I recently realized a minor underlying fact in the background knowledge I laid out in my peer-reviewed book On the Historicity of Jesus has gone unnoticed. It seems trivial to me, but too many things do. I realize this stuff I take for granted is really shocking or mind-blowing to many, because they’ve been seeing the Bible only through the distorting lens constructed by Christian apologists. Even non-Christian scholars and atheists from birth can fall victim to this, as so much of the “cultural narrative” about Christianity and the Bible that is transmitted even in secular circles (even professional, academic circles) actually originated in Christian apologetics, sometimes centuries ago, and it has long since lost its obvious signal of origin. In short, you don’t know many of the things you were told are false. Because even secular experts and enthusiasts continue to unknowingly perpetuate these ideas.

Students who’ve taken my monthly course on the historicity of Jesus across several years now have repeatedly remarked on the fact that there are tons of examples of this even just in OHJ, indeed even in just the first few chapters; and that work in no way even aimed to find or touch on them all, only the ones relevant to examining how certain we can be that there was ever really a Jesus at the origin of Christianity. But none of them until recently had mentioned the one I am writing on today: that in the time of Paul, Christians believed references to “the Lord” in ancient Jewish scriptures actually meant Jesus—literally. Even when the scriptures declared that “the Lord” said this or that, Christians believed it was Jesus Christ saying it. What this means is what I’ll elaborate on today, reusing and expanding on some of the material you’ll find (along with more examples and detail and cited scholarship) in On the Historicity of Jesus.

Revelations of the Lord

You’ll find this listed as Element 16 of the relevant background knowledge in Chapter 4 of OHJ (pp. 137-41), the opening summary of which is:

The earliest Christians claimed they knew at least some (if not all) facts and teachings of Jesus from revelation and scripture (rather than from witnesses), and they regarded these as more reliable sources than word-of-mouth (only many generations later did Christian views on this point noticeably change).

The first example I give there comes from Paul himself, who is explicit on the point:

My gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ [is] according to the revelation of the mystery which was kept secret for long ages, but now is made visible through the prophetic scriptures and is made known to all nations, according to the command of the eternal God, for the obedience of faith.

Romans 16:25 & 16:26

In other words, Paul outright says even the preaching of Jesus (as well as the whole gospel) is known by revelation and scripture. No mention of human tradents. The idea that these things were known from the Apostles Jesus preached to in life is completely absent here. There is a lot more evidence of that specific point that I list in OHJ. But here my interest is not in arguing that this appears to have been the only way anyone thought anything about or from Jesus could be known (I make that detailed case in OHJ and summarize in my much more accessible work Jesus from Outer Space). Rather, here let’s even just assume there was a historical Jesus and at least “some” of his teachings and preachery came from his historical ministry and subsequent word of mouth. Even if that’s the case, it is also the case that “some” of his teachings and preachery “came” from revelation and ancient Jewish scripture—and this is no mere theory but an actual documented fact. As I show in Element 16 and in Chapters 8.5 and 11 of OHJ.

Only a part, but an important part, of this evidence consists of the evidence in Galatians 1 where Paul swears up and down, repeatedly, that he did not learn the gospel from oral tradition, but revelation alone, thus illustrating the order of values: he and his congregations respected mystical spirit communications far more than human traditions (see Chapter 11.2 and 11.6 of OHJ). Paul is actually there fighting the accusation that he might have gotten some of the teachings of Jesus from eyewitness sources—the accusation, mind you. Pay close attention to that fact: Paul had to write an entire chapter desperately insisting he did not learn anything from eyewitness sources, because the Galatians actually thought learning such things from witnesses would make Paul a fraud.

Moderns don’t get this. Because they’ve been told over and over and over again that Paul had to argue his revelations were as good as eyewitness sources. But that’s false. It’s a later Christian apologetic fabrication. Throughout his letters Paul not only never makes that argument, he repeatedly indicates the opposite was the case: eyewitness (human, oral) sources were considered by all Christians then as unreliable and no one trusted them. Anyone who claimed to have the teachings of Jesus that way was dismissed as of no account. This was literally the accusation leveled against Paul that he had to write the entirety of Galatians 1 to rebut; and his defense was to accede to the principle leveled against him by his fellow Christians that human, eyewitness sources carry zero authority, requiring him to instead swear up and down that he never used them—that he had the only kind of sources any Christians then trusted: direct communications from the celestial Jesus himself inside Paul’s mind, and trusted written records of past such spirit communications to long dead prophets.

