When Were the Earliest Creeds?

When Were the Earliest Creeds?

Lots of people think of the Apostles Creed, Nicene Creed and the Athanasian Creed as being THE Creeds. Little do people realize the creeds that existed long before, even before the writings of Paul.

For example, Paul wrote off of a creed about 55 AD. He wrote in 1 Cor 15.3-5, "For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve."

Since Paul received this from Peter and James while he was visiting them at Jerusalem three years after his conversion, we know there was a Jerusalem Creed of oral summary like the oral summaries we see in Acts.

Most scholars also recognize Luke 24.34 as the early proclamation that reports the post-mortem appearance of Jesus to Peter because it is an awkward insertion that lacks an accompanying story. This may be the appearance mentioned in 1 Cor. 15.5 in the creed.

"I delivered to you . . . what I also received," denotes imparting oral tradition (cf. 11.23).

Since the language would have been Aramaic for these earliest creeds by oral tradition, we should find some evidence of Aramaic. The four-fold use of the Greek term for "that" (hoti) is common to Aramaic narration and the name, Cephas, is Aramaic for Peter (see John 1.42).

The text is stylized and contains parallelism. The first and third lines are longer, have same construction, and contain the phrase "according to the Scriptures" at the end, followed by a short sentence beginning with "that."

Non-Pauline terms indicate that probably he did not form the creed but got it elsewhere, as he states in verse 3.

It is possible that Paul even received this creed at the time of his conversion which would place the origin of the creed even earlier than 3 years after his conversion.