An atheist was given a New Testament, and I'm the one who gave it to
him. He read the New Testament and being a scholar himself he said there's
something about the New Testament that confuses me. He said Matthew, Mark, Luke,
and John quote Jesus Christ, and then the epistles and the other letters do not
quote their follower. Why is it that the epistles and the other letters of the
New Testament do not quote and say Jesus said this? [Craig] Right, okay so the question was
why is it that when you read the epistles of the New Testament, for
example the letters of Paul, you don't have Paul quoting Jesus of Nazareth all
the time, whereas you do have this in the Gospels? Well I think the answer to that
is that the Gospels are biographies of Jesus, and so naturally they tell the
story of Jesus' life and his teachings, so naturally they quote him.
By contrast, the epistles are what we call occasional letters. That is to say,
they were written on specific occasions to address specific issues that were
burning in those churches. For example, the premier example of this would be the
letter of Philemon where Paul is writing to his friend to let Onesimus, this
runaway slave, go. And it's a very personal letter; it's
clearly just an occasional letter between Paul and this other person about
this specific concern. And even in places like Corinth Paul addresses issues like
meat offered to idols, people were getting drunk at the communion table, how
do you use spiritual gifts in corporate worship, Paul is addressing all of these
very specific concerns in these letters, and not trying to give a sort of
biographical account of Jesus. But in fact, if you do read the letters of Paul,
you will find he does quote Jesus on several occasions, and even more than
that, there are lots of allusions to Jesus' teachings in Paul's letters
where he's paraphrasing Jesus. A great example of this is where Paul says now
concerning the married, he says, I have no command from the Lord. But I give my
opinion as one who by the Lord's grace is trustworthy. Now he's not saying there
I have not been inspired by the Lord to give this comment; I don't have any sort
of inspiration from God and so I'm just giving my view. He's saying I don't have
any tradition from the historical Jesus to share about this. I don't have
something I can quote from Jesus about this, but as an apostle commissioned by
him, I'm going to give you my authoritative view as an apostle of
Christ. And that's a perfect example I think of where Paul is in touch with the
Jesus tradition, but in this case he said I don't have anything from the Lord
about this and so I'm going to give my view. By contrast when he addresses in
1 Corinthians 11 the problems at the communion table, there he does say on the
night that he was betrayed Jesus took bread and broke it and said this is my
body which is for you, and he quotes the Jesus tradition; there he's got Jesus'
tradition, and what is especially significant about that, you notice Paul,
in quoting the words of institution about the body and the blood is he says
on the night that he was betrayed. This shows that Paul knew the historical
context of the traditions that he handed on. He didn't just have the story of the
Last Supper; he knew it was on the night of Judas' betrayal of Jesus, so we
see there that Paul understood the wider context of the traditions that he handed
on and delivered and knew the wider Jesus story. So only the tip of the
iceberg is in view in the epistles, and Paul will
quote from or allude to the teachings of Jesus only insofar as they impinge upon
the occasions that prompted him to write the letter to these people. But many New
Testament scholars have called Paul's epistles a fifth gospel because,
precisely, of his allusions and quotations to Jesus.