And that last part is the one perhaps least noticed and understood by most people today: Christians in Paul’s day—Paul included—thought Jesus had spoken to the ancient prophets, and therefore prophecies in the Jewish scriptures, even the Psalms, were literally the words of Jesus—spoken by Jesus, using the prophets who recorded them, “like musical instruments” as Athenagoras would say. They could therefore be quoted as the words of Jesus. And with total confidence that they really were; no further eyewitness testimony to Jesus required. This was more than the belief, still commonly voiced today, that the scriptures told us authoritative things about Jesus. As for example when Paul says we must resort to the scriptures to “teach us” things about Jesus (Romans 15:3-4) and that we should not “go beyond” the scriptures in our claims about Jesus (1 Corinthians 4:6) or when Paul says we learn of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus “from the scriptures” (the actual meaning of kata tas graphas, the ancient idiom for a source citation, in 1 Corinthians 15:3 and 15:4).

The truth went beyond that. They didn’t just learn things about Jesus from hidden messages they found in the scriptures; they learned things from Jesus in those hidden messages. It’s also important to realize “the scriptures” meant to them not just what we now call the Old Testament but also additional books besides, since “the Old Testament” as a thing did not exist when Christianity arose. So when Paul or any other early Christian author says “the scriptures” they meant a larger body of texts than “the Old Testament,” including such works as Enoch and the Wisdom and Psalms of Solomon and possibly even the Assumption and Revelation of Moses. They also meant versions of even our Old Testament scriptures that said different things than ours now do. (On both points see evidence and cited scholarship in Element 9 of OHJ. These points are another of those little “facts” often not known to the public, though in this case at least usually known to scholars.)

How This Affects Interpretation

We see the clearest example of what I mean in the early epistle of 1 Clement (which, contrary to later Christian tradition, many scholars and I believe dates to the 60s A.D. and thus to very near Paul’s time: OHJ, Ch. 7.6). There we find countless “quotations” of things “Jesus Christ” said—and never once is any attributed to any oral tradition or witness. In every single case the only sources cited are revelations and scripture:

Clement assumes that Jesus ‘speaks’ to us through the scriptures. Clement didn’t even have to say this. He simply assumes that a quotation of scripture can be described as a quotation of ‘Christ’ without explanation or citation—the fact that [even Paul’s] Corinthians don’t need this to be explained to them entails this was routinely understood within the churches of the time: that Jesus speaks through scripture, rather than human tradition.

On the Historicity of Jesus, p. 312

Indeed, when Clement wants to cite “sayings” of their “Lord” and “master” in support of any point (such as that God will save the penitent: 1 Clement 8; or that God will raise the dead: 1 Clement 24–26; or that we must not succumb to pride and hypocrisy: 1 Clement 30), he quotes ancient scriptures (and that extensively), not Jesus in any kind of pre- or post-Gospel-tradition; and he gives examples (of repentance, forgiveness, resurrection) only from ancient scriptures, never from any kind of pre- or post-Gospel-tradition. Which means there were no Gospel traditions. Not of stories about Jesus. Not of things Jesus said or taught. Clement could only find examples and teachings to get from Jesus by mining ancient holy books.

The book of Hebrews likewise claims to quote “Jesus” but in fact repeats lines from ancient scripture (e.g. Hebrews 10:5-10, claiming Psalm 40:6-8 records the words of Jesus). But again this is even more explicit in 1 Clement, where “commandments” of Christ (49.1) appear to come by revelation or scriptures; Clement mentions no other source—except through Apostles as proxies for either. For example, Clement says the Apostles learned “through our Lord Jesus Christ” that they must establish offices and rules of succession in the church (44.1), even though most scholars would doubt that that is true (it’s a concern most scholars admit only arose later). Nevertheless, Clement seems to imagine the Apostles learning this from Jesus, through scripture (42.5). Clement never mentions any other source on this point.

