Re: PAREDWKA/PARELABON

Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Wed, 1 Jan 1997 08:03:44 -0600

At 1:46 AM -0600 1/1/97, Eric Weiss wrote:
>An article posted on the Higher Criticism WEB site by Robert M. Price
>entitled "Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a
>Post-Pauline Interpolation" states:
>
>"The pair of words in verse 3a, "received / delivered" (paralambanein /
>paradidonai) is, as has often been pointed out, technical language for
>the handing on of rabbinical tradition.17 [17 - See Joachim Jeremias,
>The Eucharistic Words of Jesus (Oxford: Blackwell, 1955), 129.] That
>Paul should have delivered the following tradition poses little problem;
>but that he had first been the recipient of it from earlier tradents
>creates, I judge, a problem insurmountable for Pauline authorship. Let
>us not seek to avoid facing the force of the contradiction between the
>notion of Paul's receiving the gospel he preached from earlier tradents
>and the protestation in Gal. 1:1, 11-12 that "I did not receive it from
>man." If the historical Paul is speaking in either passage, he is not
>speaking in both."
>
>My question is:
>
>In 15:3 Paul writes PAREDWKA GAR hUMIN EN PRWTOIS hO KAI PARELABON, hOTI
>CHRISTOS APEQANEN...
>In 11:23 Paul writes EGW GAR PARELABON APO TOU KURIOU hO KAI PAREDWKA
>UMIN, hOTI hO KURIOS...
>
>Other than switching the order of the PAREDWKA and PARELABON phrases,
>these seem to me to be pretty much the same formula. Why, then, does
>Price assume that in 1 Corinthians 15:3 Paul is talking about receiving
>his gospel from men when in 1 Corinthians 11:23 he says he received his
>knowledge of the last supper from the Lord? Could not Paul have received
>his 1 Cor 15:3 gospel also from the Lord, and he just omitted the APO
>TOU KURIOU - and thus there would be no contradiction with Galatians? Am
>I missing something here?

I think that the apparent contradiction is evident enough--but it is the
sort of contradiction of which one finds several in the Pauline
correspondence, and I think that most, if not all, of these apparent
contradictions are to be explained by the contextual differences of
correspondence to different groups. Nowhere are these differences more
striking than between Gal and 1 Cor, and I think that the reason is that in
Gal Paul is concerned to defend his gospel against what he believes,
rightly or wrongly, are Judaizers, while in 1 Cor he is concerned to
protect his gospel from a congregation that appears to be transforming it
into a Greek mystery religion. Consider, for instance, the ethical
parenesis in the two letters: in Gal Paul underscores "freedom from the
Law" because he believes that his opponents are pushing for observance of
the Mosaic Law, while in 1 Cor he is combatting a proto-gnostic doctrine
that those who have GNWSIS can do whatever they like because PANTA EXESTIN.

So: in Gal he emphasizes his independence from human authority and
underscores his dependence upon direct revelation from Christ (but it
should be noted that he also says in Gal that he checked with Jerusalem
authorities to see if he was "running right"); in 1 Cor however, his
concern is rather to combat a tendency in the Corinthian congregation to
stress independence of members from the "body of Christ" in such a fashion
that each believer relates directly to Christ above. But that runs counter
to Paul's insistence that the believer's relationship to Christ is BOTH
personal AND corporate; therefore he here insists that the gospel message
is a tradition shared by the whole church, and that the way the Corinthians
are tending to interpret it, denying the reality of resurrection, runs
counter to that clearly-fixed tradition. In sum, I think that pragmatic
considerations are sufficient to explain this apparent contradiction.

Incidentally, what's the URL for this Higher Criticism site? It sounds
interesting.

A fruitful New Year to all and sundry on B-Greek!

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/