Galatians Vrsn 2 Chapter 2:2-4

I had no idea that Gal 2:1 would chew up an entire post of its own. The issue was the dating of Paul’s return to Jerusalem, fourteen years after his initial conversion. From an historical point of view, being able to fix a date on this occurrence is hugely important. A date like this affects the history of the period, and all the subsequent development. It affects how we look at the texts, how we consider the sources.

1 Ἔπειτα διὰ δεκατεσσάρων ἐτῶν πάλιν ἀνέβην εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα μετὰ Βαρναβᾶ, συμπαραλαβὼν καὶ Τίτον:

2 ἀνέβην δὲ κατὰ ἀποκάλυψιν: καὶ ἀνεθέμην αὐτοῖς τὸ εὐαγγέλιον ὃ κηρύσσω ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, κατ’ ἰδίαν δὲ τοῖς δοκοῦσιν, μή πως εἰς κενὸν τρέχω ἢ ἔδραμον.

3 ἀλλ’ οὐδὲ Τίτος ὁ σὺν ἐμοί, Ελλην ὤν, ἠναγκάσθη περιτμηθῆναι:

4 διὰ δὲ τοὺς παρεισάκτους ψευδαδέλφους, οἵτινες παρεισῆλθον κατασκοπῆσαι τὴν ἐλευθερίαν ἡμῶν ἣν ἔχομεν ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, ἵνα ἡμᾶς καταδουλώσουσιν:

When after fourteen years again I went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, we brought with us also Titus. (2) I went up according to a revelation, and I communicated to them the gospel (good news = euaggelion) which I announced (usually rendered as “preached”) to the peoples/pagans, privately to them being reputed, lest not into emptiness was I running or had I ran. (3) But neither was Titus who was with me, being a Greek, compelled to be cut around (circumcised). (4) On account of the false brothers introducing these things in secret, those who came to look down upon our freedom which we had in Christ Jesus, so that they may enslave us.

The translation of Verse 1 is included again in order to provide full context.

In the previous comment, we didn’t even get to Titus. His inclusion on the trip to Jerusalem is something of a provocation on Paul’s part, or at least an act best described as passive-aggressive. As we shall see, the point of the meeting will be to discuss Paul’s missionary activity. The crux of the problem to be solved will be whether followers of Jesus who weren’t already Jews had to become Jews before they could be followers of Jesus. One of the big stumbling blocks–we will get to others–was circumcision. This was a Jewish practice, and one that the Greeks were a bit put off by, which is putting it mildly; the reaction was almost best described as horrified. The Greeks left plenty of evidence of their admiration of the human figure, particularly the male human figure, and we all know that they were not ashamed to be nude in public. In fact “not ashamed” is a serious understatement. They flaunted their nudity in public, or at least in the company of other men. The term “gymnasium”, where the men went to exercise and study literally means something like the “the place you get naked”. The Greek “gymnos” means nude. So, to do something like perform a circumcision was considered mutilation. Nay, more, it was impiety. The human figure was a reflection of the divine figure, so marring the human form was an offense against the gods. Now, the Greeks did not take such offenses against the gods too seriously, unlike the Jews and especially not anything close to the way Christians did. The Greeks did not stone people, or burn them at the stake, or hang them for impiety, but they were not shy about expressing their scorn, either. There’s that, but there is also the issue that performing a circumcision on an adult male was a fairly serious operation, especially given the state of medicine at the time. So for both these reasons–and one suspects the latter carried a bit more weight than the latter–circumcision was a serious stumbling block in proselytizing pagans and convincing them to convert. So the arrival of Titus bound to stir things up a bit.

Then notice why Paul went. He was not summoned, as in, James did not summon him so they could hash this out. Once again, it was due to a revelation, which neatly absolves him of any sort of responsibility, and makes it very clear that he is still beholden to no human. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. Because the first thing he did–according to the “itinerary”, or the program he provides us is explain his teaching to the pagans. Now, reading between the lines a bit, this certainly does open quite widely the possibility that he actually had been summoned. Or if that is too strong, it provides the possibility that the impetus for the meeting came from James rather than Paul or the source of Paul’s revelation. Of course Paul has pre-empted such a charge by claiming the revelation up front, before we get to the reason why he came. He also had a private audience with those of repute within the community (the translation is a bit clumsy because the Greek is a bit clumsy). It is interesting that Paul does not name names, or drop names, depending on how one views this. Why not? Are we to infer that James was, or was not part of the discussion? I suspect that most would simply understand that he was included, largely on the basis of what is to come. However, that is an inference, and not a certainty. There is altogether too great a tendency to think we know more than we do, and we need to be aware of it, and wary of it. Paul here is providing perhaps the most solid historical evidence we have for anything in the NT.

As one final note, let’s remember that there are dozens of apocryphal texts that purport to be about Jesus’ life and teachings. These are the texts that were not deemed to be canonical once the assemblies had coalesced into something resembling what we can call The Early Church. If you notice, one of the major criteria for canonical status was an ability to be traced back to the so-called Apostles. But there are Gospels of Peter, and Acts of Peter, and so forth, so that was not sufficient. The other thing is the dating of the texts. The Gospel of John and perhaps Revelation (which may actually have been written before John’s Gospel) possibly, or probably, spill into the early Second Century. Some of the epistles probably do as well, but nothing goes much beyond that. So the works had to trace back to a time when they could reasonably be supposed to have been the work of someone who had at least heard the first generation, the immediate followers of Jesus. And yet works continued to be produced, and usually were accompanied by the claim of having been a revelation. Elaine Pagels made an excellent point in her book on Gnosticism: there comes a time when an established church cannot tolerate continual revelation. Such additional revelation has the unpleasant ability to undermine the authority of that established institution, which is an obvious threat to the institution. This became an issue for The Church in the centuries directly prior to Luther’s 95 Theses, when a mystical movement (who’s got a better term?) began to spread. While most of them remained orthodox, they were all problematic to some degree. Mysticism is the personal and direct union with God, which means The Church is not necessary. And what is a revelation, but a personal vision arising from a personal experience of God? So at some point the nascent church had to put an end to continued revelation. Now think of it: what was Paul doing, by claiming continued revelation? He was undermining the status quo as practiced by the Jerusalem Assembly under the auspices of James. This would threaten the position of those following these precepts. So, yes, of course there was going to be pushback as Paul stepped on toes and made enemies. But we will come to this again later.

The question here is whether this private setting indicates that Paul was in trouble and was being spared potential embarrassment in front of the community, or if the private setting was to facilitate earnest discussion where both sides could be frank. See, here is where knowing what is coming is a bit of a detriment. I do know what’s coming, so am I reading this appropriately, or am I reading back into these passages the contention that is to follow. Overall, I do suspect the latter.

The bit about the emptiness in which he was, or had been running is the key. By “emptiness”, he means “in vain”, as in, activity done to no purpose or result. That is to say, had he been preaching a message for the last fourteen years that those of repute in the Assembly were about the disavow? I do believe that is the meaning of the verse. I checked with the aggregated commentaries at the Bible Hub and they support my reading. For once, at least, I haven’t wandered too far beyond the pale. The commentators also agree that there was a real issue at stake here. Paul had been a loose cannon for the past 1.4 decades, and now it was time to face the music, as it were. He was effectively being examined to determine if his methods had become unsound, as happened with Kurtz in The Heart of Darkness. Again peeking ahead, the bone of contention is the degree to which the Law was going to impact the lives of the new converts. Hence the next assertion, that Titus was not compelled to undergo circumcision, and Paul reports this as a triumph for his perspective, or for his message. Interesting to note a certain smugness in the tone of the commentators: of course Paul wasn’t going to insist on all those Jewish practices. Actually, smugness might be a bit kind. But recall a lot of these commentaries were written in previous centuries when the Eurocentric world view was simply not challenged, or even questioned.

The section closes with some dark insinuation. False brethren are saying things in private, trying to take away Paul’s freedom, and presumably by implication, that of those whom he had brought over to his gospel. Who are these “false brethren”? One of the commentators says these were Jews who 

…It is probable that he refers to Judaizing Christians, or persons who claimed to be Christians and to have been converted from Judaism. Whether they were dissemblers and hypocrites, or whether they were so imperfectly acquainted with Christianity, and so obstinate, opinionated, and perverse, though really in some respects good men, that they were conscientious in this, it is not easy to determine…

Note the words “imperfectly acquainted with Christianity”. Of course they were imperfectly acquainted with Christianity because there arguably was no such thing at this point. Had the term even been coined yet? We have a possible terminus ante quem for the term, given that Nero blamed the Christians for the fire in Rome in the year 64. Or so Tacitus tells us. This implies both that there were people calling themselves Christians by the year 64, and that there was a significant assembly of them in Rome by that point, which enabled Nero to use them as a scapegoat for the fire. The problem is that Tacitus was writing some fifty years after the event. Was he projecting backwards? The word Christian occurs twice in Acts, and once in 1 Peter. That is, it is not attested before the last decade of the First Century. The topic of how much we can derive from these two uses is a discussion properly left for the commentary on Acts. Luke says the term was first used in Antioch. What we can draw from this, I think, is that the term started outside of Jerusalem. Most likely, it began to be used, and/or came to be the common term in some of the communities that Paul had either established or helped foster. But primarily these were communities composed largely of non-Jews, of former pagans. I have to be careful with that assertion, because it’s not based on a lot of evidence, but I think the inference is sound based on what is going to happen in the rest of this epistle. 

