We are now enabled to understand ' I received of the Lord ' ( 1 Co 1 1^) in the same sense as we interpret ' The Spirit of Jesus suflered them not.' St. Paul did not really mean that his knowledge of the Gospel history had been acquired without human intervention, nor can he have intended his readers so to understand him. What he meant to convey was that he was convinced that the evan- gelist, or the source whence he derived his informa- tion, was indeed inspired by the Spirit of Jesus.
The alternative— evangelist, or source— has been purposely suggested, in order to leave it an open question, as, indeed, with our scanty information it must remain, whether St. Paul derived his knowledge of our Lord's life from oral teaching or from a written document. At the time of his conversion there was a Christian conmiunity of some importance at Damascus ; and it is probable in the highest degree that the Church there had the advantage of hearing the story of Jesus from one of those who had companied with Him during His ministry. On the other hand, St. Paul's own statement (Gal lie 17), •'! con- ferred not with flesh and blood ... I went away into Arabia,' suggests a retirement for solitary study, meditation, and prayer. There does not seem any extreme improbability in supposing that even at that early date there was in circulation a Gospel narrative in Aramaic, or even in Greek. In any case, it is un- reasonable to question that Saul the persecutor needed some instruction or study before he could ' proclaim Jesus, that he is the Son of God.'
It cannot be denied, however, that the language of the heavenly vision (Ac im), ' It is hard for thee to kick against the goad,' points most naturally to a long previous struggle between prejudices inborn and trained and the strange attrac- tiveness of Jesus of Nazareth, whose glorious deeds and gracious words may have become known to the voung Pharisee
Jerus.aleni from Tarsus.
ling to which he could not be indifferent.
xecrable heresy or the only way of salvatii
urged 1 ■
was either an
All that he had learnt froi
vice of blood, upon the threshold of the mind ' (In Meimr.
iii.); the preventing grace of God bade him 'embrace it as
his natural good.'
All that we can certainly state with regard to the Gospel story known to St. Paul, however he acquired his knowledge, is that his allusions to it, direct and indirect, ' proceed,' to use Paley's jihrase (Evidences, i. 7), 'upon the general story which our Scriptures contain ' ; while it certainly was not identical with any of the foiu- we now possess. This latter point is proved by the enumeration in 1 Co 15 of the appearances of the risen Lord. Of the five appearances there mentioned, two, namely that to James and that to 500 brethren, are not mentioned in the canonical Gospels. It is to be noted, as possibly significant, that the appearance to James was recorded in the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Jerome, de Vir. illustr. c. 2).
6. It would be irrelevant to the purposes of this article to call attention to any conesjjondences
GC6
GOSPELS
between the Pauline Ej i-.tles and oui pie'^ent Gospels other than those that aie Instoiical oi literary. It would lead us too fai aheld to dibcusb St. Paul's Cliristology, and to inqmie how far it was based on extant recoided statements of Jesus about Himself, how fai on OT and subsequent Messianic conceptions, and how far on what >\e may for convenience call the Johannine theolo^-y which, as distinct from its Johannine e\piession seems to have existed in the Chuich tiom the be ginning.
The faithfulness of God to His promise that the Chi st should be not only of the seed of Abiaham b it al o of the lineage of David, is as markedly emphasized b bt Pa il as t i in the Gospels ; Ro lo* ' Chr st hath been made i i ister of
the promises given unto the fathers woids \hichecho those of Zaoharias (Lk 1"-- "3) ; Eo 13 ' Born of the seed of Da\ id accord ing to the fiesh ' ; 2 Ti 28 ' Of the seed of David according to
There is no explicit reference to the A r h th i the
) refer
Pauline Epistles. The expr and 'the childbearing ' (1 Ti latter possibly, to ' the seed of the
The account of the institut on ) St. Paul 'received of the Lord (1 betrayal of the Lord Jesus, ai d oti
closely to that given by St. Luke I
edition of his Gospel revised h s information received from St Pa 1 I (1 Co 1016) and in 1416 we ha.\ e aUu tion which have always been used ll Li » lb I
St. Paul's references to the death of Chri t are for the most part doctrinal, not historical. He ins sts on its \ oluntary char acter : ' He gave himself for our sins (C al l-" cf "0 Eph 52 "' Tit 2'-'). The words of Jesus extant onh in Mt O-M The Son
ivell a.s those torn
kath of
underhe
Jesus is spoken of as an