Galatians (Paideia: Commentaries on the New Testament)

Oakes, Peter, Parsons, Mikeal C., Talbert, Charles, Longenecker, Bruce

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781441246516
• Topic: Theologie & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblischer Kommentar

In this volume, respected New Testament scholar Peter Oakes offers a translation and reading of Galatians as presenting a gospel of unity in diversity in Christ. He shows that Paul treats the Galatians' possible abandonment of his gospel as putting at stake their fidelity to Christ. As with other volumes in the Paideia series, this volume is conversant with contemporary scholarship, draws on ancient backgrounds, and attends to the theological nature of the text. Students, pastors, and other readers will appreciate the historical, literary, and theological insight offered in this practical commentary.

Galatians 1:1–10

Letter Opening

Introductory Matters

Paul begins his letter in a strange and striking way. To us, its strangeness partly lies in the fact that it is an ancient Greek letter, and such letters were written rather differently from our own. However, there is also a strangeness that would have struck the first hearers even more forcefully than it strikes us.

With today’s letter-writing conventions, and with the typical rhetoric of letters between people who know each other, we might expect something like this:

Dear brothers and sisters in Galatia,

I hope you are all in good health. It seems so long since I was there, enjoying your generous hospitality. I have been keeping well, except for the usual ailments that you know about. The progress of the mission here has been encouraging. You may not know that, last month, Timothy went to . . .

. . . with best wishes,

Paul

Rylands Greek Papyrus 243, Letter of Demarion and Irene

“Demarion and Irene to their dearest Syrus, very many greetings. We know that you are distressed about the deficiency of water; this has happened not to us only but to many, and we know that nothing has occurred through any fault of yours. We now know your zeal and attentiveness to the work of the holding, and we hope that with God’s help the field will be sown. Put down to our account everything you expend on the cultivation of the holding. Receive from Ninnarus for Irene’s account the share belonging to her, and similarly from Hatres for Demarion’s account the share belonging to her. We pray for your health.”

Figure 4. Letter of Demarion and Irene. Rylands Greek Papyrus 243, second century AD (image number: JRL022778tr). By permission of the John Rylands Library. [Copyright of The University of Manchester]

On reverse:

“To Syrus from Irene and Demarion”

trans. from Bagnall and Cribiore 2006, §350

Instead, as you can see from the opening of Galatians, the structure and tone are different. Most obviously, the names of sender and recipients are the other way around, with sender named first: “Paul, an emissary . . . , and all the brothers and sisters with me, to the assemblies of Galatia.” Other NT letters follow the same pattern, which is typical of ancient Greek letters (Stirewalt 1993; Stowers 1986; White 1986). It gives the opportunity for the sender to characterize both sender (“Paul, an emissary”) and recipients (“the assemblies of Galatia”). In Paul’s other letters, he describes himself and his recipients in a range of ways. These can help set the tone of the letter or relate to its main agenda. In opening Galatians, Paul emphasizes his divine commissioning and characterizes his hearers in the most unvarnished way possible, without positive terms such as “holy.” Grace wishes such as Gal. 1:3 are standard in Christian letters, but Paul unexpectedly expands this with a reference to Christ as rescuing Christians from “the present evil age.”

Galatians 1:1–10 in the Rhetorical Flow

►Letter opening (1:1–10)

Paul’s divine authorization (1:1–2)

Rescue from the present evil age (1:3–5)

Deserting the one who called them and the only gospel (1:6–10)

Even more unexpected is what happens in verse 6. One thing ancient and modern letters have in common is that, however problematic the issues to be addressed in the letter, the opening is almost always full of polite expressions. First Corinthians is a good example. In 1:1–9, Paul is warm in commending the Corinthians, even though later he will have severe things to say. (He starts subtly by setting up some of the difficult issues, even in his warm comments: “I thank my God . . . because you have been enriched in every way in him, in every word and all knowledge” [1 Cor. 1:5–6; cf. 2:1–4; 4:8; 8:1].) Galatians bypasses politeness with the shocking verse 6 (shocking but not unprecedented: the “angry letter” was, unsurprisingly, a form known in antiquity [see comments on 1:6]). Something has made Paul desperately concerned and angry. He wants to shock his hearers into a radical reevaluation of their situation and actions.

