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Wednesday 8 September 2010

Bedrock of our common faith? 1 Corinthians 6:14 added later?

"There can be no question . . . of the centrality of Jesus' resurrection for Paul . . . the references he does make to it show how fundamental it was to the gospel and to his faith. And not just to Paul's own theology. This was the bedrock on which the common faith of the first Christians was built. The resurrection of Christ by God was where and how it all begun." (James Dunn, The Theology of Paul the Apostle, 1998, p237).

Dunn lists dozens of important texts where Paul articulates the fundamental importance of the resurrection - including 1 Cor 6:14 which states:
But God raised up the Lord, and he will raise us up also through his power.

Udo Schnelle, in a 1983 article believes this verse to be a "nachpaulinische Glosse" (NovT, p217-219) - thus, a later redactional addition. I still need to go deeper into this claim but at this stage of my research, it seems that Schnelle's hypothesis is not generally accepted by the majority of New Testament scholars.


I had a fascinating discussion with professor Schnelle in May 2010 here in Nijmegen. He is a serious scholar whose work needs to be taken serious - even if one wants to disagree with him.

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