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  • From: "Dieter Mitternacht" <dieter.mitternacht AT teol.lu.se>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: SV: Re: was:Paul Not a Pharisee?
  • Date: Sat, 22 Jan 2000 18:28:09 +0100


Dear Mark.
Thank you for your good comments. I am glad we agree on methodological
procedure in general. With regard to your critical remarks, I would like to
react in the following way:
I have not made clear in my input to the list, the way I arrived at my
inference, and so your critical comments are absolutely justified. And, given
the character of this kind of discourse, I will probably not be able to be
clear enough this time either, but I will make an attempt:

If we read Galatians, we find, that Paul is never hesitant to make a point
with regard to his position in the church, or in Christ for that matter, and
to make his position unequivocally clear and explicit, except for a couple of
places, namely those we are discussing and possibly also 2.5. You may want to
look at 1.1 (divinely appointed apostle), 1.11-12 (unique recipient of the
gospel), 13-14 (superior zelot for the traditions of the fathers), 15-16a
(God's son revealed in him), 16b-17 (complete independence). 6.17 (bearer of
the stigmata of Christ)... I could go on and on, but these references may
suffice.
In light of these tendencies in the letter as a whole, it would seem a
secondary procedure, to ask whether or not the recipients had or had no
knowledge of all of these affirmations, i.e. did Paul only want to fill in
their blanks? My answer would be: No. Instead, Paul is extremely interested
in listing every point possible in order to establish an overwhelming ethos,
thus preparing the addressees for the rather unpleasant things he will be
dealing with in ch 3-5 especially. (I have delt extensively with a
communication-psychological analysis of Gal in my book, see below.)
In three cases of crucial importance, circumcision (2.5), authority (2.6-9)
and conflict management (2.11-14), his persuasion strategy is obvious, yet
his argumentation is dubious at crucial points.
On the basis of the overall tendencies in his self-presentation, it would
seem plausible to me, even if the addresses may have heard it before, that he
would not have left out, to cite a decision in Jerusalem that had accredited
to him the authority of apostle to the Gentiles, just as Peter was the
apostle to the Jews. Neither would he have left out to emphasize (once
again), the fact of his victory over Peter in Antioch. However, he
constructed his argument in such a way, that, given the conditions of oral
presentation, the crucial weeknesses of the arguments will be overlooked.

We could go through the other conflict reports in ch 1 and 2 and ch 4, 5 and
6 and nowhere is there, as far as I can see, any hesitance with regard to
repetition of accusation (or curse for that matter), but rather (if one
considers ch 4 especially) a tendency to be over-explicit to the point of
making a personally not involved reader feel uncomfortable. Thus, the
explicit evidence of the letter, I believe, speaks strongly against your
suggestion regarding compliance with ancient cultural conventions. If it was
dishonorable to gloat, then Paul's explicit remarks do not, as far as I can
see, square with such a convention. But then again, who can draw the line
between gloating, paradigmatic self-conception, self-stigmatisation and so
on? And also, could there not be considerations of overriding importance on
the part of the sender?

As you can see, my methodological procedure is to move from patterns and
tendencies to inferences in cases of divertion.

Let me just mention, in order to stick to my own rules, the hermeneutical
position I have chosen for these anlyses. Already in 1934 W Bauer wrote the
famous sentence in his book on the early heretics (Rechtgläubigkeit...):
'Muss der Geschichtsschreiber nicht ebenso über den Parteien stehen und das
audiatur et altera pars as höchsten Grundsatz haben?' I would add to that: if
we have to wait for an impartial judge, we will wait forever. Instead, we
need, at least, a public defender for the accused, however partial that
analysis may turn out to be. Then, let there be a jury of readers. It has
been my strategy for a couple of years to read Galatians with the ears of the
accused, which has made me change my opinion on both Paul, the opponents and
the letter recipients.

Thank you for asking for the reference. Here it is:
Mitternacht Dieter, Forum für Sprachlose. Eine kommunikationspsychologische
und epistolär-rhetorische Untersuchung des Galaterbriefs. Coniectanea
Biblica, New Testament Series 30, 1999. 346 pp. ISBN 91-22-01833-6.

Looking forward to your and other listmembers' reactions.

Dieter

***************************************************
Dieter Mitternacht
Lund University
e-mail: dieter.mitternacht AT teol.lu.se
URL: http://www.teol.lu.se
****************************************************











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