The theme is one that could easily be allowed to develop into a history of the apostolic age. I hope to keep it within reasonable bounds by approaching it in the main from one angle only. Like most of the great figures of the past, Paul is known to us both as a historical and as a legendary figure, and it is my intention in this paper to consider in a small way not only how the real Paul and the legendary Paul illuminate each other, but also how, between them, they cast a measure of light upon an obscure period.

The American scholar John Knox is noted for his defence of the thesis that the canonical gospel of Luke reached its final form after it had passed through the hands of the heretic Marcion in the second century. This thesis, hinted at by the scholar Semler in the eighteenth century and argued by F. C. Baur in the nineteenth century, was again stated by John Knox in an article in 1939 and in a book, Marcion and the New Testament, in 1942..

Das kleine Gleichnis von den ungleichen Söhnen in Matth. xxi. 28–32 hat in der Forschung hauptsächlich wegen seiner verwickelten Textüberlieferung Beachtung gefunden. Es reizte bedeutende Außenseiter wie J. Wellhausen, A. Merx und E. Hirsch zu Rehabilitationsversuchen der ‘westlichen’ Überlieferung, ohne daß deren stark psychologisierende Überlegungen, wie sie ähnlich schon Hieronymus angestellt hatte, überzeugen konnten. Auch der neueste Rekonstruktionsversuch von J. R. Michaels, der auf die Kombination sekundärer Lesarten hinausläuft, widerspricht allen Regeln textkritischer Vernunft. Unsicher bleibt, ob man mit Alands Synopsis Quattuor Evangeliorum (1967) den Jasager oder mit dem Greek New Testament den Neinsager voranstellen soll; für den Sinn ist dies unerheblich. Über die Herkunft der Parabel machte man sich meist keine Gedanken; die Bezeichnung ‘Sondergut’ schien zu genügen. Auf die Logienquelle wollten A. Plummer, A. Loisy, C. G. Montefiore und – sehr zurückhaltend – E. Hirsch unser Gleichnis zurückführen, während E. Lohmeyer seine heute vergessene Pais-Quelle als Fundort anbot.

It has become almost a commonplace in New Testament scholarship to attribute to Christian prophets in the early Church a creative role in respect of sayings which the Gospel tradition presents as dominical utterances. The authority, among modern scholars, for this view is to be found in the formcritical analyses and conclusions of Rudolf Bultmann. Christian tradition, he affirms, took over certian Jewish materials and put them on the lips of Jesus (e.g. the Marcan Apocalypse): the Christian community also revised or reworked elements from older traditions (e.g. the interpretation of the Sign of Jonah in connection with the person of Jesus, Matt. xii. 40) and even formed logia which reflect its own interests and concerns. Such logia are ‘inauthentic’ (in the sense that they are not genuine dominical sayings) and, according to Bultmann, they may originally have gained currency as utterances of the Spirit in the Church, without their ascription to Jesus being initially intended. Sayings like Rev. xvi. 5 (in which the risen Christ speaks) and Rev. iii. 20 show clearly the process of the creation (or, reformulation) of such logia (den Prozeβ der Neubildung solcher Herrenworte). These sayings would only gradually (erst allmählich) have been regarded as prophetic words of the historical Jesus. ‘The Church drew no distinction between such utterances by Christian prophets and the sayings of Jesus in the tradition, for the reason that even the dominical sayings in the tradition were not the pronouncements of a past authority, but sayings of the risen Lord who is always a contemporary for the Church.’