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- From: "Roy E. Ciampa" <roy_ciampa AT compuserve.com>
- To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
- Subject: Re: '14 years' of preparation/seclusion
- Date: Sat, 31 Mar 2001 12:13:47 +0100
Perhaps I have missed part of this dialog, but I did want to
respond to the idea of "the problem of the 14 relatively inactive years" that
has been explicitly mentioned or implied in several of the messages. In
several messages it has been suggested they were years of seclusion and/or
preparation.
Since the reference to 14 years comes from Paul in Galatians
it would be good to see how he represents those years. 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."
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. That was the
message to which the Jerusalem leaders had "added nothing" (2:6), the one that
he had been preaching with such success that they could see that God had
entrusted him with it (2:7) as a special appointment by grace (2:9) and
that God had been at work through Paul's ministry to the Gentiles
(2:8).
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 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)!
All the best,
Roy Ciampa
--------------------------------------------------
Dr. Roy E. Ciampa
IBP-ESETE
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Dr. Roy E. Ciampa
IBP-ESETE
Rua Castelo Picão, 13
2670 Sto. Antão do Tojal
Portugal
Tel:
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- Re: '14 years' of preparation/seclusion, Roy E. Ciampa, 03/31/2001
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