The Earliest Witnesses

When we open a New Testament, the Gospels come first, and it is easy to assume that they are where the story of Jesus begins. But the written Gospels are not our earliest Christian witnesses. Before a single Gospel was put to papyrus, the believers were already saying things — short, rhythmic, memorized confessions that summed up who Jesus was and what God had done in him. These fixed formulas were recited in worship, taught to new converts, and passed hand to hand across the Mediterranean. Embedded in letters written in the AD 50s, they preserve language older than the documents that carry them — testimony reaching back, in places, to AD 30–35, the very years of the events themselves.

This week we listen to those earliest witnesses. We will look at creeds older than the books that quote them, sit with the most important of them all — the tradition Paul "received" in 1 Corinthians 15 — and ask what it means that even scholars who reject the supernatural still grant a short list of historical facts as bedrock. The point is not to win an argument but to stand, for a moment, very close to the source.

Scholars across the theological spectrum recognize that the New Testament letters contain older material — pre-formed confessions the authors quote rather than compose. The tell-tale signs are stylized parallel lines, a rhythm built for memory, vocabulary the surrounding author does not otherwise use, and the seams where a quotation has been stitched into the flowing argument. Three examples are widely cited.

Philippians 2:6ff. — a soaring hymn that moves from Christ "in the form of God," through his humbling "to the point of death, even death on a cross," to his exaltation, ending with every knee bowing and every tongue confessing him Lord. The closing lines draw directly on Isaiah 45:23, where it is God the Father who receives that universal worship — a staggering thing to say of Jesus, and said in poetry already old when Paul cited it.

1 Timothy 3:16 — six tight, balanced clauses, plainly meant to be sung or recited: "He was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the Spirit, seen by angels, proclaimed among the nations, believed on in the world, taken up in glory." A confession in miniature, from incarnation to ascension.

Romans 1:3–4 — marked as a pre-Pauline creed by the parallelism of its clauses, and especially by the contrast it draws: Jesus "descended from David according to the flesh" and "declared to be the Son of God in power... by his resurrection from the dead." The same Jesus born in space and time was raised and vindicated. Packed into two verses are three of the great titles — Son of God, Christ, Lord — all anchored to the resurrection as the event that proved them true.

The most important single creed in the New Testament sits in Paul's first letter to Corinth, written about AD 55. Paul does not present it as his own insight. He hands on what was handed to him — a fixed summary of the gospel, with a list of named witnesses to the risen Christ.

Several features mark this passage as a creed Paul inherited rather than wrote. The words translated "delivered" and "received" are technical terms for the careful passing on of oral tradition — Paul is openly saying this material was not his own. A number of the phrases are non-Pauline ("for our sins," "according to the Scriptures," "the third day," "he was seen," "the twelve"), and the lines fall into a stylized, parallel shape built for recitation. The Aramaic "Cephas" for Peter and the Hebraic threefold "and that" point back through Paul's Greek to an even earlier Semitic source.

Put together, these signs let scholars date the formula remarkably early. Critical theologians commonly place it in the mid-AD 30s — and more specifically, many date its origin to just three to eight years after the crucifixion. This is not preaching that grew up over decades; it is the church's confession from its opening phase.

How did Paul come to hold it? The most likely answer runs through Jerusalem. Dating the crucifixion around AD 30 and Paul's conversion to roughly AD 33–35, Paul tells us that three years after his conversion he went up to Jerusalem and stayed with Peter, also seeing James the Lord's brother (Galatians 1:18–19). The gospel of Jesus' death and resurrection would have been the natural center of that conversation — and both Peter and James appear by name in the creed's list of appearances. The reasonable conclusion is that Paul received this tradition from these very eyewitnesses, in Jerusalem, around five to seven years after the cross. And the creed itself, of course, was already in circulation before Paul ever heard it.

Because of these early creeds and other data, even contemporary critical scholars — treating the New Testament as nothing more than ancient literature — recognize a core of historical facts surrounding Jesus' death, burial, and resurrection. At least twelve are considered knowable history by virtually all who study the question, whatever their school of thought.

With the partial exception of the empty tomb, virtually every critical scholar who engages this subject grants these as the minimum of known history. Any honest account of what happened after the crucifixion has to reckon with all of them.

Habermas notes that one need not even use all twelve. A sufficient case can be built on just four "core" facts, accepted as knowable history by virtually all critical scholars: (1) Jesus' death by crucifixion, (2) the disciples' experiences they were convinced were appearances of the risen Jesus, (3) the corresponding transformation of the disciples — men who became willing to die for what they proclaimed — and (4) the conversion of Paul through what he too believed was such an appearance. These four are even more widely conceded than the rest, and they already carry the weight of the argument. The question this series will keep pressing is simply this: what best explains them?