In the book Scripting Jesus, L. Michael White dives into Paul’s first of two letters to the church of Corinth. White chooses to focus on Chapter 15, verses 3-7. These five verses are centered on the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This is formally known as the gospel. In Greek, the term is “euangelion”, “the good news” of Jesus Christ.

There are several clues that imply that this passage in 1 Corinthians derived from oral tradition. An example that White gives of oral tradition in the New Testament is 1 Thessalonians 4:14. First Thessalonians was written by the apostle Paul. The letter has an overlying theme of the second coming of Jesus Christ. Paul states in chapter 4 verse 14, “For since we believe that Christ died and rose again…” The phrase ”we believe” states the significance that it wasn’t a primary fact. Paul wasn’t there. Stating what he has heard, however, “Christ died and rose again…” Paul uses oral tradition in his message to the Thessalonians.

The passage 1 Corinthians 15-3-7 derives from many Old Testament prophesies of the coming Messiah. In Isaiah 53, Isaiah goes into vivid detail of the slaughtering of the suffering servant. In verse 5, “But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities”. This has a direct correlation to Chapter 15, when Paul is talking about the death of Jesus Christ. Many Old Testament and New Testament scholars believed that Jesus was the man spoken of in Isaiah 53. Other examples that reveal early Christian engagement with Jewish scriptures are found in Hosea 6:2 and Psalm 15:9-10.

White states in his book that the “appearances of the risen Jesus” are nowhere to be found in the any of the gospels, nor are they found in any later Christian sources. He poses the question of whether or not the resurrection of Jesus is actually factual. If Paul wasn’t there to see it, and none of the disciples saw Jesus rise from the grave, where did Paul get this idea?

I think that Christians were so interested in developing oral traditions around the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus because if Jesus didn’t actually rise from the grave, he would still be in the ground. If he were still in the ground, he wouldn’t have been who he said he was. Instead, he would have just been an ordinary man. However, if Jesus did rise from his grave, then he fulfilled Old Testament prophesy and also fulfilled the promise he made to everyone he preached to. If he didn’t rise from the grave he was nothing more than a man. Christians find their hope and faith in the fact that he fulfilled everything he said he was going to do.