Paul's Negotiation of Abraham in Galatians 3 in the Jewish Context

The Galatian Converts — Lineal Descendants of Abraham and Heirs of the Promise

Per Jarle Bekken

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9783110722178
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Théologie et religion
• Subtopic: Critique et interprétation bibliques

This work offers a fresh reading of Paul's appropriation of Abraham in Gal 3: 6–29 against the background of Jewish data, especially drawn from the writings of Philo of Alexandria. Philo's negotiation on Abraham as the model proselyte and the founder of the Jewish nation based on his trust in God's promise relative to the Law of Moses provides a Jewish context for a corresponding debate reflected in Galatians, and suggests that there were Jewish antecedents that came close to Paul's reasoning in his own time. This volume incorporates a number of new arguments in the context of scholarly discussion of both Galatian 3 and some of the Philonic texts, and demonstrates how the works of Philo can be applied responsibly in New Testament scholarship.

Chapter 1: Introduction

1 The Thesis of this Study

Samuel Sandmel once wrote about Philo’s interpretation of Abraham: “To see what the writer makes of Abraham is often to see most clearly what the writer is trying to say.”¹ This statement may be applied to Paul and Philo as well as to other Jewish authors. A presupposition of this study, which justifies it, is that, in spite of the vastness of the secondary literature, the various aspects of Paul’s appropriation of Abraham need to be examined further, especially since Philo can provide us with parallels which have not yet been made the subject of a detailed analysis.² It is the main thesis of this study that Paul in Galatians 3:6 – 29 shares aspects of a Jewish referential background,³ particularly evident in Philo’s writings, in which the figure of Abraham was conceived as an authoritative norm relative to the law of Moses. I shall now investigate the constituents of such a Jewish referential background in and behind Galatians 3, and this study leads to the following main conclusions:

1. Gal 3:6 – 29 provides a small “exegetical treatise”, in which words from the main quotation of Gen 15:6 and from other subordinate biblical passages have been given an exegetical paraphrase throughout the passage. Paul follows a conventional method of Jewish exegesis, in which phrases from the biblical quotation may be omitted or replaced and supplemented by other interpretative terms or otherwise combined with various exegetical traditions. Such exegetical traditions may be identified either as exegetical motifs or as a cluster of other biblical passages, i. e., exegetical explanations that deviate from the Hebrew Bible itself, or a conjunction of biblical passages that appear regularly together and can be found to be deployed in different writings by other ancient authors who belong to an author’s cultural context.⁴ Moreover, parallels in Philo and other Jewish data also suggest that Paul has cast his exegetical argument into conventional “forms” in terms of exegetical structures and terminology of his own day.

2. The Galatian converts had experienced that God had granted the Spirit and worked manifestations of power in them when they came to trust in God. At this juncture, Paul applies the exegetical motifs, in which Gen 15:6 is interpreted about Abraham’s reception of the Spirit and his experience of being transformed by God in a context in which Abraham is characterized as the paradigmatic proselyte. By comparing the experience of the Galatian converts to this crucial event in Abraham’s life, Paul ascribed to the Galatians the status of being approved by God as Jewish proselytes apart from circumcision and a way of life under the jurisdiction of the Law. This assertion was most probably developed in an intramural debate with Paul’s opponents, who draw the opposite conclusion from the same exegetical motif and data, namely, that the mode of conversion based on the paradigm of Abraham implied that the Galatian converts needed to be circumcised and become adherents to the commandments of the Law of Moses.

3. Furthermore, the experience of becoming a Jewish proselyte under the same scriptural terms as Abraham meant that Abraham was not merely a model, but was also conceived as the father of the Jewish converts. Thus, Paul insists that the non-Jews as Jewish converts, and not without regard to their conversion, inherit the status of being incorporated into the lineage of Abraham, identified as “οἱ ἐκ πίστεως”, that is, the fundamental virtue of piety that defined their father Abraham. As for Paul’s conception of the converts as being descended from Abraham, a comparison with Philo and rabbinic data shows they all were sensitive to the converts’ foreign lineage, but tried to solve this predicament in different ways. Philo, who never crafts a new genealogy for the proselytes, rather turns to the notions of “spiritual” and “civic” kinship as superior to biological ancestry, in order to claim for the Jewish proselytes the status as “citizens” within the Jewish politeia, who thus were ascribed equal rights and could live in fellowship with Jews on the basis of common virtues that the particular laws of Moses are meant to promote. In contrast to Philo, both Paul, and later on, some rabbis resort to a view that considered the converts as adherents of Abraham’s God, and therefore already legitimate lineage of Abraham.