Galatians 1:1–10 clearly falls into two halves. The structured sender-receiver-greetings section is 1:1–5. Paul then launches his attack in 1:6–9. His denial of being a flatterer (1:10) is somewhat freestanding. J. Louis Martyn (1997a, 136–37) sees it as a transition, attaching it to verses 11–12 and separating it from 1:1–9. Hans Dieter Betz (1979, 46) links 1:10 to 1:11, seeing them together as a transition that forms the end of the exordium (see introduction above). We will take 1:10 with verses 1–9. This is partly because, stylistically, it forms part of a series of emotional outbursts from 1:6 onward. Also, as Martyn (1997a, 140) in fact argues, 1:10 mirrors the “not people but God” pattern of 1:1. Verse 10 thus forms something of an inclusio with 1:1 (as the end of a passage corresponds to the beginning). Although 1:11 echoes the “not people but God” pattern, that verse begins with a disclosure formula (“I declare to you”). This works well as the opening of the narrative that follows, and disclosure formulas are used in a similar way to begin the main body of the letter in other correspondence from Paul (e.g., Phil. 1:12).

Tracing the Train of Thought

Three arguments are forcefully made in verses 1–10: Paul’s authority is of divine origin; salvation involves Christ’s self-sacrificial rescue from this evil age; and the Galatians are abandoning their founder and the only gospel.

Paul’s Divine Authorization (1:1–2)

1:1–2. Paul makes full use of the opportunity provided by the standard Christian letter-opening pattern, “A to B, grace,” to describe A (himself) and to expand, theologically, on the “grace.” In contrast, he barely describes B (the Galatians) at all. In itself this somewhat sets the tone of what is to follow.

First A, the sender. To some extent, Paul takes a risk here. Paul, an emissary not from people, nor through a person, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from among the dead (1:1). To argue that you do not have authority from other humans, but from God instead, is a high-risk strategy. Your hearers might just see it as wild assertion. However, Paul has an advantage. His hearers have become Christians as a result of his preaching. Their identity as individuals and as a group is consequently tied rather strongly to the validity of Paul and his message. It will be difficult for other teachers to challenge his authority. He can push his argument about his divine authority quite hard. Indeed, he does so through most of 1:1–2:10. Almost all of this largely narrative section brings home the divine origin and authority of Paul’s calling and his message.

The Greek word that is here translated as “emissary” is apostolos. Of course, this gives us the term “apostle.” The word was already being commonly used to designate a particular set of early leaders (see, e.g., 1 Cor. 15:9). This means that translating apostolos here as “apostle” would have the advantage of indicating, rightly, that by using the term Paul is making a claim to belong to this particular, authoritative group. However, the translation “apostle” does not convey what the function of an apostolos was, and as Martyn (1997a, 82–83) argues, the prepositional phrases that follow in the verse show that here Paul particularly has in mind the idea of the apostolos as a person who is sent: the noun is derived from the verb apostellō, “I send” (for a general discussion of the term, see R. Longenecker 1990, 2–4). Early Christians used the term to cover a range of types of people sent by churches (e.g., Epaphroditus in Phil. 2:25). In Gal. 1:1, the translation “emissary” is useful particularly because Paul’s very first point is about his being sent: that he is not an emissary sent from a group of people—unlike, probably, the opponents whom he will attack in the letter.

Paul presumably implies that, instead, he is sent from God. However, he does not directly express this but instead jumps to the further point that not only was he not sent from people, neither was he sent “through a person.” This probably refers to his sense of commissioning, that it was not done by a human person but by “Jesus Christ and God.” Paul reinforces his divine commission in 1:15–16. God is the one who called Paul, by God’s grace, to proclaim him among the gentiles. (If we compare this with Acts 9 and 22, we can see there the role of a human agent, Ananias. However, even in Acts there is a strong sense of fairly direct divine commissioning of Paul, most notably in 26:16–18.)

Jesus Christ and God are bracketed together in Gal. 1:1 in the action of commissioning Paul. This happens again in 1:3, where both are the source of grace and peace to the Galatians. On the other hand, it is only to God, not Christ, that glory is given in 1:5. In the earlier verses, the very naming of Jesus alongside God the Father both links them together and suggests that Paul sees their identities as distinct. We might also wonder whether there is implicit docetism in 1:1 (the idea that Jesus only appeared to be human but was not really so). If Paul was commissioned not through a person but through Jesus, it sounds as though Jesus is not a person. However, in the letter, Paul is very clear about Jesus Christ’s human birth (4:4) and death (2:21), so the christological implication of 1:1 is very unlikely to be that Paul saw Jesus as nonhuman. Instead, he seems to see Jesus, whom he knew to be human, as also occupying a status much higher than that of humans—a status that enabled Jesus to act alongside God.