Thus my point is that the false brethren were probably Jews who belonged to the Jerusalem Assembly, and took direction from James or Peter, but especially the former. We have to bear in mind that there was nothing in Jesus’ ministry that indicates he intended to break away from Judaism. Most of the interactions with pagans, and the attestations that Jesus had not found such faith in the children of Israel are almost certainly the product of later developments. They make little sense in the 30s, but they make a lot of sense in the 70s and beyond, after Paul’s missions had brought many pagans into the fold. In this sense they were “false” mainly–or only–from Paul’s perspective. The giveaway is the claim that they wanted to take away Paul’s freedom, and enslave him and those who followed his interpretation of Jesus’ role in salvation. As mentioned above regarding Paul’ continued revelation, I don’t want to go too deeply into this at the moment, but we will certainly take this up as we get further into the epistle.

Galatians Vrsn 2 Chapter 2:1

No, that’s not a typo in the title. This post is dedicated to a single verse.

This is the chapter that describes what has come to be called (in some circles) the Synod of Jerusalem. It contains the interactions of Paul with James, brother of Jesus and Peter. It’s interesting to note that Paul does not really give us any introduction to these people; the implication is that the audience will simply know who they are. That is significant. It’s also interesting and possibly significant to realize that I did not point this out in Version 1 of Galatians, largely because it did not occur to me. And yet these are often the sorts of things that carry a great amount of historical weight, mostly because they are so casual and so impromptu, tossed out off-the-cuff with no forethought, or thought of any kind. These are buried assumptions, the sorts of things that we all carry around with us, that affect the way we think and look at the world, and yet we are simply unaware of them. Why? Because they are the cultural data, the things having been given of a geometric proof. So we assume they are because they have to be and they cannot be otherwise. Needless to say, this assumption is dead wrong. Great examples of these data are the meaning of the words grace, baptize, and angel. We simply assume we know what they mean, when in fact they had very different meanings to the people who used them two millennia ago.

So let’s see what Paul has to say about the Jerusalem Assembly. In the first version I referred to them a bit irreverently as the “James Gang”, a play on the gang of American outlaws led by Jesse James. The designation was, arguably, a bit too flippant, at least too familiar, but perhaps not. This was a group, after all, led by James that followed rules that were not part of the mainstream. They weren’t killing people and robbing banks and trains, but what they did was enough to draw the unwelcome attention of the Jewish authorities which is where the sense of being outlaws, outlaw = outside the law, arises, making the irreverent moniker not inappropriate.

Hmmm…this just occurred to me. The Jerusalem Assembly existed and operated in, well, Jerusalem. There is no mistaking that. And yet, there is nothing to indicate that Paul–or anyone–ever put the assembly on the proscribed list, thereby designating them as personae non gratae who should be persecuted, or prosecuted, or made uncomfortable to some degree. Why? This is on the same wavelength of why none of Jesus’ followers were rounded up with him when he was arrested. If he was indeed a dangerous revolutionary, the Romans would (likely) not have been content with just him. So in the same way, if the Jewish authorities, “some of our leading men” as Josephus calls them, had executed Jesus, why were they so willing to allow his brother to continue to run the operation unscathed?

Yes, there are those who will say that the impetus to execution came from Joseph Caiaphas and his father-in-law Annas (or other variant spellings); once they were out of office the motives against Jesus and thereby James would have dissipated. This is entirely possible. But according to Josephus, once Caiaphas left office in 37, he was followed by three of Annas’ sons in succession, the last one holding office until 63. This could be used as the basis for an argument that the policies of Caiaphas likely would have been continued by those who were his brothers-in-law. Or, they could have gone in a completely different direction, but the former has to be considered. Caiaphas held office for an extraordinarily long time, some eighteen years. This implies a degree of popularity, or perhaps more accurately a degree of acceptance and toleration from the Roman overlords. They left Caiaphas in office that long because they liked what he was doing, so it would make sense to keep the office in the same family hoping to get the same results. That there were three sons of Annas in succession indicates that they did indeed get the same favourable results.

So back to the question: why would the successors of those who allegedly executed Jesus tolerated James, and for almost thirty years? That seems odd. The indication would be that Caiaphas really wasn’t all that responsible for Jesus’ execution, that Jesus hadn’t been much of a nuisance, let alone a threat, so his successors really didn’t bother themselves about James. Rather, if we take a close reading of Paul, it would seem that such persecution of the new movement as existed was done under the auspices of the authorities in Damascus. This is where Paul was going when he had his conversion, and from whence he skipped town to take it on the lam in Arabia, and thence he returned when the heat had indeed died down. No real mention of Jerusalem at all. This, in turn, would put a very different complexion on Christian claims of persecution. But let’s get on with it, shall we?

Text

1 Ἔπειτα διὰ δεκατεσσάρων ἐτῶν πάλιν ἀνέβην εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα μετὰ Βαρναβᾶ, συμπαραλαβὼν καὶ Τίτον:

When after fourteen years again I went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, we brought with us also Titus.

There is a lot of historical information packed into this single verse. According to this, Paul was out preaching his own gospel for fourteen years. To this point and according to his own account, he spent more two weeks with any of the others. After that, he took off on a fourteen-year tour, preaching the gospel. Depending on when Paul converted, this return to Jerusalem could have taken place as early as 48; the upper end is perhaps 64, or a bit sooner, when we are told James was executed. The earlier terminus post quem of 48 presents problems. That would require that Paul’s conversion came within a year of the traditional date of Jesus’ death in 33 CE; however, this date could be off by at least 4-6 years, and this assumes Luke is correct at putting Jesus at age 30 when he began his ministry. There is no reason to accept Luke’s age; it’s pure speculation, meant to convey that Jesus started his mission as s fully mature man. But that Jesus’ death occurred in the reign of Tiberius as Luke says is much more likely to be accurate. When dealing with the ancient world, the year a prominent figure died was likely to be noted and remembered, whereas dates of birth are often speculation, or at best an educated guess. There were no real records and mostly no one pai attention to a birth, unless the person was born into a prominent family, say the heir-apparent or something such.

But should we assume, or infer, that Paul started his persecution immediately Jesus died? No. If our inferences are correct that the persecution was focused in Damascus rather than in Jerusalem, a certain period of time would be required for the preaching to reach as far as Damascus, a journey of some days, or even weeks on foot. Then the assembly, once planted, needed time to grow to reach a level of visibility sufficient to irritate someone in authority, and goad that authority figure into beginning some sort of countermeasure. All of this would require years. A period of at least 3-5 years would seem more or less sufficient, but longer is more likely than shorter. So this puts the beginning of Paul’s career as a persecutor into the late 30s at the very least. Given Paul’s zeal, we can safely assume, IMO, that he would have been one of the first to sign on for the new duty. How else to cut his way to the head of his contemporaries? Then how much time elapsed before the conversion? It would seem Paul pursued his career for some non-trivial amount of time; Paul tells us he was known as a persecutor, and that members of the assemblies were astonished that he had switched sides, and this requires that he had time to establish his reputation and for the reputation to spread. So we are likely talking in terms of some years, but perhaps not so long as five years.

The end result of all of this is that dating Paul’s conversion before 40 CE seems unsupportable. Even if we say it was in 40, this still puts us at 54 when this return to Jerusalem occurred. Why is this important? It has a lot pf bearing on when some of these texts were written. This would include Q (well, when it could have been written), the Gospel of Thomas, and the Didache. Given Paul’s meeting in 54, it is really difficult to sustain the position that Q was produced in the 40s, let alone the 30s. This, I suspect, is another reason why Paul so often is ignored or summarily dismissed by NT scholars. Almost to a scholar they desperately want all of these documents to be dated as early as possible, and even the 50s is too late–by a decade if not more–if their contentions are going to hold. Again, the real significance of Q is that it’s the only possible way that any of the books of the NT can possibly trace back, if not to Jesus himself or his lifetime, then in the years immediately following his death. Because even by 54, there is a gap of twenty years, a generation, between Jesus’ death and the first written text of the NT.

Twenty years is a long time to maintain an accurate oral record. Yes, I am fully aware of the wonders of memory and how pre-literate cultures can preserve very long poems or stories for centuries. The Iliad and The Odyssey are two remarkable examples. However, all that research done in the Balkans in the early part of the last century is not an apples-to-apples comparison. The big reason is that the life of Jesus was not The Life of Jesus, an epic of some duration. Second, it’s not like the bards actually memorize a long poem; they more or less compose it as they go along. There are the standard lines, “the child of morning, rosy-fingered Dawn” and such were fillers, sort of a resting place where the bard could toss off the line while composing the next part. Second, Judea and Galilee were not pre-literate in the First Century CE. That part of the world had been literate for millennia by that point. The Homeric poems came out of a period in Greek history that was pre-literate. It had been literate in the Bronze Age, but then fell back into a technical Dark Age when literacy became a lost art. That is when the poems of Homer were created, and were then written down when literacy was re-introduced. Granted, literacy was not widespread in Judea and Galilee, but given the emphasis placed on Torah in Jewish culture, the rate of literacy was probably higher than it was in many contemporary cultures, including Persia and Rome. This remained largely true until only very recently with the spread of state-sponsored schools. So the idea that bards were spinning the epic of the Life of Jesus already in the 30s is probably misplaced. Finally, very recent research, done in the past twenty years, has shown that eyewitness accounts are not necessarily as accurate as we have been led to believe. People often don’t see what they think they see, and/or they mis-remember what they did. One area of research is in family stories, special events in which most or all members of the family participated. As time passes, the story mutates and evolves and people start to remember bits and pieces that simply did not happen. It’s the game of Telephone; repeat a story, pass it through a number of people, and you end up with something rather different from the initial tale.

