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  • From: "moon-ryul jung" <moon AT saint.soongsil.ac.kr>
  • To: corpus-paul
  • Subject: Re: Paul as apostate (was Paul obligated to Torah?)
  • Date: Wed, 2 Feb 2000 21:0:7


Mark, thanks for the encouraging comments. Your following comments on Gal
is quite surprising:

> I think that T. Martin is right that the time-elements which define
> that which the addressees are turning back to are not related to
> Jewish but idolatrous civic practices such as the imperial cult. They
> were not Jews and would not thus return to Law-observance, but former
> idolaters, and thus return to idolatry [because of social and political
pressure]

Do you mean that the Galatians were under two kinds of pressure? Paul
dealt with the Jewish pressure so far, and now am dealing with the pagan
pressure? I think that it may make sense only when we take "us" and "we"
in
4:3-5 to refer to the Galatians.

> >4:3 So with us; when we were children, we were slaves to the elemental
> >spirits
> > of the universe. 4:4 But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his
> >Son,
> >born of woman, born under the law, 4:5 to redeem those who were under the
> >law,
> >so that we might receive adoption as sons.
> >

Let me paraphrase. "We", the Galatians, were slaves to the elemental
spirits of the universe, the pagan ideas and practices. But God redeemed
those who were under the Law,
the Jewish people, so that their blessing may go to "we", the Galatians.

> >
> > 4:9. now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God,
> >how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits,
> >whose slaves you want to be once more?
> >

Now, because of pagan pressure, do you want to go back to the elemental
spirits that once enslaved you?
>

The above interpretation requires lumping "we" and "you" together.

But the context of Gal 4.1-3 (heir, son, the father,children,,)
strongly indicates that the "we" and "us" in
4.3 refer to the Jews. Gal 4.8-9 says that the Galatians were going back
to the elemental spirits of the universe from which they came out.
Is it impossible for Paul to describe their attempt to be "under the Law"
this way? Though they were not Jews, they wanted to be under the Law.
Paul thought, it seems, that their attempt to be under the Law was
equivalent to going back to the elemental spirits.

The only problem with this interpretation is how Paul could say that the
Law
was weak and beggarly elemental spirits. But what was the weak and
beggarly
spirits was not the Law itself, but the works of the Law, the barrier
between Jews and Gentiles, from which the Jews themselves needed redemption
("to redeem those who are under the Law", Gal 4.5).

So, all depends on how you take "we" and "us" in Gal 4.3-5. Do you have
any
ideas?

Moon
Moon R Jung
Associate Professor
Sogang University
Seoul, Korea





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