The description of God in Gal. 1:1 is twofold. He is “Father,” and he is the one “who raised” Christ “from among the dead.” In fact, God is described as Father three times in the first five verses. This is more than in the equivalent opening segment of any other Pauline letter. We should not make too much of this. However, in a letter that so strongly involves issues of obedience to authority, it could be that Paul is stressing God’s role as a figure of authority, albeit a caring authority. The description of God as Father could also be beginning to lay the groundwork for the discussion of sonship later in the letter (3:26; 4:5–7; Hays 2000, 203).

More striking than the mention of God’s fatherhood is the introduction, in the first sentence of the letter, of Christ’s resurrection. Surprisingly, Christ’s resurrection is not mentioned directly anywhere else in the letter. The closest Paul comes is to talk about the Christian life by using a pattern implicitly drawn from Christ’s death and resurrection: “I have been crucified with Christ. I am no longer alive. Christ is alive in me” (2:19–20). The promise of Christian resurrection is also a key motivator at the end of the letter: “the one who sows to the Spirit will, from the Spirit, reap eternal life” (6:8). More broadly, the mention of the resurrection signals to us that this text has an apocalyptic worldview (although probably not Martyn’s particular version [see on 6:15]). The dead are raised. Ages of the world can be good or evil (1:4). Angels speak (1:8). This text works with assumptions very different from those of most twenty-first-century Western discourse.

In the next verse, Paul broadens the pool of senders: and all the brothers and sisters with me (1:2). Many scholars view Paul as a somewhat isolated figure as he writes Galatians, rejected by his “home church” of Antioch and largely abandoned by his own converts in Galatia (e.g., Elmer 2009). Whether or not this is the case, Paul presents the letter as coming from a substantial group. This lends their authority to the letter.

Translating Adelphoi

The inherent cultural difficulties of translation are neatly highlighted by the problem of handling adelphoi. The New Revised Standard Version renders adelphoi here as “members of God’s family.” In verse 11 it offers “brothers and sisters.” For pseudadelphoi in 2:4 it gives “false believers.” In 4:12, 28, 31, and 5:11 adelphoi is “friends.” In 5:13 we are back to “brothers and sisters.” Then 6:1 uses “friends,” and 6:18 uses “brothers and sisters.”

Traditionally, English translators have opted for “brothers.” Most translators are aware that Paul uses the term to refer to all Christians, male and female. In past centuries, translators viewed “brothers” as being, in this kind of use, an inclusive term, encompassing women as well as men. In the twentieth century, feminist scholars argued that the presence in a language of such masculine “inclusive” terms encoded and reinforced patriarchal assumptions. At the same time, English usage was moving away from hearing these masculine terms as inclusive: many women perceived themselves as excluded from such categories. The result of these arguments was that translators have tended toward renderings of adelphoi such as “brothers and sisters,” as in this commentary.

However, this does not entirely solve the problem. The word adelphoi is actually one of the masculine “inclusive” terms in question. Rendering it as “brothers and sisters” could, to an extent, mask a real patriarchal tendency in ancient Greek culture or in the Bible. Moreover, adelphoi may carry connotations of the activities of particular kinds of male groups, such as clubs or elite philosophical gatherings. It may also be that it was actually quite radical for Paul to use this term to designate the members of a gender-mixed and socially mixed group. He may effectively have been ascribing heightened status to some members who would not normally have moved in circles where they would have been addressed as adelphoi (see Oakes 2009, 107–10).

The verse ends with the recipients: to the assemblies of Galatia (1:2). The Greek word ekklēsia is Paul’s common designation of local Christian groups. He also uses it of Christians more broadly in 1:13. Our “ecclesiastical” words derive from this term, and it has traditionally been translated as “church.” However, the word can be used of other kinds of assembly, such as meetings of town citizens (Acts 19:32; Louw and Nida 1988, 11.78). Translating the word as “church” is also potentially misleading. It suggests a degree of institutional organization, and of similarity to modern Christian groups, that is not warranted at this period.

In other letters, Paul uses the singular, “assembly,” in the address. That is because he is writing to Christians in a single town. Here he is addressing all the groups in a wide area, probably the Roman province (see introduction). In other letters, Paul always elaborates somewhat on the identity of the recipients. Their assembly is “in God” (1 Thess. 1:1), they are “made holy in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:2), and so forth. The Galatians just receive the unvarnished title “assemblies”—a sign of things to come.

Rescue from the Present Evil Age (1:3–5)

1:3–5. Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins, to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory through all ages, amen. After a standard wish for grace and peace, Paul adds a surprising description of Christian salvation.

The description begins in a relatively common Pauline way. Christ “gave himself for our s...