Paul says nothing about what happened during his fifteen-day intercourse with Peter. But it is highly improbable, as even Holsten pointed out, that he spent the time gazing silently at Peter as though Peter were one of the sights of the city.[39] Undoubtedly there was conversation between the two men, and in the conversation the subject of the life and death of Jesus could hardly be avoided. In the Epistle to the Galatians Paul denies, indeed, that he received his gospel from men. But the bare facts about Jesus did not constitute a gospel. The facts were known to some extent to friend and foe alike; Paul knew something about them even before his conversion and then increased his knowledge through intercourse with the disciples at Damascus. The fifteen days spent in company with Peter could hardly have failed to bring a further enrichment of his knowledge. [39] Holsten, _op. cit._, p. 118, Amn.: "Aber natürlich kann in dem ἱστορῆσαι Κηφᾶν nicht liegen, Paulus sei nach Jerusalem gegangen, um den Petrus fünfzehn tage lang stumm anzuschauen. Die beiden männer werden miteinander über das evangelium Christi geredet haben." In 1 Cor. xv. 3-7, Paul gives a summary of what he had "received"--the death, burial, resurrection, and appearances of Jesus. The vast majority of modern investigators, of all shades of opinion, find in these verses a summary of the Jerusalem tradition which Paul received from Peter during the fifteen days. Undoubtedly Paul knew some if not all of these facts before he went to Jerusalem; the facts were probably common property of the disciples in Damascus as well as in Jerusalem. But it is inconceivable that he should not have tested and supplemented the tradition by what Peter, whose name stands first (1 Cor. xv. 5) in the list of the appearances, said in Jerusalem. Recently, indeed, an attempt has been made by Heitmüller to represent the tradition as being derived merely from the Christian communities in Damascus or Antioch, and at best only indirectly from Jerusalem; these communities are thus interposed as an additional link between Paul and the Jerusalem Church.[40] But the very purpose of the passage in 1 Corinthians is to emphasize the unity of teaching, not between Paul and certain obscure Christians in Hellenistic communities, but between Paul and the "apostles." "Whether therefore," Paul says, "it be I or they, so we preach and so ye believed" (1 Cor. xv. 11). The attempt at separating the factual basis of the Pauline gospel from the primitive tradition shatters upon the rock of 1 Corinthians and Galatians. In Galatians, Paul says he was in direct intercourse with Peter, and in 1 Corinthians he emphasizes the unity of his teaching with that of Peter and the other apostles. [40] Heitmüller, "Zum Problem Paulus und Jesus," in _Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft_, xiii, 1912, pp. 320-337, especially p. 331.