Evidence · Case 10 · Islam
Paul, First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 15
One exhibit from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.
In 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul passes on a creed he says he received, affirming that Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to witnesses. Critical scholars, including skeptics, date this formula to within a few years of the crucifixion, and the atheist scholar Gerd Lüdemann places its core in the first two years. That means the resurrection claim predates Paul’s own writing.
Sources
Objections & responses
- The creed says Jesus was raised; it doesn’t say he was divine. Doesn’t using it as evidence for a resurrected, divine Jesus conflate two claims?
Correct, and the two should be separated. The 1 Corinthians 15 creed establishes early resurrection belief. Early belief in Jesus’s divinity comes from other pre-Pauline material: the Philippians 2 hymn, the Aramaic prayer Maranatha, and the reworked Shema in 1 Corinthians 8:6, all of which the Trinity case treats. The creed carries the resurrection half of the claim, and those texts carry the divinity half; neither is asked to do both.