From personal experience, I can provide a great example that has occurred in my own lifetime. Western society is not only literate, it’s saturated–or more–with information. And yet, despite this, the actions of prominent individuals, and events that the entire population experienced are simply gotten wrong. There was a book written in the early years of this century that dealt with the Great Depression. The exact date “The Depression” started is, of course, elastic; it depends on your definition.  But for seventy years no one disputed that it was in full swing in 1932 when FDR was elected. And yet this book I reference claimed that FDR and his policies were responsible for the Depression. That is, policies and laws that were enacted in 1933 somehow created the Depression that had begun several years prior. Talk about retroactive. I lived through the first OPEC oil embargo, which created shortages of gasoline resulting in very long gas lines. A great many people saw this as the low point of the Carter administration; the problem is that it happened while Nixon was president, three years prior to Carter’s election. The pièce de resistance is the memory of Reagan. Many people remember him as the great cutter of taxes; however if you mention that he subsequently raised taxes after the initial cut, you will be met with vehement denials of this. More, this myth of Reagan the Tax-Cutter, absent the reality of Reagan the Tax-Increaser was fully in place by the early part of the millennium, about twenty years after the first years of the Reagan presidency. That is to say, about the same amount of time that elapsed between Jesus’ death and the Synod of Jerusalem.

The point is that twenty years, a generation, is a long time to preserve an accurate memory, even of a prominent figure in an age of wall-to-wall news coverage, books, and more information about that person than an individual could consume in a decade. This is why the early date for Q and the rest is so critical for so many people. It’s really not enough that Q be accepted as fact. Without an early date for Q, we’re more or less in the same boat that we are without Q. If Q was written in the 50s, assuming it was written at all, we have still lost a direct connexion to Jesus. A document that came into being only a generation after Jesus’ death really doesn’t work.

Well, this went on much too long. But, this is a very important text, so I beg your forbearance.

Summary Galatians Vrsn 2 Chapter 1

In the past, these Summaries have gone into some detail about the issues raised in the chapter. However, for the first time I’m writing one of these, I know what is coming in the next chapter, whereas to this point I’ve not really had a clue what was to come; at least, not in any sort of detail. In addition, I spent a fair bit of time on each section, going through the implications and questions raised to some depth. The result is that it seems like I should hold fire until I get through Chapter 2. I apolgise for taking so long to come to this conclusion; I deliberately allotted extra time for consideration, only to find myself reluctant to say very much because of what I know is coming. I could have said “comment withheld” and gone straight into the next chapter a whole lot quicker than it’s taken me.

There is one overriding theme to this chapter. In fact, this may be the overriding theme to the entire epistle, and possibly for the Pauline corpus as a whole. In turn, this may require looking at the entire NT through a slightly different lens that the one to which we’re accustomed.

οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτό, οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.

(12) For I did not receive it from men, nor was it given, but/except through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 

I’m not sure it’s possible to overstate the significance of this. What it means is that we cannot be certain that anything Paul tells us about Jesus is factually accurate. This extends to the Words of Institution that are found in 1 Corinthians 15:23-26, although there may be extenuating circumstances for that passage that legitimize that particular quote. Given that we cannot trust that Paul represents Jesus faithfully, what does this mean? Essentially, this is to ask what Paul puts forth as the sort of things we are to believe?

In 1 Thessalonians we actually find very little of what we would call doctrine or dogma. The three things that stand out are 1) Paul comparing himself favourably to other preachers who burden the community, the sort of thing that the discusses; 2) That Jesus was killed by the Jews. I had forgotten this; it throws some sand in the gears of my theory that the Romans killed Jesus for reasons unknown; and 3) That the Lord will return on the clouds, and the faithful will rise up from the earth to meet him. This latter includes the assertion that Jesus died and rose again, and that the faithful who have died will rise from their graves to join the ascension into the clouds, and that the collective “we” will then be with the Lord forever. Since Paul opened the letter with “Lord Jesus Christ” we can assume that he is the “Lord” that we will be with forever.

We will see more of what Paul teaches in this epistle, but there is not a lot of what could call “teaching”. The main topic of Paul’s message contained in the epistle concerns the relative merits of faith vs the Law, meaning Jewish Law, the Law of Moses. Let’s save that for later.

The second most significant thing is the existence of (at least) one other gospel. Wouldn’t we all love to know what that was about! Where did it come from? What did it contain/how was it different? Who was preaching it? This latter is possibly the most interesting question. How does this tie in with what we will read about in Chapter 2? Again, this seems as if we would all benefit to tie this in with what Paul has to say regarding his relationship and interactions with James and Peter in Chapter 2.

We also read Paul’s confession about how he pressured, or pursued, or possibly prosecuted or even persecuted the new assemblies of Jesus’ followers. One aspect of this that I had not considered was to ask how many of these assemblies Paul was harrying? Where were they? He only mentions Damascus, which is in Syria, but isn’t all that far from Galilee. It’s sort of the next big town north of Caesarea Philippi, which is a town that we are told Jesus visited during his preaching tours. As such, it does not mean that the word had spread all that far beyond Galilee or Judea. And it bears mentioning that Paul says he went to Arabia; this will depend on the map you find, but by some Arabia was the name of the territory between the southernmost extension of Syria and Judea, more or less west, or north and west of Galilee. Damascus is in this southern part of Syria. So we are not talking about a great distance–Google tells me it’s 136 miles, which walking at 20 miles/day is a walk of 7 days, give or take. From Caphernaum to Damascus is about 90 miles, to provide some perspective. Leaving from Damascus one could enter northern Arabia in about the same distance as to Caphernaum.

However, in Verse 21 Paul tells us he went to Syria and Cilicia. The northern border of Syria is the southern border of Cilicia. Antioch is in the far north of Syria, and it is actually much closer to Tarsus than to Damascus. 

The point is that it appears that the word had not spread too far as of yet. Antioch is towards the norther border of Syria, so that could take weeks to walk. He says there were “assemblies of Jews in Christ” in those regions, which does indicate a certain amount of diffusion. But he also says he was not known by face in these further territories, which we can take to mean that he had never gotten that far in his pursuit of the new groups. Antioch and Damascus were pagan towns, albeit with sizable Jewish populations; most of the bigger towns in the region has such populations, from Alexandria to Babylon. But, as pagan towns, one wonders if any persecution of these sectarian Jews would have been ordered, or organized there, or would this all have been done from Jerusalem? The attitudes of the Roman administration in any of these cities would have depended greatly on the individual in charge and the local circumstances which makes generalizing very difficult. However, given that Paul says he avoided Jerusalem after his conversion, perhaps we can read between the lines a bit and infer that he may have been avoiding the Jewish officials who had been directing the persecutions. 

In Acts, Luke famously tells us that Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Indeed, a “Road to Damascus moment” is something of a cultural cliché for the moment an individual undergoes any kind of sudden revelation of the Truth, or even just something true. I said this the first time around, but I will stick to it. Despite their obvious and vast differences in detail, Paul’s description here does not contradict Luke’s later account. The difference is the attendant details. Luke obviously tells a much more dramatic tale, full of magical moments and vivid detail, but, at its core, it is the story of a sudden and dramatic change of heart. Paul does not indicate why he changed his view, and the lack of explanation is entirely consistent with the sort of blinding and singular event found in Acts. One moment, Paul is going about his business; the next an overwhelming power takes control and changes his life forever. And truly, this is the imagery of the lightening bolt hurled by Zeus: in a single moment the course of a life, or of history is irrevocably altered. Often these moments of “sudden” conversion can be found to be not so “sudden” at all. Over time, a number of small details begin to accumulate unnoticed, and continue to accumulate unremarked until we reach the straw that broke the camel’s back, to cite another cliché. And so it may have been with Paul. First he is impressed by the conviction of one of the follower’s faith; and as a convert, this follower was likely to exhibit a conviction that one raised in a religion often does not feel. Then Paul was a bit baffled at the physical courage displayed by the convert, an imperviousness to the consequences that Paul threatened. Certainly, this became the staple of Christian hagiography as applied to martyrs. Paul may not have been threatening actual death, but a loss of status in the Jewish community would constitute a serious consequence, especially in the eyes of someone like Paul who was determined to cut his way to the front of the pack of his contemporaries (Verse 14). I mentioned the strong faith of the convert which is not always, or often, felt by the one raised in the religion. That, obviously, does not apply to Paul who claims he felt that conviction to a very large extent. So perhaps what impressed him was the way “ordinary” Jews had developed a fervour that was lacking previously.

Whatever the actual details were, at some point they broke through and Paul changed his attitude and the course of his life. Such breakthroughs often feel as if they are sudden and dramatic, coming from out of the blue, out of nowhere. Usually, though, there was a process occurring, but in such small ways as to go unnoticed until the tipping point is “suddenly” reached.

