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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT mail.gvi.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Goulder's Two Mission Hypothesis
  • Date: Sun, 9 Apr 2000 20:41:04 -0500


I would like to express agreement with some of the views expressed by Jerry Sumney in this post, and add a few comments.

Jerry Sumney wrote:

I don't think my reconstruction, which opposes Goulder's revival of Baur,
will help with the Gal 2 passage because I think that the group being
opposed in Galatians is completely separate from those who opposed Paul's
apostleship.

This is an important distinction that the recent commentaries on Galatians still fail to deal with. Some note that it should be considered, although none to my knowledge have yet altered their work in view of this. Still others just build upon this as though no seam exists between the relating of narratives of other times and places and the situation and players in Galatia.

Yet I do not think that it can be assumed that because of Paul's concern to assert his apostleship in Galatians that those whose influence Paul opposed there (in Galatia rather than Jerusalem or Antioch) where opposing Paul's apostleship either. Paul seeks to reassert his authority to oppose developments among his addressees, and thus reasserting his apostolic authority with them is important to accomplishing his rhetorical aims. But apart from mirror-reading it is not clear that Paul's apostleship was opposed. Rather his addressees appear not to believe that the message of good of these others is opposed to, but rather compatible with, Paul's message, or at least they do not believe that they are irreconcilable, even though Paul had told them otherwise. In other words, he sees the implications as opposition, but that is not the same as these influential people in Galatia understanding or proposing opposition to his apostleship in what they offer. In a similar way Paul tells how he confronted Peter at Antioch for the implications for the gentiles of his hypocrisy (masking what he believed and taught), but he does not present this as intentional/apostasy, as though this was what Peter believed and taught.

Both Judaism and
Christianity were more diverse than such reconstructions allow.

Simple, but too often ignored.


Finding arguments about authority structures is common in emerging
movements like early Christianity. So it is not surprising that Paul faced
these questions. But there is a whole other set of questions such groups
also face, that of self-definition. That, I think, is what the Galatians
question is about. Discussions about these 2 different sets of issues may
be related, but that does not mean they were raised by the same people.

Right. And identity vis-a-vis competing membership and reference group norms is the issue that is argued in the rhetoric of Galatians.

Regards,
Mark Nanos





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