Corpus-Paul

[Jeff Peterson <peterson AT mail.ics.edu>]

At 2:52 PM +0200 10/27/99, Kevin Smith wrote:
>      Thus the grammar itself does not conclusively prove that Paul
>regarded James as an apostle since there are two other places in Galatians
>where  Paul used EI MH in the sense of "but." However, in the absense of
>contextual indicators to the contrary the most natural way to take EI MH
>is as  "except" rather than "but." In Galatians 2:16 the context
>completely eliminates the possibility of taking EAN MH as "except";  since
>"except" makes perfect sense in Gal 1:19, it is the better  translation,
>the meaning Paul's readers would most naturally ascribe to EI MH in  the
>absence of contextual clues to the contrary.

I find Kevin's grammatical analysis of Gal 1:19 helpful. What settles the
matter in the way he has suggested is the mention of the brothers of Jesus
in 1 Cor 9:5 as examples of APOSTOLOI (cf. 1 Cor 9:1) who are entitled to
congregational support for themeselves and their wives. As Richard Bauckham
observes in his excellent JUDE AND THE RELATIVES OF JESUS, this text
presumes that the Corinthians are familiar with the brothers of Jesus as
APOSTOLOI, their commission as such having been narrated in the initial
instruction summarized in 15:7 ("[Christ] next appeared to James, then to
all the APOSTOLOI").

Jeff

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Jeffrey Peterson
Institute for Christian Studies
Austin, Texas, USA
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