There is another aspect to the disparate versions of the story of Paul’s conversion. Now, when faced with two such different stories, the first question historians must ask is “which is more likely to be accurate?”. Often a key factor in this question is “who more likely had best access to the event itself?” Generally the rule is the closer the source is to the event, the more likely the story of that narrator becomes. Contemporary evidence usually carries the most weight. Indeed, this is why a letter such as Galatians is such an important historical source. It is a contemporary account of the life of the movement in the years between the deaths of Jesus and his brother James, placed by Josephus in 64. So when confronted by the seemingly very different stories told by Paul and Luke, which narrator most likely had best access to the facts surrounding the event? Is it more likely that Luke had more information to the details surrounding this event than Paul had? After all, Paul was not only a contemporary, not only an eyewitness, he was the main actor. So of course Paul would have known better what happened, even if he may not have understood the process very well. This is not at all unusual. In certain circumstances, perhaps especially in times of stress, we say and do things without fully comprehending why. It is only later, in retrospect, that we understand the why behind those actions. But here, we are not concerned with the why, but only with the what. Neither account offers much in the way of why, but they do describe the what, as in, the what happened? I think we have to concede that Paul’s description is likely to be closer to the actual events. Besides, Paul is a bit of a drama queen; does it seem likely that he would leave out such spectacular details as a blinding light from heaven?

This requires us to ask if Paul actually did omit this detail. I would suggest he did not. After all, what is a revelation of the good news of Jesus if not a blinding flash of light from heaven? This is what Paul claims, and Luke’s version does not really undermine or contradict Paul. Rather, Luke just tells it in a way that adds a level–a high level–of drama to the story. Hence my tendency to describe Luke as a novelist.

This leads to another aspect of the story. Or, perhaps, it is two closely related aspects. Yes, there is the element of drama in Luke, of sheer ability to tell a compelling story. But I also asked whether Luke or Paul had access to more information about the events of Paul’s conversion. Naturally, the automatic response would be Paul, of course. How could Luke have known more about the event from a distance of fifty years than Paul did who was the protagonist of his own narrative? The suggestion that Luke knew more is preposterous. It’s impossible. Isn’t it?

This is one of two events for which we actually have two independent sources of evidence. At least, we have independent sources that we can identify. At least, it is possible we have two independent sources. Well, perhaps the best description is that we have both a contemporary source and a secondary source. This is true for only two (that I can think of off the top of my head; there may be others) events in the NT. The other one is the so-called Synod of Jerusalem, which we will come to in Chapter 2. For with these two events we have the testimony of one who was not only a contemporary, who was not only an eyewitness, but who was an actual participant. Then we have the evidence of Luke from fifty years later. As such, it’s possible that Luke had access to evidence, such as it was, that Paul did not. Luke had the evidence of the intervening tradition.

Here we come to the crux. The accounts of Paul’s conversion and the Synod of Jerusalem provide some impressive insight in the process of how legends develop over time. Luke’s version is so much more elaborate, including aspects that Paul does not, such as his blindness (metaphorical?) and the name of the individual Paul stayed with after the event (the house of Judas) and the name of the man who restored his sight (Ananias). I would suggest this is information that Paul did not have, because it was added afterwards. Whether these details were added by “the tradition” (presumably oral), or made up by Luke himself is impossible to say. Neither is inherently more nor less credible than the other. Either way, they provide an excellent example of how a legend grows. We have the names of two additional individuals who likely were involved in the activities of the missionary movement, or in the assemblies. My guess is that the House of Judas was a meeting place of the assembly, and that Ananias had been a respected teacher; each left their name, but perhaps not much else, behind them to be incorporated into the story. Such is Phillip, the apostle named by John but not the others, as one of the Twelve.  

Now notice what we don’t have. Arabia has been removed, as has the revelation from Jesus the Christ. Sort of. Paul did return to Damascus after a sojourn in Arabia, so that squares with Luke, but Arabia has been lost. Why? Usually this is an indication that the story made no sense to those who came later. One possibility is that Arabia, or more likely one of the towns near its northern border with Syria such as Philadelphia or Pompea (named after Pompey the Great, the Roman general who added this stretch of land to the Roman territories) had a nascent assembly that later withered to nothing, like the seed cast in the shallow soil. Or, perhaps Paul went there precisely because there were no assemblies, and few Jews who might be aware of his activities. IOW, in the jargon of the old gangster movies from the 1930s, Paul was laying low until the heat blew over. The sudden cessation of his “persecuting” activities may have caused some consternation among a certain segment of Jews in Damascus and/or Jerusalem. Long story short, Arabia did not figure in the subsequent history of the movement in any significant way, so its retention in the story became an unnecessary distraction and was forgotten. This would be more relevant for the commentary on Acts, but it seems, or feels, like Luke’s version was mainly his own creation, even if it had been cobbled together from different pieces of information coming from different sources.

Nor do we have the revelation from Jesus the Christ. Or do we? The expression in Acts is that Ananias laid hands on Paul and “the scales fell from his eyes and he regained his sight” (REB, Acts 9:18). “Scales falling from eyes” is a very well-used metaphor for anything related to sight. This could be physical sight, as with the blind, or it could be spiritual sight, the gaining and/or understanding of profound spiritual Truths. Or, it could be both. I do not know what the consensus opinion is of the level of familiarity Luke had of Paul’s writings. I find it impossible to believe that anyone could suggest Luke had no knowledge, but people say the darnedest things when they are trying to get published. It’s like an attorney: you present the best argument you can, whether or not you actually believe that your client is innocent. That’s an irrelevant detail. It’s possible that Luke had access to the full corpus of Paul, but I would have to say that he was at least aware of Galatians; that is an absolute bare minimum. This epistle contains many of the seeds that will sprout and bear fruit in Acts.

 

 

Galatians Vrsn 2 Chapter 1:18-24

Now we race ahead to the exciting conclusion. Paul has just told us that, after his conversion, he went to Arabia and back to Damascus. Now he is picking up the story and moving it forward.

Text

18Ἔπειτα μετὰ ἔτη τρία ἀνῆλθον εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα ἱστορῆσαι Κηφᾶν, καὶ ἐπέμεινα πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡμέρας δεκαπέντε:

19 ἕτερον δὲ τῶν ἀποστόλων οὐκ εἶδον, εἰ μὴ Ἰάκωβον τὸν ἀδελφὸν τοῦ κυρίου.

20 ἃ δὲ γράφω ὑμῖν, ἰδοὺ ἐνώπιον τοῦ θεοῦ ὅτι οὐ ψεύδομαι.

21 ἔπειτα ἦλθον εἰς τὰ κλίματα τῆς Συρίας καὶ τῆς Κιλικίας.

22 ἤμην δὲ ἀγνοούμενος τῷ προσώπῳ ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Ἰουδαίας ταῖς ἐν Χριστῷ,

23 μόνον δὲ ἀκούοντες ἦσαν ὅτι Ὁ διώκων ἡμᾶς ποτε νῦν εὐαγγελίζεται τὴν πίστιν ἥν ποτε ἐπόρθει,

24 καὶ ἐδόξαζον ἐν ἐμοὶ τὸν θεόν.

Then after three years, I came up to Jerusalem where I inquired after Cephas, and remained with him fifteen days. (19) I did not see the rest of the apostles, except for James the brother of the Lord. (20) Which I have written to you, and behold, before the face of God, that I do not lie. (21) Then I went to the areas of Syria ad Cilicia. (22) But we were unknown by face to the assemblies of Jews in Christ. (23) They only heard that the one who was pursuing then now evangeilized the faith which before he destroyed, (24) and the glorified God in me. 

One quick word. As someone who has been reading history for decades, the word Paul used about inquiring about Peter/Cephas strikes a chord. He says he inquired (after) Peter, or sought him. The word he used is historēsei, the root of which is historia. The man who more or less invented the idea of writing history was Herodotus, dubbed the Father of History. The work starts with the line, Herodotus of Hallicarnassos hereby sets forth his historias..It literally means his “reseaches”, or his “inquiries”. Like angel or baptize, in English the word has taken on a specific meaning whereas in Greek it’s just a common ordinary everyday word.

Back in the translation of Verse 13, I said that I would say more about the pursuing of the assembly and trying to destroy it. There are two different words. The first can mean “pursue” or “pressure”, but it tends to be translated as “persecute” in the NT. The second means “to destroy”, and even, “to destroy utterly”. It is hard to dispute the inherent prejudice, and even implied violence of the second. The first word, however, is much more ambiguous. The base meaning is to pursue or chase, “as in war or hunting” (L&S).  In that nonexistent entity called “NT Greek” it is almost always translated as “persecute”. All four of my crib translation render it as such; however, in regular Greek, it is (almost?) never used for persecution, but it is used for prosecution. The NT usage, I believe is one of those “consensus” translations; it fits the story that is desirable, and so the meaning is stretched a little bit. And “everyone knows” that the proto-Christians were heavily persecuted by all and sundry; so, given that “fact”, the translation is chosen to fit it. Now, we’ve discussed this. My position is that the Christians grossly oversold the amount of persecution suffered. I say this because the evidence for it in the pagan authors is pretty scant. One of the exceptions is Suetonius, the biographer of the first twelve Caesars, who told that Nero blamed the Christians for the fire in Rome in 64. He adds the lovely detail that Nero ordered Christians to be covered in pitch and then set afire to serve as street lamps. But Caligula and Nero perpetrated all sorts of heinous acts against a lot of people. Nero murdered his mother. Then Domitian in the 90s led some sort of persecution, but it was not confined to Christians. The most notorious, and likely the worst, was that of Diocletian in the late Third Century. We are told by Christian writers that Polycarp was martyred, but the date and the emperor in whose reign this occurred is unclear, so we have to be a bit cautious about accepting the testimony of Christian writers at face value.

