Q. One thing that emerges from your discussion of Gal. 5 is that you think the agitators are not in fact like zealous Saul the Pharisee was in terms of meticulous keeping of the whole Mosaic covenant, nor are they trying to impose the whole Law on the Galatians. You surmise that they merely want the Galatians to do the things that make them appear to be Jewish to outsiders so they can claim the Jewish exemption from pagan religious... Read more
Q. The Galatians, and the Greco-Roman persons in the Empire in general were part of an agonistic culture, or as we would call it, a competitive culture where people strove to establish their honor, and did it in a way that was over against other families and groups. I think John Barclay and you are both right that this sort of social milieu was brought into the churches in Galatia and Paul is combating it with appeals to unity... Read more
Q. One of the most helpful points you make in the discussion of Gal. 5 is that some conservative readings of the Bible (and its covenants as well) are frankly too flat, by which I mean they could not imagine a stage by stage plan of God to save humankind and all creation. They can’t imagine either that some things in the Mosaic Law, as Jesus says, were given due to the hardness of heart, but once the new... Read more
Q. There are places in Galatians from at least Gal. 3 on where it seems that Paul doesn’t know exactly who it is that is troubling the Galatians. He has heard what they are demanding the Galatian gentiles do, but he seems not to know who they are. Or do you think this is a case of damnation by anonymity? To me, the further we go in the letter, the more I think he doesn’t really know, but perhaps he... Read more
Q. I agree with you that the Sarah and Hagar tour de force in Gal. 4 is not like one of Philo’s allegories, or for that matter like Spencer’s Fairie Queene or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. But it is an allegorizing of an historical narrative and the trick is to figure out why certain things are lined up by Paul in the way he does it. What does he mean, for example by the notion of the present Jerusalem being enslaved?... Read more
Q. On the issue of appealing to Torah ironically to get the Gentile converts not to submit to the Torah involving the Mosaic covenant I have often told my students that there is a difference between using the OT as Scripture which still speaks throughout to God’s people, and using it to talk about participation in a particular covenant, namely the Mosaic one. While Paul’s audience is not obligated to keep, observe, the Mosaic covenant they are required to learn... Read more
Q. I entirely agree with you that we already see incipient Trinitarian thinking about Father, Son, and Spirit all under the heading of God, in Gal. 4. I like to say that we have already in our earliest NT books the raw materials of a doctrine of the Trinity, which granted, needs some later unpacking, but that M. Hengel was right that the earliest Christology which we find in Paul is the highest or some of the highest, so the... Read more
Q. Michael Heiser, an OT scholar, who studied with M. Fox at U Wisconsin Madison, has written some fascinating books about spiritual beings (not just impersonal forces) in the OT and NT— The Unseen Realm, another on Angels etc. These studies are of relevance to the discussion of the ‘things (or is it beings) who are not by nature gods. I am not sure that Paul is talking about idols or beings with the stoicheia language but in 1 Cor... Read more
Q. It is interesting isn’t it, and I quite agree with you, that Paul applies the adoption as sons language to both Jews and Gentiles in Christ. They all need to become new creatures in Christ, and this is indeed like the way the 4th Evangelist says we all need to become children of God through being born of God/born again. Even a pious good Jew like Nicodemus is said to need this to get into the Kingdom later. John... Read more
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In