Dating the Creed

News organizations race each other to publish "breaking news"! The first one to report on a major development wins attention, credibility, and revenue. While it's not accurate to think of the gospels as "breaking news," we rightly prioritize early eyewitness testimony to an event.

For instance, imagine if the first written documents about the resurrection of Jesus dated to 1782. In that case, we might be a bit skeptical that documents written so long after the purported resurrection were valid. We would be suspicious!

As we covered last time, our cornerstone Bible passage in this course is 1 Corinthians 15. Before we go any further, we need to ask a critical question: When was 1 Corinthians written?

In Rethinking the Dates of the New Testament, Jonathan Bernier rigorously evaluates the dating for every book of the Bible. He notes that 1 Corinthians 16:5-8 tells us that Paul wrote the letter from Ephesus. Then, based on a careful reconstruction of Paul's ministry trips from Acts and other sources, we can determine that Paul was in Ephesus from around 53-56 A.D. Dr. Bernier concludes that 1 Corinthians should be dated to A.D. 56.

**In other words, this letter was written roughly twenty-five years after the death of Jesus.**

But wait, there's more! Within 1 Corinthians 15, Paul includes an even earlier creed. As Dr. Craig Keener tells us, "'Handed on to you ... what I had received' (NRSV) is the language of what scholars call 'traditioning': Jewish teachers would pass on their teachings to their students, who would in turn pass them on to their own students."

Think this through with me: In AD 56, Paul writes down this creed in a letter. But he says he had already told the Corinthians this creed when he was with them in person (he arrived there in AD 50). But for Paul to pass on to the Corinthians this creed in AD 50, he must first have received it before then.

So when did Paul receive it? Likely, Paul received it when he had an opportunity to meet the apostles. But when did that happen? As scholars reconstruct his life, he likely went to Jerusalem around AD 36-37.

Even Dr. Bart Ehrman, a skeptic, considers this creed to be early. He writes, "So this is very ancient tradition about Jesus. Does it go back even to before the time when Paul himself joined the movement around 33 CE, some three years after Jesus died? If so, it would be very ancient indeed!"

**This creed was developed within five years of Jesus' death and resurrection.**

Here's the point: When you invite people to discuss 1 Corinthians 15, you are repeating the same gospel message that Cephas - and the other original apostles - developed, memorized, and taught to others!