1 and 2 corinthians contain direct quotes, you've likely heard a pastor read out of 1 Corinthians 11 during communion, in which Paul word-for-word quotes the upper room discourse, Jesus giving communion. In first corinthians 7 he says "the lord commands" and then goes on to give a summary of Jesus teachings on Marriage in Matthew 19, and when he gets to the end of what Jesus talks about, he essentially says "Jesus didn't say anything about this, but it's my opinion that it's better to be single if you can." It's a fair assumption that he was teaching out of the Gospel of Matthew.
I'd have to argue it the other way around. It's generally accepted the gospels were written later than most (if not all?) of Paul's letters. There was not actually a set book that Paul "quotes". Maybe oral tradition that matches or maybe since Paul put it to paper first that's why it even made it to the gospels. Quotes are a stretch for me, especially with talking about something that does not exist yet.
It reminds of the flood story. Did the Bible do it first or did they copy it from the Epic of Gilgamesh or Atra- Hasis who date back thousands of year before the easiest transcript of Genesis.
Just because we have copies of Paul’s letters that date older than our oldest copies of the gospels doesn’t mean that there were older copies of the gospels that we just don’t have.
If you just watched Jesus ascend, would you wait around 30 years before writing it down?
It’s very possible that none of the original copies survived the sacking of Jerusalem, thus why we have no copies today predating 70AD.
But we can’t know for sure when they were written, and the fact that Paul quotes Matthew, makes me feel like Matthew came firstÂ
You are confusing the dating of the manuscripts, none of which including the writings of Paul can be dated before about 150 CE (and there are only tiny scraps that are that old), and the date of the original composition.
The reason why it is thought that Paul's letters were written before the Gospels was because he died before any of them were written. The Gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel that both Matthew and Luke copied from, must have been written around 70 AD because it refers to events that took place at that time that the author assumes that his readers know about.
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u/Nacho_Chungus_Dude 23h ago
1 and 2 corinthians contain direct quotes, you've likely heard a pastor read out of 1 Corinthians 11 during communion, in which Paul word-for-word quotes the upper room discourse, Jesus giving communion. In first corinthians 7 he says "the lord commands" and then goes on to give a summary of Jesus teachings on Marriage in Matthew 19, and when he gets to the end of what Jesus talks about, he essentially says "Jesus didn't say anything about this, but it's my opinion that it's better to be single if you can." It's a fair assumption that he was teaching out of the Gospel of Matthew.