Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>]

Mark,
Have not read Troy Martin's new article to comment, but I think he is quite
right about Gal 4:10, and have developed this in the context of Galatians
explored in Irony of Galatians--albeit in a direction very different than
does Martin. It helps to make sense of Paul's language about the addressees
consideration of "returning" to the kinds of practices (family and civic
idolatry) that they observed earlier, when they did not know God but gods.
The calendar revolved around such events. If being told that if they do not
become proselytes they are not entitled to think of themselves as entirely
free of the pressure from their family and town to participate in such
things, then this would offer the occasion to see why these are linked in
Paul's argument. 

On the one hand, if wanting to claim to be more than merely pagan guests of
the Jewish communities and thus receive the welcome accorded to guests but
not membership on the same terms as Jews and proselytes, there would be
pressure to comply with traditional way to transform identity from pagan to
proselyte. On the other hand, this "good news" of how to make this identity
transformation would be accompanied by the threatening news that otherwise
they are not entitled to claim, e.g., the right of the Jewish communal
members to abstain from imperial cult festivities--which involves the
observance of days and months and seasons and years.

I argue that this then provides the context for understanding Paul's
comments in 6:12-13, such as his accusation that the influencers' interest
in the addressees' compliance with proselyte conversion is in order to avoid
persecution for the cross of Christ. That I take to mean the influencers'
effort to avoid suffering reprisals from the larger pagan communities for
accepting the addressees' claim (who are still pagans as far as everyone but
their Jewish subgroup is concerned) to refrain from civic cult on the basis
of the death of a Judean martyr of the Roman regime, which is the basis of
the addressees' legitimation of this nonconforming behavior (opting out of
compulsory civic idolatry). Thus the influencers do not accept the
justification of this behavior to which the addressees appeal. Paul seeks to
undermine the influencers' motives as self- instead of addressee-centered
in pushing for the proselyte conversion of the addressees if they are to
think of themselves and behave as though no longer pagans with such
obligations. If the addressees are considering their message, which could be
quite compelling, with appeal to Scripture and long-standing Jewish as well
as pagan communal norms, they would be in a position to understand Paul's
comments in 4:8-10 and elsewhere in the manner herein proposed.
 
Regards,
Mark
-- 
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
Co-Moderator
http://mywebpages.comcast.net/nanosmd/