The earliness of Paul's traditions is universally agreed because Paul visited
Athens and then Corinth in the early AD 50s and then he wrote a letter to the
Corinthians to deal with issues they were struggling with around AD 55. So
when Paul says in his letter in AD 55 "I delivered to you as of first importance
what I also received," and then he quotes these traditions about Jesus, he is
talking about a visit back in the early AD 50s in which he handed on to them
information, traditions about Jesus, that he himself had received earlier, probably
no later than when he visited Jerusalem and spent two weeks with James and with
Peter around AD 36. Now think of this: that's just 6 years after the
crucifixion of Jesus, so these traditions that Paul hands on to these Corinthian
Christians go back to within the first 5 years after Jesus' death.These are not
legends that accrued over the decades and eventually came to be written down
in the New Testament; this is among some of the earliest material about Jesus. And
it's extraordinary for any figure in ancient history, such as Julius Caesar or
Alexander the Great, that we should have information that goes back to within the
first 5 years after that person's death. So that would be an example of Paul's
information. Now with respect to the gospels, most scholars who study Mark
think that Mark drew upon a source for Jesus' so-called passion, that is to say
the final week of his life, the week of his suffering and death;
this passion source or story is different than the rest of the Gospel of
Mark which consists of little snapshots of Jesus, anecdotes that are not always
arranged chronologically. They've been aptly compared to beads on a necklace
which might be strung in a different order. But when you get to the passion
story it's very different; now you do have one continuously running narrative
of chronologically ordered events leading up through his arrest, trial,
crucifixion, and burial. And so scholars think that Mark is drawing upon a very
early account of Jesus' passion. Now Mark is already the earliest of our our
gospels; everyone thinks that Mark was written
prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70. I think it's highly likely that it
was written even earlier than that, maybe the late AD 40s, I would argue. Now that
puts you again within just a couple decades of Jesus'
death, and the pre-Markan passion story, then, would go back even closer to the
time of Jesus' crucifixion.So we're not dealing again here with legends or the
tales that have been passed down and handed down over the decades; this is
oral history, it goes right back to the time of the
eyewitnesses in Jerusalem who experienced these events and who would
know whether or not these were accurate accounts.