paul's "gospel" as luke's gospel?

As Richard Anderson has just noted, 1 Timothy 5:18 is an interesting text in that Paul appears to be citing Luke's Gospel as Scripture: "The scripture says, 'You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,' and, 'The laborer deserves to be paid.'" The first quotation is from Deuteronomy 25:4, and the second is word for word the same as Luke 10:7 (and not the same as the Matt 10:10 parallel). There are other interesting similarities between Paul and Luke, most notably the Lord's Supper tradition Paul cites in 1 Corinthians 11:23-25, which is noticeably similar to the Lukan version (Luke 22:19-20). On the surface, these would seem to support the patristic claim (by Jerome?) that whenever Paul refers to his "gospel" he means a written text, and in particular a version of Luke's Gospel. However, even assuming Pauline authorship of 1 Timothy (which goes against most critical scholarship), in my view there are some difficulties with this idea.

One of the things that has always intrigued me about 1 Timothy 5:18 is the connection between this passage and 1 Corinthians 9:3-14, where Paul is similarly arguing for compensation for gospel teachers, and in a very similar way. He quotes from the same Scriptural text (Deut 25:4) and then concludes his series of arguments with these words: "The Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel." This is certainly a reference to this same teaching of Jesus as is reflected in 1 Timothy 5:18 and Luke 10:7, but paraphrased and not cited verbatim. In other words, the same two authorities are cited in 1 Corinthians 9 for this matter as in 1 Timothy 5. This supports the idea that the 1 Timothy 5 passage at least reflects authentic Pauline teaching.

However, this creates a difficulty for 1 Timothy 5:18, in that in the parallel in 1 Corinthians 9:14 Paul is not citing from "Scripture" or apparently even from a written source for his teaching tradition of Jesus. This then relates to another question on 1 Timothy 5: does the kai that connects the two citations indicate that the introductory formula ("the Scripture says") covers the second citation also, or does it simply mean that the second citation is an additional appeal to another authority to supplement the first Scriptural citation? Given the parallel with 1 Corinthians 9, and that Paul does not there seem to be citing a written text (let alone "Scripture") in citing the Jesus tradition, I would tend toward the latter view.

This leads to one further point. In my view both Paul's gospel and his Jesus tradition were primarily orally communicated. The "receive" (paralambanō) and "deliver" (paradidōmi) terms Paul uses for pre-Pauline tradition referred to the oral tradition in Pharisaic circles, not the written Scripture, and so when Paul uses those terms he is most likely referring to oral tradition. Also, Paul's language which accompanies his "gospel" language points to an orally communicated gospel: the language of "proclaim publicly" (kērussō), "proclaim the good news" (euangelizō), and similar terms is language of oral communication, as is the "word" language which functions as a virtual synonym of "gospel" for Paul (e.g. "word of God"). This is, interestingly enough, evident from the reference in 1 Corinthians 9:14 noted above: the "gospel" is a message which the Jesus-followers "proclaim" (katangellō), not a written source from which Paul gets this Jesus tradition.

In view of these and other considerations, while one cannot rule out Pauline access to any written forms of Jesus tradition (testimony books? blocks of tradition such as an eschatological discourse?), I think it most likely that Paul primarily accessed the Jesus tradition orally, including some oral Jesus tradition which eventually made its way into Luke's Gospel. Also, Paul's gospel, however much it could be expounded in his written letters (e.g. Rom), was primarily an orally communicated message, communicated through his preaching and teaching (cf. 1 Cor 15:1-11).