4. Paul’s exegetical paraphrase of Gen 15:6 is fused together with words from other Genesis passages about God’s promise spoken to Abraham and his descendants. Just as the emulation of Abraham’s trust in the one God was the means of marking the identity of patrilineal lineage, so too were the patriarchal promises. Thus, we can find that Paul further warrants the identity of the Galatian converts as valid descendants from Abraham by claiming their share in the promise and their blessings. Paul’s conjunction of Gen 15:6 with a catena of promises from the Abrahamic narrative presupposes a specific Jewish tradition, which suggests a correspondence between the conduct of Abraham’s trust and the very same conduct expected in return from God, in terms of the reward God promised through a solemn oath to Abraham and to his descendant Isaac. It is my hypothesis that a particular version of this Jewish thought pattern is evident in Philo’s appropriation of Abraham and presupposed by Paul. In Galatians 3, Paul argues that the granting of the Spirit to Isaac’s descendants, as well as to Jewish converts, is evidence that God had demonstrated his will to keep his oath of promise; this results from the parallelism of Abraham’s trust and the reward of God’s trust / faithfulness given in return. In Paul’s new perspective, the promised blessing to Abraham and to his descendant is now conferred on the Jews and Gentile converts and comes to fruition as the result of the crucifixion of Christ, who is taken by Paul to be Abraham’s ultimate descendant. Just as the oath of promise was originally made to Abraham (Gen 22:16 – 18) on the ground of his conduct of trust (Gen 15:6), and later was also reiterated to his offspring (Gen 26:3 – 4), it is now conferred on Isaac’s descendants, provided that they manifest the same fundamental quality attributed to their ancestors. Such a line of thought, with an analogy attested in Philo’s interpretation of the oath of promise in QG 4:180, seems also to be presupposed in Paul’s allusions to Gen 26:3 – 4, i. e., a patrilineal correspondence between Abraham, Christ, and those who belong to Abraham’s offspring in terms of their common character of trust. This pattern of thought also resonates with Paul’s claim that “those of trust” are Abraham’s sons and therefore partakers of the blessings promised to his descendants by oath.

5. Since Philo and Paul coincide in appropriating Abraham as the foundational model of Jews and non-Jewish converts, they seek to explain how the Law of Moses stands in a dynamic relation to Abraham as a legal norm. In a discussion with his interlocutors, Philo modified the view of “some” who interpreted Gen 26:5 about Abraham positioned as an observer of the Law of Moses. According to Philo, Abraham was himself a “law and an unwritten ordinance”, however, so that he read Gen 26:5 about his adherence to the divine Law in Nature achieved through his instinctive words and deeds, and manifested in Abraham’s trust in God and His commands. Consequently, it was his observance of the divine Law in Nature, antecedent to the written Law revealed through Moses, that made him worthy to receive the oath of promise. Philo’s view, however, seemed to maintain a dynamic between these two “jurisdictions” of the Torah, in that an emulation of Abraham and access to the Abraham-centered divine Law and its promise of blessings were mediated by means of the observance of the Mosaic Laws. The basis for this assumption was the view that the Law of Moses represented a copy of the divine Law in Nature, i. e., that the Law of Moses only sets forth as legislation a record of what Abraham and the other patriarchs did and said (Abr. 3 – 5, 273 – 276).

