Corpus-Paul

[Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>]

Moon, you wrote:

> I take as the meaning of 3:25-26:
> 
> "Now that faith has come, we, the Jews, are no
> longer under a custodian;
> for in Christ Jesus, you, the Gentile believers, are
> all sons of God, through faith."

>That is, the reason that the Jews are no longer under
> the custodian of the law is that the Gentiles can be
> sons of God apart from the law...

But it's really Gentiles who are no longer under the
custodian of the law. In the past they were -- they
had to be "guided and guarded" by the Torah after
becoming proselytes. The image of the law as a
"pedagogue"/"custodian" doesn't apply well to the
Jewish people in any case. Pedagogues were household
slaves appointed to guard boys from mischief and
educate them until they became mature adults -- and
they were widely perceived as "killjoys" with
unfavorable dispositions. The Jewish people certainly
didn't find the Torah to be onerous or cumbersome --
or in any way "like a pedagogue" -- and Paul of course
was no exception (Philip. 3:4b-6). On the other hand,
Gentiles, especially fresh proselytes or those faced
with the immediate prospect of proselyte conversion,
would easily have appreciated the metaphor of the
Torah as a "pedagogue".

The context in Galatians is a Gentile one all around
(for I believe that the opponents/influencers were
Gentile proselytes rather than Jews), and so my own
paraphrase of verses 25-26 would read as follows:

"Now that faith has come, 'we' proselytes are no
longer under a pedagogue, for in Christ Jesus you
uncircumcised Gentiles are all sons of God through
faith."

As I stated earlier, it is neither far-fetched nor
unprecedented to lump "Gentiles and the Torah"
together, given an adequate context. That's why I
think the "we" is rhetorical.

Having said this, I do acknowledge that your own
reading of Gal. 3:23-29 follows as a logical
implication -- in the same way that it "logically"
follows from Rom. 7:7-25 that "no Jew can fulfil the
law adequately without Christ". (I realize that Rom. 7
is beset with a host of other problems, but for the
limited point I'm making here, the analogy holds.) But
I don't think these "logical implications" have much
to do with the real thrust of Paul's arguments.

How does this grab you, Moon?

Loren Rosson III
Nashua, NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com


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