It is not easy to uncover the thoughts of the earliest Christian community. Just as a physical object, a New Testament, which begins with the gospels, could give the impression that the gospels are the earliest records of Christianity. However, it is now generally agreed that the gospels were written after the authentic letters of Paul, which were produced between about 48 and 62 CE.
1 Corinthians was written somewhere in the range of 54-57 CE,1 so in the third decade since the death of Jesus Christ. In it, we find the following fascinating bit:
3 For I delivered unto you first of all that which also I received: that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; 4 and that he was buried; and that he hath been raised on the third day according to the scriptures; 5 and that he appeared to Cephas; then to the twelve …2
Reventlow describes verses 4 and 5 as “an early Christian confession” that Paul has been taught and is passing on. He takes a particular interest in the phrase repeated twice, “according to the scriptures”. While it is not clear what particular citations to scripture the framers of this confession might have had in mind, it does speak to how the early Christian movement looked at the Hebrew scriptures.
… the entire Old Testament canon is called on to serve as a witness for the death and resurrection of Jesus. Accordingly, a decisive gate has been opened: the young church is determined not to leave behind to Judaism the sacred Scriptures that they have adopted; rather, Christians are to interpret them according to their own understanding to be a witness to the Christ-event. — Reventlow, p. 57-8.
Reventlow also views Philippians 2:6-11 as “an early Christian hymn”:
6 who, existing in the form of God, counted not the being on an equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men; 8 and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. 9 Wherefore also God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the name which is above every name; 10 that in the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven and things on earth and things under the earth, 11 and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
Although this hymn does not contain any extended direct quote from Isaiah 53, Reventlow nevertheless sees it as reflecting how the early Christians saw Christ as the servant-figure referred to by Isaiah. There is a more direct reference here to Isaiah 45:23. For comparison, here is Isaiah 45:22-24 as it appears in Brenton’s English Septuagint3:
22 Turn ye to me, and ye shall be saved, ye that come from the end of the earth: I am God, and there is none other. 23 By myself I swear, righteousness shall surely proceed out of my mouth; my words shall not be frustrated; 24 that to me every knee shall bend, and every tongue shall swear by God …
“It is a revolutionary idea,” observes Reventlow, “to transfer the motif of the kingship of God to Jesus Christ, who here appears as ruler of the world (kyrios, i.e. Lord, is the rendering of the name Yahweh in the Septuagint)” (p. 59).
And so we may say, from a very early date, that Christianity was born with a commitment to understanding Jesus in terms of the Hebrew Bible, and the Hebrew Bible in terms of Jesus. As we will see in future installments, fleshing out this understanding will prove to be no small task.
Footnotes
- For the date, I am relying on Raymond Brown’s An Introduction to the New Testament, p. 512. Brown favors a date of 56/57, and refers to the 54/55 dating as “revisionist”. ↩︎
- American Standard Version (1901). ↩︎
- I am using a Septuagint here, as the Septuagint was the earliest Old Testament of the early Christian movement. ↩︎
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