Corpus-Paul

[Richard Fellows <rfellows AT shaw.ca>]

Mark,

as I think you suspected, I did not make myself clear. I am proposing only
that the infiltration of the false brothers occurred in Galatia. Obviously
the meeting with the apostles happened in Jerusalem. I am taking up the
suggestion of Manson (1) and Orchard (2), who said that Gal 2:4-5 is a
parenthetical remark which takes the reader away from the Jerusalem context.
While Gal 2:1-3 and 2:6-10 concern Jerusalem, they argue that 2:4-5 describe
an incident in one of Paul's towns. They suggest that the issue of
circumcision might never have arisen in Jerusalem. Is that clear?

One form of this idea is the suggestion that the false brothers were
Galatian non-Christ-believing Jews who had no particular connection with
Jerusalem. They could then be equated with your own Galatian influencers,
Mark. Alternatively, the false brothers could have been Judean
Christ-believers who visited Galatia and infiltrated Paul's circle there.
This would fit with more traditional interpretations of the letter.

In any case, I am proposing something like the following.

Paul, Barnabas and Titus went to Jerusalem and met with the apostles. Paul
presented his gospel and the apostles recognised its validity. P, B and T
returned to Antioch where Titus was given the new name 'Timothy'.
Titus-Timothy went ahead to south Galatia and Paul arrived later. Some
'false brothers' infiltrated Paul's circle and overheard mention of
Titus-Timothy's Greek father. This information spread among all the Jews of
the region. Since Paul wanted to take Titus-Timothy with him, he circumcised
him so that he would not cause a scandal and so that he could be effective
in evangelism among the Jews. The circumcision of Timothy led to the
mistaken view among the Christ-believers in Galatia that Paul thought
circumcision was actually necessary as the final step of conversion. They
thought that the Jerusalem apostles supported circumcision (for gentiles)
and they assumed that Paul had come under their influence. When Paul wrote
Galatians he tried to correct these misunderstandings. First he emphasises
that his gospel is not from the Jerusalem church - in fact he had had
minimal contact with them. Secondly he points out that even Titus, who was
the most Jewish of Gentiles, was with him in Jerusalem and was known to be a
Greek at the time, yet the apostles did not demand that he be circumcised -
the issue never arose. In fact, they added nothing to his message. Paul's
statement that the apostles did not compel Titus to be circumcised then
raises the obvious question, "if the apostles did not want Titus to be
circumcised, why did you circumcise him?". Paul then explains that the need
to circumcise Titus-Timothy arose because of the sneaky false brothers.

I fully realise that this reconstruction contains assumptions that you do
not share, Mark, and I accept that nothing here can be proved. However, I do
think that there are useful ideas here, and perhaps others can take them
further. I also think that the picture that I have sketched above has a
certain self-consistency and simplicity, and I think that is all that we can
hope for when dealing with Galatians.

Like Tertullian and Ambrosiaster, I have interpreted Gal 2:4-5 in the light
of Acts 16:3. I am suggesting that the false brothers leaked the information
that Timothy had a Greek father. One thing that I like about this is that it
explains how Paul could have expected his readers to understand his broken
grammar in Gal 2:4-5, especially if we accept that Timothy was Titus
renamed. The news that the false brothers had overheard that Timothy's
father was a Greek had spread to 'all the Jews in those places', so the
Galatian Christ-believers would certainly have known what Paul was referring
to when he mentioned the false brothers. They would have known about the
circumcision of Timothy and the events leading up to it, even if they became
confused about Paul's motives. Paul did not have to include the words "His
circumcision was necessary" at the beginning of 2:4 because his meaning was
clear enough. A simple 'but', standing adversative to the 'circumcised' of
2:3, was sufficient.

Mark, you say that the false brothers did not journey from Jerusalem to
Galatia, and you may be right. However, you place them in Jerusalem all the
time, whereas I am suggesting they may have been in Galatian all the time. A
difficulty that I have with your view is that it makes it hard for the
addressees to understand Gal 2:4-5. The incident of Gal 2:4-5, whatever it
was, would have taken place a long way from the addressees, and it would
have involved people who they would never have met. How then, could Paul
have expected them to understand what he wrote? As you say, we would have to
assume that Paul or his secretary had a very bad moment.

There are three possibilities.
1. The false brothers were, at different times, in Jerusalem and Galatia.
2. The false brothers were in Jerusalem, but never in Galatia.
3. The false brothers were in Galatia, but never in Jerusalem.

Mark, I know that you prefer 2 to 1 (though I am not aware of your reasons).
But would 3 also satisfy your objections to 1?

Yesterday I attempted an argument against 1. Maybe you will approve of it. I
said that the addressees were confused about Paul's gospel. They would not
have been so confused if they had come under the influence of individuals
who had been at a meeting where Paul had laid out his gospel. It is likely
that the influencers themselves misunderstood Paul, and therefore had not
heard a presentation of his gospel. Therefore, if the false brothers were
the influencers, it is unlikely that they infiltrated the Jerusalem meeting.

> > 1. Paul writes, ".. that the truth of the gospel might remain with you".
If
> > the incident occurred in Galatia, this is just the sort of thing that we
> > would expect Paul to write.
>
> Really? On what model for how rhetoric within this letter works? Paul
> explains select events in his life in this autobiographical narrative for
> the benefit of the Galatian addressees, and here he makes the point they
are
> to grasp explicit: we upheld this principle then, which is to your benefit
> now. No?

Yes, but if 2:5 were set in Jerusalem Paul could equally have written "that
the truth of the gospel might remain with the Gentiles", or simply have
omitted the clause. Note that at 2:2 he talks about the gospel that he
preached among the Gentiles. Not 'among you'. And when describing the
Antioch incident Paul does not explicitly say that he did anything for the
addressees. Only at 2:5 does he do that. Perhaps I am reading too much into
it, but I do find the 'with you' of 2:5 suggestive of a Galatian setting. I
agree, though, that it could be read differently if we had prior reason to
suppose a Jerusalem setting.

>But your statement implies that the
> readers are the "false brother," not those being influenced by them (if
> being influenced by them at all! which I doubt and argued against in Irony
> when discussing the influencers in Galatia [not where discussing those in
> Jerusalem, so that you are clear where you can find copious arguments
about
> this matter]).

Could you give page numbers?

On the issue of the non-yielding in 2:5, it is possible that Paul says here
"we did not yield" precisely because he HAD circumcised Titus and wanted to
avoid giving the impression that he had given way on the point of principle.

(1) St Paul in Ephesus: Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 24, no.1,
April, 1940).
(2)Journal of Theological Studies vol 42, 1941, 173-177.

Richard.