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  • From: Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>
  • To: Corpus-paul <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: '14 years' of preparation/seclusion
  • Date: Wed, 4 Apr 2001 04:45:04 -0700 (PDT)


To Roy Ciampa:

Roy, somehow your posting dated Saturday only arrived
this morning via my email. Here are some observations:

> I think the reader of Galatians would
> understand that since God's encounter
> with Paul was in order that he might
> "preach Christ among the Gentiles" (1:16)
> that that was what he went to do when
> he went to Arabia and then return to
> Damascus. Indeed the reader's suspicion
> that that was the case would have been
> confirmed in 1:23 when Paul informs them
> that the report was going around that
> "The man who formerly persecuted us is
> now preaching the faith."

Yes! Francis Watson argued that Paul began preaching
to Gentiles only after a long period of repeatedly
failing to win Jews to the gospel. This, however,
ignores the blatant testimony you’ve indicated, and
it’s based on a tendentious reading of Rom.
11:11-12,15,17,19-20, (“Jewish stumbling which led to
Gentile salvation”) -- which Watson sees as reflecting
not a general state of affairs but rather Paul’s
personal missionary experience.

> In the context of the 14 years
> mentioned in 2:1, Paul says that
> he went to present "the gospel that
> I preach among the Gentiles" (2:2),
> the present tense clearly implying
> that the gospel he was preaching
> to the Galatians and others was the
> same gospel he had preached from
> the time of his conversion up
> until that encounter in Jerusalem.

I agree.

> That was the message to which the
> Jerusalem leaders had "added
> nothing" (2:6),

-- except, of course, the “franchise fee” (the
collection). Paul may come across as blasé about the
matter when he says, “the only thing they asked of me.
. .” (2:10), but that’s face-saving. If we read behind
the lines, it’s not hard to deduce that the pillars
had strongarmed Paul into a quid pro quo.

> So it seems extremely unlikely that
> the original readers of Galatians would
> have thought that Paul had had a 14 year
> period of relative inactivity, of
> seclusion or preparation. The text
> clearly indicates that they had been 14
> very active years in which Paul had been
> involved in preaching the gospel to
> Gentiles with great/powerful results
> that caused the Jerusalem leadership
> to recognize that God was at work
> through his ministry.

I agree with everything as stated here, only (as
you’ve gathered from my previous postings) I would put
“14 year period” and “14 very active years” in
quotation marks to indicate, symbolically, a period
that may have been only (say) 6 years. I agree with
you that Paul was very active from the start of his
conversion, but I somehow doubt it took 14 years to
bring Gentile controversies to the forefront in
Jerusalem.

> I don't see symbolism in the reference
> to 14 years. But I do see quite a few
> elements of intertextuality in the passage.
> Anyone interested those elements can
> consult pages 130ff. in my book, The Presence
> and Function of Scripture in
> Galatians 1 and 2 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1988).

Thanks for the reference; I’ll look into it.

Loren Rosson III
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com



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  • Re: '14 years' of preparation/seclusion, Loren Rosson, 04/04/2001

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