Other than that, there were sporadic and localised events and episodes, and the Romans were brutal people so anyone convicted likely suffered a truly horrible fate. But we also have the advice given to Pliny the Younger in the early-ish Second Century. He wrote to the Emperor Trajan ca 112, asking advice on how to deal with these Christians. Trajan’s reply was basically not to bother them for being Christians, but certainly prosecute them should they break the law otherwise. So the evidence for full-scale persecution is limited. Remember, over two, closer to three hundred years elapsed between Jesus and the accession of Constantine, so a lot of different things happened in different places, so to make sweeping judgements is ill-advised in the extreme. But to be clear, Christians were persecuted, and were executed; however, the degree and extent of these persecutions is very much open to question.

So what about Paul? We have his confession here. But bear in mind that this is Paul, who got his revelation directly from Jesus. He was also the first in Judaism among his peers. And he was selected by God from the womb for his missionary work. In short, Paul tends to overstate the situation. Here’s the thing: the degree to which Paul persecuted is dependent on that first word coupled with the second, which does mean “destroy”. But if that first word means “prosecute” rather than “persecute” that puts rather a different complexion on the situation, doesn’t it? Recall that the Jews were not civil authorities by virtue of being Jews. Doubtless there were individual Jews who served the government, but their latitude was limited. A full-scale persecution resulting in arrest and execution was, really, beyond their means. Jews did not control sufficient police authority to conduct such persecution. However, as Jews they had the prerogative to maintain their own religious customs, so long as they didn’t get out of hand. As an occupying force, the Romans were necessarily outnumbered; so their objective was to keep the peace by not letting any particular group get out of hand. So, while Paul may have tried to extirpate the new movement, he likely did it judicially, as a civil matters between individuals rather than by fire and sword with the mechanisms of the state. Because here is the other thing: Josephus, we are supposed to believe, talked about Jesus. And yet, he says nothing about the persecution of one group of Jews by the authorities, let alone identifying the persecuted group as Christians. This is the sort of scandal that seemingly should have interested him, as would the Slaughter of the Innocents have interested him–had it actually occurred. So what does Paul mean here? Hard to say. A series of lawsuits and a lot of exaggeration, most likely. 

There is a lot of source-criticism that can and should be done here. The questions to be asked are: (1) How likely is it that Paul will be completely honest and/or unbiased? IMO, very limited probability. Claiming a hotline to the deity is not the act of someone who is dispassionate and balanced in his judgement and recounting of the evidence. (2) How likely are the Galatians to have any real sense of what Paul might mean by “pursue and destroy”? Again, quite possibly limited, or at least questionable. Galatia is in more or less central to north-central modern Turkey, but the Roman province extended far enough south that it bordered on Cilicia, which Paul mentions as a place he was preaching. But he was doing his prosecuting in Damascus, which is much closer to Jerusalem than it is to, say Tarsus, whence Paul came. Tarsus is in Cilicia, albeit the part closest to Antioch in Syria. Now, one of the features of the Roman Empire is that communications and travel was the best they would be until the modern era, probably the early 20th Century, if not later. The borders between provinces were more of an idea than an actual frontier, so people and goods could travel freely, even if the roads to and from different places were not always top-quality. So yes, news could travel from Jews in Damascus to Jews in Galatia, and the later group may have had some knowledge of the new sect of Judaism, and that the righteous Pharisees were working to remove it. But the Assembly of Galatia was mostly pagans; would they have been all that interested in the news of what was happening in Damascus with the Jews? All this is by way of asking whether they would have known if Paul were lying about his role as a pers/prosecutor?  The follow-up would be to ask if they knew, would they have cared? (3) Given that they had met Paul, as he had been the one leading the mission to convert them, did they have a sense of when to add the grain of salt to whatever Paul said? Would they have been content with the vague allusions Paul makes in the letter, without feeling the need to know more?

One of the most effective checks on a story is whether the audience is sufficiently informed to recognize a lie when they see it. Of course, this is hardly foolproof or always effective; there are times when the audience wants the lie to be true, and will privilege that desire over whatever the objective facts might be. However, it seems highly unlikely that the Galatians were so heavily invested in either Paul or the competing gospel as to cling to one or the other without question; after all, they were willing to follow Paul, and apparently just as willing to throw him over when a new preacher came along. So we have to assume that the Galatians were aware, to some degree or other, of the circumstances Paul describes. Otherwise, why would Paul choose to use them as part of his argument? If the Galatians were wholly ignorant, then bringing them up to support your case is a bit bizarre, to say the least. Of course, doing something bizarre is not beyond Paul, based on what he says elsewhere. Regardless, we have to accept, IMO, that Paul is just not making stuff up, but we don’t have much of basis to decide whether he was persecuting or prosecuting. But we have to ask the question.We cannot simply accept the horrendous level of persecution the early Church claimed based just on their say-so. 

And, btw, not sure how you feel about this, but a protestation that “I am not lying” detracts, rather than enhances the credibility of the one making the statement. FWIW.

The last (famous last words…) point to be taken here is the chronology that Paul provides. He had his conversion moment–incidentally, converto, whence our word “conversion”, is a very literal translation of the Greek word Paul used–and then he went to Arabia. It was only three years later that he went to Jerusalem and met Cephas, presumably for the first time. This is not surprising, for he only stayed with Cephas for fifteen days. And, oh, by the way, he also met with James, brother of the Lord. This itinerary is consistent with his claim that he did not learn his message from humans. And he certainly did not learn it from Peter, whom he did not meet for three years. We do not know where he was in those three years, nor what he did. The reasonable assumption would be that he was preaching, but that’s exactly what it is: an assumption. It is definitely not a deduction, because we have no givens from which to draw, and the extreme paucity of these givens (data, in Latin, “things having been given” as the premises from which to construct an argument) prevents us from even saying that we have drawn an inference. “it seems likely” is the best that we can do. Not sure about you, but I’d hesitate to fly in a plane if the best the engineer can do is say, “it seems likely” that this will fly and land safely.

Even so, it fits with the claim of inspired revelation, rather than learned doctrine that Paul is claiming. What is really interesting is the very, very off-hand way he lets it drop that he met James, brother of the Lord. Considering that Paul will tell us, more or less, that James was in charge, to toss this out as Paul does in Verse 19 is nothing short of dismissive. There is, Paul is telling us, barely any reason to mention that he met the leader of the Jerusalem Assembly, the man who was the head of the fledgling church. This speaks volumes about the opinion has of James. Hint: it’s not very high.

There is one final last point to make. Traveling north from Jerusalem/Judea/Galilee, one passes through Syria and then comes to Cilicia. Cilicia is where Tarsus is found, and north of that is Galatia.

That is, I believe, sufficient commentary for the actual verses. We’ll wrap this up a bit more neatly in the Summary to Chapter 1 that will follow shortly, with any luck!

 

Galatians Vrsn 2 Chapter 1:13-17

[ Please note: due to incompetent editing, the text of Verses 18-24, and the beginning of the commentary on that section was originally included below. I have removed it here, and it exists as a separate post. ]

No real need for much of an introduction. This picks up after Paul has told us that he received his gospel directly through a revelation of Jesus the Christ. I had hoped to get through to the end of the chapter in this post, but the commentary on 18-24 was running on too long. Better to make the post shorter rather than longer.

13 Ἠκούσατε γὰρ τὴν ἐμὴν ἀναστροφήν ποτε ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ, ὅτι καθ’ ὑπερβολὴν ἐδίωκον τὴν ἐκκλησίαν τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἐπόρθουν αὐτήν,

14 καὶ προέκοπτον ἐν τῷ Ἰουδαϊσμῷ ὑπὲρ πολλοὺς συνηλικιώτας ἐν τῷ γένει μου, περισσοτέρως ζηλωτὴς ὑπάρχων τῶν πατρικῶν μου παραδόσεων.

For you have heard (of) my conversion/upsetting/turning upside down {more on that in the comment} when I (was) in Judaism, that very much I pursued the assembly of God and I was repeatedly trying to destroy it, (14) and I was habitually cutting my way forward over my contemporaries in my age, striving zealously over being first of the things betrayed* from our fathers.

Yes, the use of “betrayed” is deliberate to make a point. The same word is used both for being betrayed, as Judas (supposedly) did to Jesus, and for being transmitted, in the sense of transmitting, or handing down traditions. Paul uses the word, supposedly, in the the passage of 1 Corinthians 11:23-26, where Paul says that he handed down to the Corinthians what Jesus had handed down the night he was betrayed. Both “handed down” and “betrayed” are the same word in Greek, used here as traditions, the last word of Verse 14.

15 ὅτε δὲ εὐδόκησεν [ὁ θεὸς] ὁ ἀφορίσας με ἐκ κοιλίας μητρός μου καὶ καλέσας διὰ τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ

16 ἀποκαλύψαι τὸν υἱὸν αὐτοῦ ἐν ἐμοὶ ἵνα εὐαγγελίζωμαι αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν, εὐθέως οὐ προσανεθέμην σαρκὶ καὶ αἵματι,

17 οὐδὲ ἀνῆλθον εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα πρὸς τοὺς πρὸ ἐμοῦ ἀποστόλους, ἀλλὰ ἀπῆλθον εἰς Ἀραβίαν, καὶ πάλιν ὑπέστρεψα εἰς Δαμασκόν.