Yet some of these “scriptures” Clement quotes no longer exist; we don’t know what books he is quoting. For example, Clement says to the Corinthians (while clearly assuming they know what he is referring to):

Remember the words of our Lord Jesus, for he said, ‘Woe to that man! It would have been good for him not to be born, rather than cause one of my chosen to stumble. Better for him to have a millstone cast about his neck and be drowned in the sea than to have corrupted one of my chosen’.

1 Clement 46.7-8

This is clearly represented as a quotation of one unified saying, yet in the Gospels it is quoted as two completely unrelated ones: one part spoken during Jesus’ ministry, in the presence of a group of children, about people tempting his followers to sin (“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were hung round his neck and he were thrown into the sea,” quoted exactly in the first Gospel of Mark, then evolving over time as it passed through Matthew and Luke), then another part is spoken about Judas at the Last Supper (“Woe to that man, by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man not to be born,” thus again in Mark, evolving later in Matthew and Luke).

Clement does not know of the Judas story. He elsewhere elaborates many examples of betrayal as lessons for the Corinthians—evidently never even having heard of the paradigmatic betrayal in Christian myth to teach by, Judas. So here we see the phrase “Woe to that man! It would have been good for him not to be born” was never originally anything Jesus said about Judas, but a generic statement about those who lead the Lord’s “children” to sin, meaning Christians (Jesus’ “chosen ones” per Matthew 18:3-7; see also Element 13 in OHJ). Which means Jesus almost certainly never said this—because it reflects the concept of a church community, of “believers” in Jesus that did not exist until after he had died. Which makes this a good candidate for a post-mortem revelation (Element 16), or once again some pre-Christian scripture that Clement is quoting but we no longer have (Element 9). Because apart from this and one other instance (13.2-3), for Clement the words of Jesus always come from scripture. They probably also did here as well. We just don’t have the scripture he is quoting.

All of this evidence means that when Paul quotes scripture as the sayings of the Lord, he in fact literally means Jesus said those things—to the prophets who wrote them down, which Paul is now quoting. And he did not have to explain this; his Christian audiences already concur that these are the sayings of Jesus. So when Paul tells us, for example, that he has “a commandment from the Lord” (e.g. 1 Corinthians 14:37 and 1 Corinthians 7:9-11) we actually don’t know whether he means by revelation (as in Galatians 1 or 2 Corinthians 12) or from some scripture he believes records the ancient words of the spirit-being Jesus—a scripture we just no longer happen to have; or one we do, but which said different things then than our copies now do, or which they were interpreting a certain way. For example, when Paul says “the Lord commands” that those who work for the gospel be paid, it appears Christians understood him to be quoting or “interpreting” a now-lost ancient scripture (compare 1 Corinthians 9:14 and 1 Timothy 5:18, possibly a variant reading or “interpretation” of an ancient version of Levitucus or Deuteronomy from where we find, only in different words, a lot of the teachings now “attributed” to Jesus: see Dennis MacDonald’s Two Shipwrecked Gospels for some examples).

Likewise when Paul says “it is written” that “‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19; quoting Deuteronomy 32:35 and then, as if also spoken by “the Lord,” Proverbs 25:21-22), Paul means Jesus said this—as in, said it to the ancient prophet Moses, who merely recorded the Lord Jesus Christ’s words on a scroll. And Paul’s readers knew that, and believed it. Hence likewise Romans 14:11, “It is written: “‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God’.” Paul means everyone will acknowledge God by bowing to his Lord Jesus (Philippians 2:10: “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow”), and he is “quoting Jesus” from, in fact, Isaiah 45:23. Likewise 2 Corinthians 6:17, where Paul says “’Come out from them and be separate’, says the Lord; ‘Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you’,” quoting this time a pesher mash-up of Isaiah 52:11 and Ezekiel 20:34, 41. Note that “says the Lord” is not in these verses in the actual scriptures Paul is quoting. Though the original chapters, each written by an ancient prophet speaking the Lord’s words, might indicate it, Paul himself is adding into the specific lines he quotes the reminder that the Lord says these things. And we well know the Lord for Paul, and his Christians, meant Jesus (e.g. Philippians 1:2, Philippians 2:11, Philippians 2:19; 1 Thessalonians 1:1, 1 Thessalonians 2:19, 1 Thessalonians 4:2; Philemon 1:3, Philemon 1:5, Philemon 1:25; Galatians 1:3, Galatians 6:14, Galatians 6:18; 2 Corinthians 1:3, 2 Corinthians 11:31, 2 Corinthians 13:14; Romans 1:7, Romans 5:1, Romans 10:9; and especially 1 Corinthians 1:2, 1 Corinthians 6:11, 1 Corinthians 8:6; etc.).

