Paul and Jesus

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I have spent my thirty-year career as a scholar of Christian origins investigating the silence between two back-to-back statements of the Apostles’ Creed, namely that Jesus was “Conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary” and that he “Was crucified, died, and was buried, and on the third day He rose again from the dead.”1

Is it not striking that this oldest and most foundational Christian creed jumps from Jesus’ birth to his death and resurrection, entirely skipping over his life?

How did it happen that the way Jesus came into the world, and how he left—Christmas and Easter—came to define Christianity itself? Here Catholics, mainstream Protestants, and Evangelicals all agree. To be a Christian is to believe in the virgin birth and resurrection of Christ, and thus to participate in the salvation Christ brought to the world as God-in-the-flesh. Where did this emphasis on the “entrance” and “exit” points of Jesus’ heavenly existence come from, and how did it achieve such centrality—even above that of Jesus’ life and teachings?

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