That [God] was pleased the separating me from my mother’s womb and the having been called through his favour* (16) he revealed his son to me so that I may good news (evangelise) him to the peoples, simultaneously taking on flesh and blood, (17) nor did I come to Jerusalem to those sent out before me, but going to Arabia, and again returning to Damascus. 

Now things get even more interesting. One word, I think, that cannot be used to describe Paul is “modest”. God separated Paul from the womb, by selecting him–and him alone–to preach the gospel of God’s son. Now, we can say Paul is full of himself, or we can stop to realise that he is standing firmly in the traditions of Judaism. After all, this is what God did with the prophets: he selected each one to be The One who went to preach to whoever the target audience was. Jonah tried to avoid his selection, but we know what happened to him. It’s really just to modern day–or my personal–sensibilities that this seems a tad outrageous. The point though is that the claim of selection from the womb enhances, in a very big way, the claim of revelation from Jesus. The enhancement is that now God is a part of the equation, he helps make all of this more plausible because this is God. We talked about the hierarchy of divine entities, and presumably Jesus as the Christ was superior to angels, and so the word of Paul, even if secondhand from Jesus, would carry more consequence than that of an angel. Well, now that is all fully resolved. God selected Paul to preach the gospel of Jesus, and it was God who revealed Jesus to Paul.  So now we have God’s authority in the background; God has become the ultimate, or the actual source for Paul’s message. Can’t get more authoritative than that.

But let’s take a step back and consider this. Paul feels a powerful need to drop names and pull rank to the degree that his message is coming from God, by way of Jesus the Christ. What I see here is the odd combination of a high degree of self-confidence coupled with a high degree of insecurity. What this Indicates to me is that Paul is feeling very threatened, and yet sort of seriously annoyed at the unmitigated gall that someone could prefer another gospel. One has to wonder if Paul had thought about all of this beforehand, or if the news that the Galatians were slipping into another gospel irritated him to the point that he sat down and dashed off a very angry letter in a fit of pique. Because keep in mind that this is one of, if not the earliest of his authentic letters. The choice is between this and 1 Thessalonians, which is usually considered the first that we have. That is, it is the first that has survived, but it may not have been the first he wrote. To some degree this would depend on where it falls in Paul’s career of evangelising. How early was it? The letter is most often dated to the 50s, which makes sense. There is a ten-year gap coming up, indicating that Paul had been preaching for at least ten years. This would put the beginning of his career into the 40s; many would like to push this back into the 30s, but that is a different debate which is outside our scope here. (Of course, that’s never stopped me before…)

The point I’m trying to reach is whether this is the first time an assembly he had established slid into the error of another gospel. That opens another whole can of worms. If this is the first time, then that would indicate the message being preached had remained fairly consistent, so there were not competing gospels before this. If it wasn’t the first time this happened, but was only the first time we’re aware of, then perhaps there had been competing gospels right along, but the evidence for them has not survived. I put no faith in the chronology of Paul’s preaching expeditions set out in Acts; there is simply no way that the sort of evidence required to produce that narrative survived into the 90s. Yes, Luke may have spoken to companions of Paul, but they are discussing events that occurred 40 years prior. Modern studies of memory as relating to eyewitness testimony in a trial indicates that memory is a very unreliable thing. Any stories that Luke heard would have been just that: stories. There were doubtless the proverbial “kernels of fact” somewhere within the narrative, but sorting out what is accurate from what is not is nearly impossible. I mention this as a pre-emptive strike against trying to date the founding of the Assembly of the Galatians from what we find in Acts. 

I will say more about all this later. I don’t want to anticipate the narrative too much.

Incidentally, this claim of selection from the womb is a very short step from Predestination.

There is a final word about vocabulary. In Verse 15, I say that Paul was called through God’s “favour”. The Greek is charitas, and everyone translates this as “grace”. I chose “favour” because “grace” is another of those words that have become loaded with all sorts of theological implications that, to make matters worse, have been filtered through Latin. The Greek charis and the Latin gratia do overlap, but the fit is not great. It’s better than the fit between logos and verbum, but that’s not necessarily saying a lot. To the modern reader, in this context grace refers to prevenient grace, or the magical pixie dust bestowed on us by God. It does not especially bring to mind the sort of grace that simply means favour, or good-will. Grace in the Christian sense is impossible here, it’s simply a concept that would not exist for a century or more after Paul wrote. After all, the Holy Spirit as one of the persons of the Trinity did not exist until the Third Century because the Trinity as a theological concept had not coalesced until the Third Century. Given that in this context, “grace” would be misunderstood, I chose a more neutral term.

 

Galatians Vrsn 2 Chapter 1:10-12

This is really an addendum to the last section. Or the end of the last section was the prologue to this one. Whatever. The point is that there is some sort of organic connexion between the last one and this one. The point is that Paul makes an earth-shattering claim in Verse 12, and it deserves a lot of attention. But it also needs to be taken in context with Verses 6-11, so I’ve included the text of those verses as well. It’s a bit of a rerun, but it’s short enough not to be too much of a burden.

Text

6 Θαυμάζω ὅτι οὕτως ταχέως μετατίθεσθε ἀπὸ τοῦ καλέσαντος ὑμᾶς ἐν χάριτι [Χριστοῦ] εἰς ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, (7) ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο: εἰ μή τινές εἰσιν οἱ ταράσσοντες ὑμᾶς καὶ θέλοντες μεταστρέψαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ. (8) ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐὰν ἡμεῖς ἢ ἄγγελος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ εὐαγγελίζηται [ὑμῖν] παρ’ ὃ εὐηγγελισάμεθα ὑμῖν, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. (9) ὡς προειρήκαμεν, καὶ ἄρτι πάλιν λέγω, εἴ τις ὑμᾶς εὐαγγελίζεται παρ’ ὃ παρελάβετε, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. 10Ἄρτι γὰρ ἀνθρώπους πείθω ἢ τὸν θεόν; ἢ ζητῶ ἀνθρώποις ἀρέσκειν; εἰ ἔτι ἀνθρώποις ἤρεσκον, Χριστοῦ δοῦλος οὐκ ἂν ἤμην. 11 Γνωρίζω γὰρ ὑμῖν, ἀδελφοί, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τὸ εὐαγγελισθὲν ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν κατὰ ἄνθρωπον:  12 οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτό, οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

I marvel that in this way you have so quickly changed from the one who having summoned you in the grace [of Christ] to a different gospel, (7) which there is no other; unless some persons are the ones troubling you and wishing to turn (you) from the gospel of Christ.  But and even if an angel from the sky  evangelizes [you] aside from (other than) we have evangelized you,  let him be an accursed thing (anathema). (9) As we have said before, and just as I say again, if someone preaches a gospel (evangelizes) to you aside from what you have received, let him be anathema. (10) For now do I trust humans, or God? Do I seek to please humans? If now I wish to please men, I was not a slave of Christ. (11) For I point out to you, siblings, that the good news which was good-newsed by me is is not from humans. (12) For I did not receive it from men, nor was it given, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 

“I did not receive (the gospel) from men, but through (dia) a revelation of Jesus Christ.”

In the comments to the last section I described that statement as “extraordinary”. In the intro to this section, I called it “earth-shattering”. Neither of those two adjectives, singly or even taken together put across the blinding audacity of that claim. The Yiddish word would be “chutzpah“. The Greek might be hubris. By making that claim, he has effectively set himself above everyone mortal, and a chunk of those immortal (the angels) in comprehension of the good news of God. There is no one on earth, and very few in heaven, who can interpret God’s word better than he can. No One. Not James, brother of the Lord, not Peter, not any of those who had known Jesus. None of them. I can hear the objections, that I am overstating the implications of Paul’s claim, but I don’t think so. A revelation of Jesus Christ. He’s plugged in to the motherboard, is drawing from the wellspring of Knowledge and Understanding, has a direct feed from the source, which is Jesus himself.

Obviously, he’s hardly the first to claim a hotline to the Deity, as Prof JW Cole (RIP) used to say, and he’s not even close to being the last. But he stands at an important juncture of the Judeao-Christian tradition. His was the time when there was no church, but the ekklesiai (plural form of ekklesia) were just that, assemblies. But here we are again with the transition of languages; church is a Germanic word, as is righteousness, and both carry baggage and meanings not found in dikēsunē or ekklesia. Church carries heavy overtones of a building where we go on Sunday; ekklesia lacks that understanding, so those Mediaeval popes had a very different set of connotations when they spoke of the eccelesia Dei (Latinised) than we have when we talk about The Church. 

Now, given the continued existence of Pentecostal Christians, for whom a direct experience of the Holy Spirit is both real and present, perhaps Paul’s claim may not seem to be as outrageous as I make it out to be. But I think there is a quantitative difference between having the Holy Spirit speak through a person and claiming your knowledge and understanding of God’s word comes from divine revelation. The Holy Spirit (or sacred breath, which I am deliberately leaving lower case to shove aside the loaded meaning of the former term) entered the group assembled in the upper room on Pentecost. As a result, they spoke in tongues to the many nationalities of Jews assembled in Jerusalem. This is consistent with my admittedly-limited understanding of a Pentecostal event, in which the sacred breath inspires (literally breathes into) a direct experience of God, the Holy Spirit being the intermediary, as it were. This is not like that, however. Paul is stating something much more extreme. Note that he calls it an apokalypseōs, (nominitive form = apokalypsis), which word should give pause. Here we see very clearly why The Apocalypse of John is usually referred to as Revelation: because that is the actual meaning of “apocalypse”. It does not mean “end of the world” in its Greek form, so the so-called “apocalyptic” literature is badly misnamed.