Conclusion

So when Paul ever says “the Lord” in his letters, he does indeed mean Jesus Christ, as the eternal spirit acting as intermediary between God and men, in his exalted pre-incarnate state. The creedal hymns in Romans 1 and Philippians 2 explain that Jesus briefly renounced this status and submitted to humiliation and death to prove his loyalty to God, and for that he was reassigned that role and elevated even further to be God’s stand-in. But he was God’s Lord already before that (Paul repeatedly confirms this: see Element 10 in Chapter 4 of OHJ). We already know that in Jewish angelology the “Archangel of Many Names” already had that role before what Paul would say was that very angel’s incarnation in Jesus (and Philo might even have already understood one of that angel’s names to be “Jesus,” literally “God’s Savior,” before Christianity contrived the idea of his descent and sacrifice). So this “Lord” could reveal secrets and teachings not only to his newly chosen “messengers” (the meaning of “apostle” being “one sent”), but to all the ancient prophets. The old scriptures thus directly contained the words of Jesus himself.

In 1 Clement we see both of these ideas: the Lord Jesus as revelator (speaking to Apostles), and the Lord Jesus as in effect the Metatron: when God “speaks” to Moses or any of Prophets or even Psalmists, it is actually Jesus (the Lord) speaking to them, as God’s instrument. In Jewish angelology this role was often played by the Metatron, the Angel of the Face, meaning the face of God (any instance in the Bible in which anyone claims to “see” God, they actually were seeing God’s stand-in, this angel). For example, the burning bush was actually this angel, whose voice God speaks through—so it is both God speaking, and a subordinate angel speaking, as if that angel were God’s speaker system. The Christians were equating that angel with their Jesus: hundreds of years ago, the eternal Lord Jesus spoke to those prophets, just as such, and for them those revelations are as valid as any new ones Paul or any Apostle receives from the Lord Jesus directly—because to them, it’s exactly the same process.

Indeed, for Greek-speaking Christians (the only ones we have any writings from), they trusted specifically the Greek Septuagint as the holy and inspired scripture collection containing the direct sayings and teachings of Jesus—which they trusted as such because they believed the legend of the Septuagint: that seventy Rabbis went each into a separate cubicle to translate the Hebrew scriptures into Greek and when they came out to compare they miraculously found their translations were identical to every jot and tittle, thus had God proved its authenticity evermore. Christians could thus treat the scriptures as the reliable and direct word of Jesus himself, speaking God’s mind and thus speaking the words of God. From God, to Jesus, to the Prophet or Apostle. That was their understanding.

This makes it difficult to know what Paul means when, for example, he says he has a “commandment from the Lord.” He could mean “found in scripture” or “delivered to me personally,” because Paul would have seen no relevant distinction between those, nor would anyone he was writing to. He “might” have also meant some human tradition, as historicists insist, but there is actually no evidence for that, and ample evidence against. This is a Christian apologetic tradition. Not anything the evidence actually supports our believing. But even if you remain lost in that con, and continue to believe that Paul “could” be quoting eyewitness tradition of “disciples” Jesus taught in life, you still don’t know when or if he ever means that. Because we know for a fact that he trusted direct revelations and revelations from Jesus to ancient prophets as of equal or even greater authority, and never makes any distinction as to which source he intends when quoting or referring to anything he claims Jesus said.

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