless, one can reconstruct Paul’s tentative biography and something of his bustling itinerary. Summarizing contemporary scholarship on the subject, Stephen Harris pieces together what rudimentary facts the New Testament preserves concerning Paul’s life and journeys.25 He warns that any evidence from Acts must be viewed with caution. For, as we have indicated, the latter warning is a guiding norm for almost all Pauline scholarship today. What major information, then, does Paul’s principal letters (Galatians, 1–2 Corinthians, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, Philemon, and Romans) provide?

Harris lists the following: Paul was born of a Hellenistic Jewish family (of Tarsus, according to Acts). The date is uncertain, but it was likely around 13 CE. Concerning Paul’s family, the Catholic scholar Jerome Murphy-O’Connor emphasizes what Paul himself states: that he was extremely proud of his Jewish heritage, circumcised as he was on the eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, as a Hebrew born of Hebrews and, as to the Law, a Pharisee (Phil 3:4–5). Based on Murphy-O’Connor’s research, Paul’s parents were originally from Galilee and were sold into slavery following Rome’s destruction of Sepphoris—a major city in Upper Galilee that rebelled against the Jerusalem government following Herod’s death. Taken as booty, they were sold to wealthy clients in Tarsus, where they later received freedom and became Roman citizens. Murphy-O’Connor speculates that Paul’s parents were something of elitists, inasmuch as Paul tends to look down on common labor, exhibiting “a snobbish leisured class attitude towards manual labour” and regarding it “slavish” and “demeaning” (1 Cor 9:19; 2 Cor 11:7).26 O’Connor further speculates that Paul likely attended the “University of Tarsus,” where he engaged in a curriculum devoted to rhetoric, language, syntax, and philosophy.

After arriving in Palestine (ostensibly to study under Gamaliel), Paul engaged in harassing members of the early Jesus movement. Passages in both 1 Corinthians and Galatians attest as much. At some point during this period (32–34 CE), Paul experienced a “revelation” involving the risen Jesus (Gal 1:12, 16; 1 Cor 15:9–10) while somewhere in the vicinity of Damascus. Whether Luke’s account in Acts 9:1–9 describes it accurately cannot be verified. Paul refers to the experience as a “revelation” (apokalypsis) whose impact changed his life, but whether it was a “mystical” or “cognitive” revelation is uncertain, at least in the Galatians passage. In the Corinthians passage, the revelation is described as a mystico-visual phenomenon. Paul calls it an “appearance,” capturing the “event” using the word ophthé, a term from which our words “optical” and “ophthalmology” and others having to do with “sight” or “seeing” are derived. Just as Christ “appeared” (optically or cognitively) to Peter and James, so he “appeared” to Paul. Whether an optical revelation or a spiritual one, it “dawned” on Paul that the crucified Jesus was clearly the Messiah, the One his nation had been awaiting for centuries.

Following this “revelation,” Paul traveled to Arabia (likely Petra), then returned to Damascus. Three years later, Paul visited Jerusalem to meet Peter and James, Jesus’ brother (Gal 1:18–19). Afterwards, Paul returned to Asia to the region of Syria and Cilicia (his homeland), considering himself Christ’s appointed apostle to the Gentiles (Gal 1:22).

It was only after fifteen years had passed that Paul journeyed again to Jerusalem, this time with Titus and Barnabas, to attend the Jerusalem Conference concerning the admission of Gentiles to the church. He then returned to Antioch, where he fell into a dispute with Peter over the latter’s scruples about eating with Gentiles, then Paul set off on his second and later his third missionary journeys. Paul returned to Jerusalem one last time before Luke’s book of Acts traces the story of his arrest, imprisonment at Caesarea, and eventual voyage to Rome.

Discrepancies between Paul’s letters and Luke’s Acts deserve acknowledgment, although their importance remains questionable. Nowhere in his letters does Paul mention his birth at Tarsus or allude to Rabbi Gamaliel. Of most importance, however, is Acts’ report that Ananias was instrumental in Paul’s baptism and Paul’s reception of the Holy Spirit, whereas Paul insists that he owed his apostolic commission to no one but Christ and does not once refer to his baptism. As for Acts’ account that Paul agreed to impose dietary restrictions on Gentiles and to ban the eating of meat offered to idols, Paul’s letters make it explicit that he refused to agree to such limitations (see Gal 2:5; 1 Cor 8:10:27; Rom 14:13–15:6). One’s conscience is free and, in the spirit of Christ, is one’s best guide.

None of this, however, scratches the surface of Paul’s grasp of the historical Jesus’ true significance: that he was crucified, dead, and buried; that he was raised to life again; and that on the evening of his betrayal, he instituted the Lord’s Supper (1 Cor 11:23–26). Note his use of the word “betrayal,” suggesting that he knew at least an abbreviated inventory of historical facts associated with Jesus’ crucifixion. His mentioning of the institution of the Supper, however, is of essential significance, as the event ties in with Paul’s theological interpretation of Christ’s basic mission. For Paul, the Supper has to do with Jesus as God’s heaven-sent Redeemer, for which the breaking of the loaf and the drinking of the cup symbolize Christ’s “body and blood” broken and shed for sin as a sign of God’s new covenant with Israel, which is to be celebrated until his return.