In a way that corresponds to Philo, albeit without speaking explicitly about Abraham himself as a “Law”, Paul too seems to have operated with a dynamic, temporal, and conceptual distinction in the Torah and Scripture, namely, between, on the one hand, an “Abrahamic jurisdiction”, centered on Abraham’s trust and God’s promise, and, on the other hand, the “Mosaic jurisdiction” revealed later at Sinai. In contrast to Philo, who would preserve the Law of Moses as representing the best proximity to the divine Law in Nature reflected in the “Abrahamic jurisdiction”, Paul took the view that the time had now arrived when the constitutional norm inherent in the “Abrahamic jurisdiction” had taken effect exclusively through Abraham’s ultimate descendant, “Christ”. Unlike Philo, who ties God’s promise to the patriarchs as concomitant with living as “citizens” of the Jewish politeia and conditional upon the observance of the Law of Moses, Paul no longer made the fulfillment of Abraham’s blessing conditional on the jurisdiction of the Mosaic Law. For Paul, therefore, the vicarious death of Christ “for us” not only meant that God kept his oath to Abraham to rescue Isaac’s descendants from the curse caused by their transgressions of the Law, but even that the Gentile “nations” as Jewish converts might be blessed in the offspring of Abraham, the crucified Christ, and thus apart from observance of the Law of Moses. In the context of such a subtle view of the effects of Christ’s death, and in a situation in which the Galatians were on the way to be circumcised and to subject themselves to the jurisdiction of Law, it is all the more understandable that Paul rebukes the Galatians that they should have known better, that is, about the true reality and consequences of Christ’s crucifixion as mediating Abraham’s blessing to them.

2 Previous Research

In general, the insights offered in this study claim to be fresh answers to some of the questions that have been discussed in Pauline and in Philonic scholarship. Since I am going to survey in more detail the research situation in each chapter of this study, I shall restrict myself at this juncture to commenting on the distinctive contribution of this study under three headings, since they relate to themes concerning Abraham that are intertwined and have received much attention in recent works on Galatians 3. This short survey of previous research will make clear that there is room for further investigation.

2.1 Abraham and Scripture

In which way can expository methods and motifs prevalent in Paul’s own day inform his appeal to Abraham, Scripture, and the argument in Galatians 3? In general, Paul’s appropriation of Scripture in Galatians 3 has perplexed scholars, since his assertions appear unwarranted by his evidence. For example, T.L. Donaldson has maintained that Gal 3:1 – 4:7 is a “maze of laboured exegesis, puzzling illustration, and cryptic theological shorthand”.⁵ Furthermore, J.L. Martyn has characterized Paul’s interpretation of Gen 15:6 as a “strange exegesis”.⁶

R.N. Longenecker finds that Paul “goes far beyond the rules of historical-grammatical exegesis.”⁷ Likewise, J.H. Neyrey claims that “Paul construes the Scriptures in his own idiosyncratic way.”⁸ Moreover, M. Silva perceives “glaring gaps in the argumentation.”⁹ Against the background of such comments, the main objective of this study is to demonstrate that Paul’s exegesis and argument in Galatians 3 become more coherent when we enquire after their referential background in Jewish exegesis such as, for example, is evidenced in Philo’s writings.

Paul’s scriptural references about and to Abraham in Gal 3:6 – 29 serve as a warrant for the claim that the Galatian believers were legitimate descendants of Abraham and partakers of the promise. In previous studies of Paul’s appropriation of Abraham in Galatians 3, scholars have a tendency to neglect the use of various Jewish exegetical traditions as an explanation for such warrants drawn from the Scripture about and to Abraham.¹⁰ Thus, earlier works that compare Philo’s and Paul’s appropriations of Abraham have focused more on the contrasts, at the cost of a more detailed scrutiny of how common Scriptures and exegetical motifs are applied within the framework of conventional exegetical methods and terminology.¹¹ An important aspect that justifies this study is the suggestion that Philo and other Jewish texts might corroborate the hypothesis that Paul builds upon a fabric of Jewish exegetical traditions, in which Gen 15:6 has been paraphrased in conjunction with other passages such as Gen 22:18 and 26:3 – 4.¹² Thus, the question that should be asked is not whether there is a particular text in Scripture that enables Paul to derive his interpretation of Abraham, but whether there are smaller pieces of an interpreted Scripture or “exegetical motifs”, incorporated in his exegetical paraphrasing of the individual text, which might explain the “inferential leap” on Paul’s part.¹³

Earlier scholars have disagreed on which texts from the Abrahamic narrative in Genesis are referred to throughout Gal 3:8 – 29. For example, when Paul obviously cites from Genesis in Gal 3:8b (“ἐνευλογ...