Hacker News Reader

Comment by barberousse | Hacker News Reader

Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though? We know that the gospels are likely younger than Paul's letters and that Paul is one of the earliest missionaries to the Gentile world. And when we read Paul's letters, they're far more direct and practical in content than everything else in the NT. So is it that over time, as early Christian's earliest leaders died out, a fascination with just _who_ this Christ was vivified? As well, wouldn't this dating make Paul's letters the most authoritative liturgical documents?

View on HN

> Isn't it fascinating how _little_ Paul refers to Jesus' own biographical life though?

This comes to mind. In my early school years, a bunch of us kids were really close. We did so many things together at school and all summer in our neighborhood. However it is fascinating to me now that we didn't share anything about our Moms, Dads or Grandparents, the people in our background we were closest to. All of that was implicit, there were no need to discuss the daily lives of ones we knew intimately and loved us so much. So with Paul, I'd think. After all Paul studied under Gamaliel and he would have known how to research and share with the world the biographical details of a subject beyond what people just knew from the Gospels, or word of mouth, at least (they must have known more as they all lived closer to the events). What I am getting at is, he just preached what that really mattered for him.

Paul’s letters were all written to previously established churches. If pre-gospel written or oral traditions about Jesus’ life had already been given to those churches, Paul had little need to repeat it in the short, practical letters that were written (except in a few cases for the sake of his argument, where he does quote the words of Jesus also written in similar form in the gospels).

In general I think none of the epistles in the NT discuss biographical details of Jesus, even those scholars generally agree were written post-70 or not by Paul. They’re pretty short and focused on specific points they want to argue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com