Paul claims that he received this tradition “from the Lord,” not from others. But if so, in what form? Or was it Paul’s own “interpretation” of the “love feast” that followers of Jesus were observing in memory of him before the idea of the breaking of the bread and the drinking of the cup were interpreted as symbolic of Christ’s founding the new covenant? One has the feeling that both were involved and that the Corinthians version became favored, inasmuch as Paul was instrumental in “passing it on” and setting it in writing before Mark incorporated it in his Passion Narrative. John knows of no such Supper, only of the Passover Seder and the washing of the disciples’ feet. Yet in his interpretation of the Feeding of the Five Thousand, John clearly refers to the “eating of the flesh” and the “drinking of the blood” of Jesus as alone insuring “eternal life.” “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you” (John 6:53–54). This is far beyond Paul’s interpretation and closer to the Asian rites of the mystery cults, but it remains significant because it forces us to ask: Did Paul “impose” on Jesus’ Passover meal a mystical interpretation of redemption inspired by the Hellenistic cults of his own homeland, thus shifting the focus of the original eating of the Passover lamb, whose blood was shed to protect the Hebrew people during Israel’s deliverance, into a redemption event for all humankind, represented in the symbolic eating of the flesh of a god and the drinking of its blood? Certainly Paul identifies the Lord’s Supper with the “body and blood” of Christ, which are not to be consumed lightly by his followers (1 Cor 11:27). If the word “impose,” however, is too strong and lacks “textual evidence,” Paul’s Cilician background nonetheless prompts one to infer that its influence shaped his interpretation of the Supper.

One doubts that the truth can ever be known, but since Paul’s tradition of the Lord’s Supper was written prior to Mark’s, one is tempted to suspect that Paul’s version shaped the gospels narratives themselves and their explanations of the event, notwithstanding the nuances of a “pre-tradition” of which Paul was aware. In it, the God-sent Redeemer is “remembered” not only for the inauguration of God’s kingdom now and to come, but also as one’s conduit to a fulfilled life, beginning now and continuing until God’s eternal plan is fulfilled. The Supper celebrates an authentic spiritual union—a critical appropriation of Christ’s life that is to be re-enacted and remembered—by which the followers proclaim its efficacy until the God-sent Redeemer returns. All this carries the marks of a Greco-Asian hunger to be purified by divine cleansing, to be marked and prepared for the afterlife, and to be infused with the life-sustaining power of the deity through ritually ingesting the god’s flesh and blood. Paul turned these grizzly effects of a general in-God mysticism into a specific in-Christ mystical experience, combining this with the power of transcendence to re-ennoble human life in a manner similar to Israel’s own re-enactment of its historical deliverance from bondage through the celebration of Passover. Otherwise, the ingestion of bread and wine as symbols of Jesus’ flesh and blood make no sense in terms of Judaism’s biblical past. The act would have been repugnant to that tradition, but possibly less so to Paul and even lesser to John.

In the Greco-Asian region, the above was honored and practiced. From the time of the Eleusinian Mysteries, the Eastern regions of Asia were drawn to myriad cultic events. Among the more popular were the cult of Dionysus and his followers; the mysteries pertaining to Demeter, Persephone, and Hades; the Egyptian rites associated with Isis, Osiris, and Horus; and the Orphic cult as well as the Ba’al rituals and the horrific rites governing Attis and Cybele. Of especial interest are the intriguing ramifications of the “communion rites” associated with Demeter’s cult. Eating a loaf of grain and drinking wine was associated with celebrating Persephone’s release from Hades. Since the cult revolved around agricultural cycles, its celebration was repeated each spring to assure Persephone’s return. Or, as Paul explains in reference to the Lord’s Supper, “you do proclaim the Lord’s death until his return.” Traditional Pauline studies account for the latter on the basis of Paul’s eschatological views, but the frequency of celebrating the Lord’s Supper as Paul commends it is nonetheless a facet of the Hellenistic mind-set concerning the importance of the commemoration of annual renewal rites.

These mysteries provided immense spiritual encouragement to those who practiced them. Meaningfulness, peace, and the assurance of an afterlife awaited the faithful. Paul would have been familiar with these cults and no doubt repulsed by their grosser features and literal interpretations. Aware of all humanity’s need to become new creations, he could understand their misled visions while still cognizant of the cults’ similarities with Jesus’ death and resurrection as well as with the elements of his Last Supper. Nevertheless, how any of this was to be reconciled with Jewish Scriptures remains a viable question.

This brings us to an investigation of Paul’s use of the Septuagint.

By the time we come to Paul’s letters—Galatians or 1 Thessalonians, whichever epistle was first—Paul had already achieved a theological synthesis of sorts, though not in the form of dogma. I say “of sorts,” inasmuch as Paul shaped his messages in accordance with each community’s needs. Only occasionally does he repeat his message’s principal themes. Nonetheless, the central tenets of what to make of the historical Jesus were clear in his mind. After all, Paul had been mulling and reshaping them since his Arabia hiatus, as well as proclaiming them for over eleven years. What were these tenets? That Jesus was God’s “Son,” sent to fulfill the ancient promise made to Abraham, who by means of his faith was deemed “righteous” before God. Now, through Christ’s death and resurrection, this righteousness pertains to all who, by their faith in Christ, qualify to become Abraham’s offspring—whether Jew or Gentile, male or female, slave or free person. Since the Law enjoined death for the unrighteous, God’s heaven-sent Son paid that penalty, thus justifying all who accept him, inasmuch as his crucifixion represents theirs. The latter was an act of atonement, which came at a high cost. What solidifies the truth behind Jesus’ cross is the resurrection—the “fact” that God raised him from the dead—not that Jesus was immortal, thus manifesting that the Galilean Jesus was God’s “Son,” his “Suffering Servant,” and “Savior [soter]” of the world.

Paul’s introductory paragraph to the Romans hones his message even further: