Corpus-Paul

["Jon Peter" <jnp AT home.com>]

Hi David,

Thanks for pointing out a possible interpolation of Gal 4.24-26.

I do see how it interrupts the basic analogy Paul is making.  In essence,
Paul is using a siblings metaphor, saying the 2 boys represent Freedom and
Bondage respectively.  The presumed interpolator is extending/interpreting
this to say they kids represent the covenant(s) (diatheke). Paul stops short
of using that particular term himself.

Your view may well be right. However (& there's always a 'however'), such an
interruption or digression as is made by v 24-27 may also be deliberate
intercalation by Paul. These style devices are not uncommon HB / NT as you
know. I'm no expert, but I have assembled various lists of them in the
Bible, reported by others. What the device accomplishes, I don't know --
perhaps dramatic suspense or estosteric purpose we no longer understand. I'm
not saying that Paul is intercalating here, because I haven't studied the
subject enough to make such a conclusion. But it's a possiblity.

The more practical approach to this issue may be to ask, 'So what?'  Suppose
you're right, that verses 24-27 are inauthentic. What, then, is the
interpolator really adding to (or distorting in) the larger subject?

The answer, in this case, is really nothing of consequence.  Paul's basic
analogy -- which is that Law-keepers are the children of Bondage (Hagar) --
still negates the legitimacy of Lawkeeping in the context of his argument.
Paul's assertion and conclusion -- that "You Galatians must expel lawkeepers
from your midst" -- remains unchanged where the interpolation exists or not.
Anti-legalism is Paul's entire point, illustrated by several figures of
speech and metaphors.

The insignificance of v 24-27 therefore suggests to me that this is not a
distortive interpolation after all.  If a humble copyist was guilty of
embellishing Paul here and added his own material, he did no damage to
Paul's message and was simply drawing out the obvious analogy a bit further.

I'm still open to hearing more on this, but this is how things look to me
now.

Moving on to addressing some of your related points, you wrote:

>
> I am not so convinced that Gal 4:21-31 is a literary unity. If it is not a
> unity, then strength of your argument will be diminished. There is a
> disruption in the discourse between vs 23 & vs 28. The interjection, vss
> 24-26, takes its natural conclusion in vss 29-31. If dissected for the
> purposes of analysis, the passage looks like this:
>
>
> I would detect the development of an argument here: a. that even Jews who
> observe the law are still actually justified by their faith in the
promises
> God made to Abraham's offspring,

I would agree with you, except to put this in the past tense "... Jews who
observe(d) the law *were* still actually justified by faith…"  but only
until Christ came on the scene. Christ becomes the litmus test for any claim
of faith, and to reject him in favor of the Law proves that faith never
really existed.  see e.g. 1Co 13.10


b. Abraham's offspring are thus the product
> of a promise, and therefor c. "we" -as in the collective sense of "both we
> Jews and you gentiles"- are all children of that same promise if we too
lay
> claim to them through the belief that they will be delivered.
>

Quite true. Also, Jews who cling to the law and reject Christ, are not
children of the Promise.

Paul's positions on the law in Gal. must be interpreted with a book open to
Rom. 4 too.


> The disruptive verses on the other hand is radically different, and
> interprets the passage as allegory.

I see no radical difference, and in fact no significant difference at all,
in 24-26.

It really has nothing to do with the
> progression of the former argument.

Again I beg to differ. The verses simply press the metaphor of a Slave Child
vs. Free Child, to say that these are also, respectively, *the Sinai
covenant-keeping Jews vs. Christ-observing Jews and Gentiles.* But this
little insert is merely re-stating ideas Paul has said already just before
it, and he states again after it.

>
> The author is literally reversing the relationships of the entities
involved
> in the Genesis account! In short, he says that the children of Abraham are
> not the Jews but "us".

That's true, but it is perfectly consistent with Pauline thought elsewhere.
It's easy to forget that Paul will sometimes draw upon a definition a 'Jew'
in spiritual terms, rejecting ancestry or "the flesh" (A definition
harkening back to the HB, e.g., Hos 1.9) Rather, Paul says God is interested
in whether a person is "circumcised in spirit and with the heart" (Rom
2.29). By this view, Gentiles are sometimes real children of faith because
they naturally obey the law (Rom 2.11-16).  Paul is really deconstructing
racial Judaism here.

This looks much more like the product of polemic of a
> later time than Paul's. Statements like "[Hagar] corresponds to the
present
> Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children" and "[just] as at that
> time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born
> according to the Spirit, so it is now" make me suspect a period after the
> war of 66-70 when the author's party (gentiles still claiming those
> promises, and perhaps privileges, associated with Judaism?) was being
> rebuffed by natural-born Jews.
>

There is clearly a theme in Paul, to the effect that true Jewishness is to
be understood in spiritual rather than carnal terms (or however you want to
put it). The same thought is lurking as well in some Gospel verses (esp. in
GJohn) and, as earlier noted, it goes back to the HB.

But is every such anti-Jewish verse an interpolation by post-70s Gentiles
who are Jewish wannabes? I don't think so, because Paul articulates that his
Gospel ultimately goes back to a much earlier pre-Siniatic time when anyone
could join God's plan regardless of lineage, merely by believing the Promise
to Abraham. That is the authentic original covenant  *as well as* the true
"Jewish" lineage in God's eyes. It is an entirely spiritual condition having
nothing to do with pedigree.

This doctrine is consistent in Paul's writings. It is also a plausible
exegesis of Genesis, in which inclusiveness of Gentiles was anticipated long
before Paul. Hence, I see no reason to regard his pro-Gentile statements as
forgeries.

Regards,

Jon