So Paul is telling us that his knowledge of the gospel came directly from Jesus Christ. And the term “Christ” is necessary here, because it’s crucial for us to know that he got it from The Christ. This arguably puts him in a superior position to those who had known and been taught by Jesus in his human days. James, brother of Jesus, Peter, and the rest had been taught by a mere man. At first glance, one takes Paul’s assertion that he did not receive his gospel from men would be taken to mean that he had not learned it from James or Peter or any of the others who were the pillars of the Jerusalem Assembly. But by stating he received his gospel from Jesus the Christ, specifically referring to him as the Christ could be seen to put this into an entirely different perspective because he has changed categories.     

Perhaps this is far-fetched. However, given Paul’s insistence that the Galatians should not heed an angel from heaven who preached differently than Paul, I think Paul is making exactly such a claim. Now, I have no idea whether this is a common interpretation, or if this is more or less understood by NT people, or if this is a novel idea. I am sure it’s been put forward before; two millennia is a long time, and it seems like most everything that can be suggested has been suggested. I was all proud of my attempt to argue that Matthew was a pagan, thinking I’d come up with something original, but others beat me to it. Given that, I would be surprised if this had not been suggested; after all, who am I? If we’re going to be blunt, calling me a dilettante is not unfair. I don’t think I’m a Jared Diamond-level dilettante, someone who is completely out of my field; I do have training in historical research and analysis, I have a decent command of the language, and I know enough to realize how largely ignorant I am on some things, but I am equipped to have decent insight into the interpretation of a text. I spent a year each on Herodotus, Thucydides, and Tacitus, working in a seminar setting with some pretty good people. Hmmm…starting to sound like Paul in my being so defensive, no? But back to the matter at hand. IMO, it would not be entirely ridiculous to say that Paul gets a little ridiculous in his claim, here. Or maybe shrill. Or over-the-top. Think about how this claim would sound if Paul were speaking it, rather than writing it.  (Shouting: I DON’T CARE IF AN ANGEL FROM HEAVEN…) And, spoiler alert, we will see more of this sort of whining, petulant behaviour from him as we go along. .

We need to get theological about this. Or perhaps this is more ontology.  An angel in religious terms is a divine, immortal creature, and as such is superior to any human. But an angel is still a creature, as in something created. What is the Christ? That’s tricky. Jesus was human, so below the angels. But as The Christ, he has overcome death and become divine, just as both Julius and Augustus Caesar, Romulus, and Herakles had done before him. So does that put him above the angels? For Matthew, Luke, or John, that’s an easy “yes”. Paul’s statement that an angel cannot gainsay him entails that his source is superior to the angels, so we can assume he would agree with the latter three evangelists, whilst Mark poses special problems. On the one hand, this is kind of silly, but OTOH, these are exactly the sorts of questions that Christian thinkers would be wrestling with for the next 1500 years or so; much of this sort of speculation died out after Erasmus and the Reformation. One highlight of Gnostic sect is there endless wrangling about aeons and emanations and the demiurge and such, so this type of inquiry and discussion was part of the background of the Graeco-Roman world. And we can safely deduce, I would daresay, that Paul had made this mental calculation himself and ranked Jesus above the angels as well. Ergo, if Paul got his revelation from Jesus the Christ, his understanding was superior to that of an angel.

This is huge. This is beyond huge. Essentially, what Paul is saying is that he has carte blanche to declare anything he wants to about Jesus and the belief system, and no one can gainsay him. Not James, not Peter, not an angel. Essentially, Paul could make it up as he went along, and I suspect that is exactly what he did. Reading the Seven Authentic Epistles* of Paul it becomes very clear that Paul was not a systematic thinker. He was an off-the-cuff, shoot-from-the-hip thinker, saying what he thought was required at the moment. He had a few principles, however, and they guided him sufficiently that he more or less provided a consistent message, even if Romans implies both Predestination and salvation through works. In particular the one constant that runs through much of his writing is sexual purity, the superior state of virginity. If we look at things the gospels tell us Jesus said, this was not terribly high on the list, so the question is: where did Paul get this, or why is it such a priority? The answer of course, is that it was revealed to him. And the tricky part is that it’s completely impossible to argue with him. Writing as I am in the 21st Century, I don’t have to look far to come across examples of people who fervently believe something is true whether there is any evidence for it or not, or even if there is ample evidence to the contrary. 

*1 Thessalonians, Galatians, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Philippians, Philemon, and Romans

This, IMO, is the key to Paul and his writing. He fervently believes what he says, because he sincerely and passionately believes that he had experienced a revelation from Jesus the Christ. As such, doubt was impossible. He could get a bit hysterical and claim to know better than an angel, because an angel’s knowledge and understanding was inferior to what he had received directly from the Font of Truth. 

This causes enormous problems when we try to reconstruct what the earliest followers of Jesus believed. It becomes nearly impossible to sort through the accumulation of later years to get to what the gospel preached by James and Peter was. We do not, indeed we cannot know whether James and Peter preached the same gospel; as we shall see there is reason to believe they did not. In the same way we cannot know if, or by how much Paul differed from either or both. In turn, the…uncertainty about James and Peter and Paul and how they fit together–if they did–causes problems for assessing the message we get from the gospels. And this is one of the reasons why Paul is so widely ignored by folks looking for the historical Jesus. He effectively obscures any connexion we may hope to find between Jesus and Mark and the other three evangelists. In this, “obscures” may not be the correct verb; “distorts” might be more accurate. As for the other reason Paul is ignored, we’ll deal with that when we come to it in the narrative.

 

 

 

Galatians Vrsn 2 Chapter 1:6-12

The intention was to make each chapter a single post, but that didn’t survive the first five verses. The end of the previous section was a bit rough, as the decision to break off there was after-the-fact.

Text

6 Θαυμάζω ὅτι οὕτως ταχέως μετατίθεσθε ἀπὸ τοῦ καλέσαντος ὑμᾶς ἐν χάριτι [Χριστοῦ] εἰς ἕτερον εὐαγγέλιον, (7) ὃ οὐκ ἔστιν ἄλλο: εἰ μή τινές εἰσιν οἱ ταράσσοντες ὑμᾶς καὶ θέλοντες μεταστρέψαι τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Χριστοῦ. (8) ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐὰν ἡμεῖς ἢ ἄγγελος ἐξ οὐρανοῦ εὐαγγελίζηται [ὑμῖν] παρ’ ὃ εὐηγγελισάμεθα ὑμῖν, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. (9) ὡς προειρήκαμεν, καὶ ἄρτι πάλιν λέγω, εἴ τις ὑμᾶς εὐαγγελίζεται παρ’ ὃ παρελάβετε, ἀνάθεμα ἔστω. 10Ἄρτι γὰρ ἀνθρώπους πείθω ἢ τὸν θεόν; ἢ ζητῶ ἀνθρώποις ἀρέσκειν; εἰ ἔτι ἀνθρώποις ἤρεσκον, Χριστοῦ δοῦλος οὐκ ἂν ἤμην. 11 Γνωρίζω γὰρ ὑμῖν, ἀδελφοί, τὸ εὐαγγέλιον τὸ εὐαγγελισθὲν ὑπ’ ἐμοῦ ὅτι οὐκ ἔστιν κατὰ ἄνθρωπον:  12 οὐδὲ γὰρ ἐγὼ παρὰ ἀνθρώπου παρέλαβον αὐτό, οὔτε ἐδιδάχθην, ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ. 

I marvel that in this way you have so quickly changed from the one who having summoned you in the grace [of Christ] to a different gospel, (7) which there is no other; unless some persons are the ones troubling you and wishing to turn (you) from the gospel of Christ.  But and even if an angel from the sky  evangelizes [you] aside from (other than) we have evangelized you,  let him be an accursed thing (anathema). (9) As we have said before, and just as I say again, if someone preaches a gospel (evangelizes) to you aside from what you have received, let him be anathema. (10) For now do I trust humans, or God? Do I seek to please humans? If now I wish to please men, I was not a slave of Christ. (11) For I point out to you, siblings, that the good news which was good-newsed by me is is not from humans. (12) For I did not receive it from men, nor was it given, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ. 

Well this passage sure raises some eyebrows along with some questions, doesn’t it? If if doesn’t, it should. First of all, it raises the question of another gospel, one different from what Paul taught to them. It is possible that someone might try to dismiss this as hypothetical, that Paul is theorizing that this might happen, but Paul’s reaction seems to me to be too vehement and vitriolic for this to me mere theory. In fact, I daresay it has happened which is what has led to Paul’s marveling that they have turned so quickly. This, we suppose, is the reason he’s writing to them, to bring them back on board with the…real? true? proper? gospel, the one that Paul taught. We absolutely have to ask who is doing this? And what does this mean? 

