My reply to Olive Tree on the "receive" of 1st Corinthians 15:3

Here is what I posted to the Christian "Olive Tree" blog in reply to its article on 1st Corinthians 15, see here.

"The gospel the Corinthians received is explicated. Paul passed on (paradidōmi) the tradition of the gospel he also received (paralambanō). In one sense, the gospel Paul proclaimed was independently given to him (Gal. 1:11–17), but Paul does not deny that he received the fundamental tenets of the gospel from others."
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If the goal is correct interpretation,  then Pauls' "not denying" that he received the fundamental tenants of the gospel from others, is irrelevant.  What's relevant is what exactly Paul DID mean by the word "received", and then afterword, why you think that meaning would reasonably imply his receiving any part of that gospel from other people. 

There is nothing in the immediate context that makes "reception from other humans" more likely than "divine telepathy". 

Apparently, the single solitary reason you impute a human-to-human element to Paul's "receiving" in 15:3 is because that is the only way to justify continuing to insist that what he received has historical value (i.e., "creed").  For if he meant "receive" in 15:3 the same way he meant it in Galatians 1 (i.e., divine telepathy or "vision"), then the basis for the "reception" in 1st Cor. 15:3 would be divine telepathy, the burden would be on you to prove it also had a basis in some human 'creed', you wouldn't be able to fulfill that burden, and about 90,00 pages of Habermas squeak and squawk about how the creed goes all the way back to the Jurassic period, would go up in flames. 

And there you are, one of the major historical evidences for Jesus' resurrection...up in smoke.  I'm not seeing how my divine-telepathy interpretation of "receive" in 1st Cor. 15:3 violates anything in the grammar, context, or requires Paul to be inconsistent in his various statements.  Nor am I seeing any basis for arguing that Paul meant this specific word as his reception of something from other human beings.  In other words, there is a dangerous risk here that regardless of how much you argue for the "creed" interpretation, there is never going to be enough evidence in its favor to render my interpretation unreasonable.  In which case it would be correct to conclude that the interpretation of 15:3 that precludes the creed's "historicity" is reasonable.

I comment more extensively on this hermeneutical issue in reply to a person who asked me about it here at my own blog.  See here.