Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

corpus-paul - RE: C-P: Gal 1:12

corpus-paul AT lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Corpus-Paul

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: Richard Fellows <rfellows AT intergate.bc.ca>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: C-P: Gal 1:12
  • Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 20:20:43 -0700


Liz wrote:

>Dear Jeffrey,
>He is claiming both. In gal 1:1 he claims his apostleship is not from men.
>>From this we can deduce that the powers that be, i.e., the Jerusalem church
>did not send him, and perhaps didn't want him sent. No little love lost it
>seems between them (1:8,9). He states here that he is going out on his own
>authority.
>In Gal 1:11,12 he states that his gospel is his own. By this I think he is
>saying that it disagrees with that of the Jerusalem church. I think that is
>the point of this statement. He is not saying, it seems to me, that he was
>never influenced by anyone else. It seems to me these are polemical
>statements. They are meant to set him apart from the Jerusalem church, and
>to give himself some authority over that church in the eyes of the
>Galatians. They are not statements about the source of his gospel. These are
>simply an appeal to a higher authority. He is trying to go 'over their
>heads' by an appeal to Jesus himself, and so gain credibility with the
>Galatians.

I think I basically agree. Paul does seem to be proclaiming his
independence from the Jerusalem church in this passage. But why? Here is
my take on things.

Firstly, there are strong connections between 1:6-10 and 5:1-12 in both
thought and language. I believe that these two passages have a common
background and can shed much light on each other. Some "agitators" (5:12)
arrived in Galatia (5:7) and started to "throw them into confusion" (5:10,
1:7) by claiming that Paul had conceded the issue of circumcision to the
Jerusalem church (5:11 and 1:10). They probably cited the case of the
circumcision of Timothy (Acts 16:1-3) as evidence that Paul was under the
direction of the Jerusalem church and was now circumcising. The
circumcision of Timothy may well have been sufficient to make it appear
that Paul had completely accepted the traditional view, namely that
Gentiles must be circumcised IF they classified themselves as 'part of
Israel' (or some such term). I suspect that the 'agitators' genuinely
misunderstood Paul's reason's for circumcising Timothy.

In 1:1 we can read "not sent from men" as "not sent from the Jerusalem
church". Similarly in 1:10 "Am I now trying to win the approval of men" we
can interpret "men" as the Jerusalem church. Hence in 2:2 and 2:6 he
strenuously denies that he recognised their authority, and in 1:11-24 he
declares his independence from them.

It seems to me that the background to 1:6-10 and 5:1-12 that I have given
above makes better sense of Gal 2:3-5. He is saying there that, contrary
to the reports from the false brothers, he had not begun to preach
circumcision on the instruction of the "pillars". To preach circumcision
would have been a perversion of the gospel (1:7), and besides, they had not
required it: they asked only that he remember the poor (2:10). I think
that in 2:3 and 2:10 he is not appealing to the authority of the Jerusalem
apostles (that would be out of place in this passage), rather he is
opposing the misinformation that Timothy's circumcision happened on the
instructions of the Jerusalem apostles.

The false brothers of 2:4 were probably the same as the agitators of 5:12.
They probably did not object to the existence of gentile believers as such.
Their view was that any gentile believer who claimed to be a 'seed of
Abraham' (3:29) should be circumcised. i.e. they were happy that there
should be gentile believers, but they insisted on retaining the ethnic
boundary, just as it existed between Godfearers and Jews. Anyone crossing
the ethnic boundary by defining themselves as part of the true Israel would
have to be circumcised. That is why they could claim, on the evidence of
the case of Timothy alone, that Paul had given in to the Jerusalem apostles
and was now preaching circumcision. (Circumcision, that is, for those
believers who openly crossed the ethnic boundary: circumcision for ordinary
Gentile believers who knew their place was never an issue) Timothy, you
see, was perhaps the only convert of Paul who had flagrantly and openly and
provocatively crossed the ethnic boundary. I imagine that the stigma of
having mixed parents made him wish to choose the ethnicity of his mother
(his father was probably dead or absent) and see himself as a member of the
true Israel. I see in Acts 16:3 an indication that if people had not known
that his father was a Greek (and therefore that he was uncircumcised)
Timothy would have passed himself off as a Jew, and there would not have
been any need to circumcise him.

So after much rambling, my point is this: the background to Gal 1:1-10 is
that some agitators had used the circumcision of Timothy as evidence that
Paul, in subordination to the Jerusalem apostles, had conceded that gentile
converts who claimed to be part of Israel should be circumcised.

I don't know if any of this helps with the question of where he got his
gospel from. We know at least that he did not get his idea about gentiles
being included without circumcision from the Jerusalem leaders.

Richard Fellows
Vancouver
rfellows AT intergate.bc.ca






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page