The second question is the easy one. What does it mean? It means that the tradition about Jesus in the 50s was fragmented. It means that different groups were teaching different things. So sure, we answered, technically, the second question but even half a moment’s reflection tells us that it raises more, and more serious, questions and/or hits us with serious repercussions. One of the most glaring holes in NT scholarship is the failure to deal with the fact that we don’t really know much about the period directly following the death of Jesus and Mark’s gospel. This includes more or less ignoring Paul, who is somehow dismissed as…I’m not sure what. Unimportant? A sideshow? A dead end? All three?  As with everything else, this author suspects this is tied in with the Q “debate”. How? Q depends on a straight line, an unbroken, continuous connection between Matthew and Luke and Jesus. And that unbroken chain also has to be authentic. This latter is may be assumed to be included the “straight, unbroken, and continuous” description, bit it still needs to be made explicit. Here’s why: If there is a single tradition, the authenticity is assured; however, with multiple traditions, how can we be sure that any sort of Q document is the authentic one, however we decide what authentic is determined. Now of course, if it got through to Matthew and Luke to become part of the canonical NT, then of course it’s “authentic” in one sense. But that authenticity only necessarily points in one direction: forward. How can we have an equal degree of confidence of authenticity pointing backwards, if there are numerous paths?

This is Paul’s point by bringing up the other gospels. He is certifying that his is the correct one, the true one, the authentic gospel. His is the only authentic one, which is another way of saying the other ones are not authentic. Now, the truly interesting question is how are they wrong? Which is to say, how are they different from Pauls’s? Which is to ask what do they, from Paul’s perspective, get wrong? Wish I could answer one of those questions, but I can’t. No one can. However, one thing we can do is compare to another text, one that happens to be non-canonical. I refer to the Didache. And let’s note that we actually do possess this as a physical and complete (?) text, in stark contrast to Q, of which we have nothing but inference. This is a text that on the surface seems to be Christian, but it was not Christian enough to become accepted as part of the NT. Why not?

Offhand, I cannot answer that question. I’m sure part of it is that it bears no one’s name as the canonical gospels and epistles did. This should hardly be damning, since we really don’t know who the actual authors of the NT were, with the exception of Paul, and maybe some–but certainly not all–of the other epistles. Still, I do know that provenance played no small role in the ultimate decision on whether something was accepted or not. But it is significant that the rationale the Didache was not accepted are rather vague. The testimony of the early Christian writers is mixed; Some of these early thinkers accepted the text as canonical, others did not. One of the latter was Eusebios, whose Ecclesiastical History is the most important source for what is called the history of the early Church. His judgement carries weight, but was not always decisive. He also rejected the Revelation of John.

Whether the work is canonical is not the major question. What matters is whether it’s historically useful. As an extra-biblical source dating perhaps as early as the turn of the First Century, it seems like it would be extremely useful as an historical source. Despite this, for whatever reasons, this text is sort of like Paul in that it gets only a nominal level of recognition. It’s discussed, and then it’s swept aside by those in a rush to get to the real story as told in the gospels. For example, in The Birth of Christianity, which runs 600+ pages, JD Crossan examines it and pronounces it to be sort of an instruction manual devised by rural communities who were subject to the burden of supporting wandering preachers. Admittedly, a significant portion of the document is devoted to that sort of thing, setting limits on how long a preacher can stay in the community without working (three) and other such guidance. This is all fine and good, but he makes no real attempt to link this to anything else. He describes it, categorizes it, and dismisses it without any effort to put it into any sort of context other than its rural setting. Does that strike anyone else as odd?

As this blog has developed, one of the objectives has come to be asking the questions that need to be asked, but aren’t.  Why is the Didache not given more scrutiny? Yes, it’s not canonical, but Paul is, and he’s (mist)treated in a similar fashion, so it’s not just that. Let us refer back to the point I made earlier about the multiplicity of the traditions that came into being after the death of Jesus. A variety of opinions is very problematic for the notion of a revealed and divine truth. If the truth was revealed, why did different versions of this truth exist? Of course, the answer is human error due to human fallibility, as was recognized early on as the newly Orthodox Church started creating heresies. The first full-blown anti-Church was probably that of Marcion in the second quarter of the Second Century. But there were others before that. Perhaps the earliest were the Gnostics, as Hippolytos Romanos says they called themselves. He dates their origin to Simon Magos, with whom Peter had an encounter in Acts*. Anyway, the point is simply that there were a number of different traditions, which makes reconstructing the history–or perhaps the pre-history–of the Church more difficult. Ignoring certain things makes the task much cleaner, and therefore much easier.

*We really have to question the historicity of this encounter. It just seems a bit too tidy. Worse, a later writer tells the tale of a showdown between Peter and Simon, in which the two have a magical duel. Of course Simon loses. This smacks of the duel between Moses and the magicians of Pharaoh, which of itself should give us pause. A number of stories are also told about Simon by other Church writers, all of them of them of course hostile to Simon. Josephus does mention another magician at the time named Atomos, which appears as Simon in Latin mss. This latter is doubtless the result of Christian tampering with the text. 

Because here’s the best part. While there is a certain amount of material that may not have a direct correlation in the canonical NT, the values are identical, and nothing is really overtly anti-NT. But many of the beliefs expressed are almost verbatim identical to the wording in the NT, with Matthew in particular. The similarities extend to “the meek shall inherit the earth” and the Lord’s Prayer. That’s pretty darn orthodox. In addition, the vision of the coming of the Lord is very similar to the description we find in Paul, both here and in ! Thessalonians. But wait, there’s more! Let’s look back on Crossan’s description of this being advice for rural communities on how to deal with itinerant preachers. What Crossan fails to mention is that we have a contemporary, eyewitness description of exactly these sorts of shenanigans occurring; and it comes from none other than our pal Paul. We will come to this in the next chapter or two, where he talks (complains, really) about the other apostles who travel in a retinue with their wives and hangers-on. And Paul is quick (and whiny) to protest that he does work for his keep at his trade of tent-maker. So check all the boxes because these are the circumstances described by the Didache.

So why is this document so often ignored, or at least given short-shrift? The problem, I suspect, comes from the Christology. There really isn’t much. Jesus is the Son of God, or perhaps the son of God, just as Paul and all the other followers are children of God. But that’s about it. At first, my suspicion was that this was a document of the Jewish followers of Jesus who never really quite became Christians because they did not accept the notion of Jesus-as-Divine as propounded by Matthew, Luke, and especially John. These groups, I suspected, had descended from James, brother of Jesus. But now that I look at the Didache more closely, and perhaps especially after reading it in such proximity with Galatians, what I see is a community that seems to have an awful lot in common with Paul. There is one difference: Paul is largely indifferent to baptism, but the Didache includes a significant passage on how to perform baptism. This, I think, indicates that baptism was fairly central to the community. But, this is a later document, written after Matthew (the meek inheriting the earth), and we know from Acts and other sources that baptism did become a big part of Christian ritual. Outside of the section at the beginning describing John baptizing, Matthew only uses the word on three other times. Mark actually uses it more, but it appears frequently in Acts and John, which is to say the later texts. (As an aside, collecting instances of the usage of the term looking for development in the attitude towards the practice,  throughout the NT could be an interesting study.) So if the practice increased over time, the emphasis on the practice in the Didache would tie in with that, and help confirm a date for the document in the 90s.

So to answer the question set out in the previous paragraph, I suspect that this document is actually embarrassing to the NT establishment. Everyone commenting on the Didache is at pains to describe how this is an interesting insight into the early (proto) church. But if it dates to the 90s, it’s not really the “early” church any longer. By that point you have the Bishop of Rome claiming some sort of hegemony, or at least, some higher authority over other churches, such as those in Alexandria or Antioch. What we seem to have is sort of a freeze-dried church, a relic of the 50s that somehow survived into the 90s. However, that is a preliminary hypothesis that requires more examination. I suspect I may provide translation and comment on the Didache as my next topic, once we’ve completed Galatians. I’ve considered doing that on many occasions.

The other salient aspect of this passage is Paul’s reaction.  Can we dispute that it’s a bit over-the-top? I mean, an angel in heaven would be wrong? That’s really pushing the envelope a bit, isn’t it? And then, anathema sit? (That’s the Latin curse of condemnation that got a lot of use in the Mediaeval Church from like 1100 on when heresy became an acute problem.) The use of the term in Greek may be a bit curious. As used by the Mediaeval Church, the expression had severe, even terrible impact, at least until it was overdone and opposing popes were hurling it at each other in a meaningless round of condemnations and excommunications. Judging from Liddell & Scott (Greek), and Lewis and Short (Latin) dictionaries, the term is mostly used by Christian writers. The word originally meant “the offering dedicated”, which is hardly a negative thing. However, Since Christians didn’t much care for pagan sacrifice, it came to mean the thing that was to die, and from there it became a thing accursed. The latter takes over the implications of being condemned to death AND the notion of something offered to a demon. The word as present here has a prehistory in the LXX, so it had a Jewish heritage before it was taken over by the Christians.  However, it’s a bit…sloppy, I guess, to say that without knowing what the Hebrew word was that got translated as “anathema”.  I have no idea what sort of distortion (if any) was involved in the translation. I can tell you that the difference between dikēsunē, iustitia (Latin), and “righteousness” is pretty significant. And there is a Hebrew word/concept behind dikēsunē.    

In my experience one does not need to read much of Paul to realize the man was incredibly insecure and defensive. In the last three verses translated above, Verses 10-12, Paul makes an extraordinary claim. He says that he did not received the gospel from humans, but through a revelation of Jesus Christ. I wanted to include the verses here, but I’m going to include them in the next section as well. I do not read a lot of theology, or scriptural discussion, but my experience in thirty or forty years of going to church, whether Catholic or Episcopalian, I don’t much recall these verses being discussed all that much. And I want to stress that I was paying attention for at least half the time, and really focusing for most of the last ten years. So I want to spend some quality time discussing them rather than try to cram them in with this section. 

To be continued…