Corpus-Paul

[Ron Price <ron.price AT virgin.net>]

I have a proposal for the occasion of Galatians and am wondering if anyone
else has had the same idea.

Starting with the North Galatian hypothesis, and the Knox
three-Jerusalem-visits hypothesis, I propose that Paul visited N. Galatia
soon after the Jerusalem Council at the start of his final missionary
journey. His primary intention was to instigate a collection there in
conformance with the request (demand?) recorded in Gal 2:10. To his dismay
he found that the Galatian churches had come under the influence of
Christian Jews loyal to James. But for the sake of the collection, Paul's
face-to-face response had to be muted. Thus after moving on to Ephesus and
settling in there, his first task was to write to the Galatian churches and
admonish them for deserting his gospel. The proposal involves Paul making
two visits to the Galatians - visit 1: Gal 4:13 // Acts 16:6; visit 2: 1 Cor
16:1 // Acts 18:23.

This scenario explains "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting
him who called you ..." (Gal 1:6) in that already on his second visit he had
found that they were deserting the gospel which he had presented on his
first visit. Paul wrote the letter by himself with no other named sender
(Gal 1:1), consistent with the evidence that he had been by himself at the
time of his visit to them (Acts 18:23). It explains why Gal 1 gives no
indication that someone had informed Paul of the desertion (as might be
expected by analogy with 1 Cor 1:11 & 5:1) - for he knew of it first hand.

Ron Price

Derbyshire, UK

Web site: http://homepage.virgin.net/ron.price/index.htm