The Jewish Annotated New Testament (96 page)

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This is the third time I am coming to you. “Any charge must be sustained by the evidence of two or three witnesses.”
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I warned those who sinned previously and all the others, and I warn them now while absent, as I did when present on my second visit, that if I come again, I will not be lenient—
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since you desire proof that Christ is speaking in me. He is not weak in dealing with you, but is powerful in you.
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For he was crucified in weakness, but lives by the power of God. For we are weak in him,
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but in dealing with you we will live with him by the power of God.

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Examine yourselves to see whether you are living in the faith. Test yourselves. Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless, indeed, you fail to meet the test!
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I hope you will find out that we have not failed.
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But we pray to God that you may not do anything wrong—not that we may appear to have met the test, but that you may do what is right, though we may seem to have failed.
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For we cannot do anything against the truth, but only for the truth.
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For we rejoice when we are weak and you are strong. This is what we pray for, that you may become perfect.
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So I write these things while I am away from you, so that when I come, I may not have to be severe in using the authority that the Lord has given me for building up and not for tearing down.

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Finally, brothers and sisters,
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farewell.
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Put things in order, listen to my appeal,
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agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you.
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Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the saints greet you.

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The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of
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the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

THE LETTER OF PAUL TO THE GALATIANS

NAME, DATE, AND AUTHORSHIP

The Roman province of Galatia in central Asia Minor (modern Turkey) extended from the Black Sea in the north to the Mediterranean in the south. There is much scholarly debate about the location of Paul’s “churches of Galatia” (1.2), whether in the north or the south and whether this letter dates from the late 40s or mid 50s CE. Paul’s own location when writing this letter is not known. This letter shares language and themes with Romans and Corinthians, but the relative sequence of these letters is uncertain.

STRUCTURE

Following an autobiographical defense of his views, Paul forthrightly states his thesis: “a person is justified not by works of law but through faith in Jesus Christ” (2.16; cf. 2.21; 3.2; 5.2). To clarify this opposition between works and faith, Paul then appeals to other oppositions: flesh vs. spirit (3.3; 4.29; 5.16–25; 6.8), flesh vs. promise (4.23), slave vs. free (4.23,30), present Jerusalem vs. heavenly Jerusalem (4.26). Paul’s point is that faith does not supplement Torah piety but replaces it (5.2).

INTERPRETATION

Paul’s negative assessment of the Torah and those who follow it is striking: he insists that the Torah does not come from God (3.19–20); no longer has a salvific role, and perhaps never did (3.21–22); and its observance is akin to the worship of the Greek gods (4.9–10). He furthermore claims that the Jewish people are neither the true seed of Abraham (3.16) nor the Israel of God (6.16). In perhaps the letter’s most famous verse, Paul writes that distinctions between Jew and Greek are effaced because all are one in Christ (3.28).

In Romans, Paul addresses these same issues, but his positions there are far more nuanced. Competition prompted this extreme negativity toward the Torah and Jewish distinctiveness. Rival apostles in Galatia sought to convince Paul’s converts that Christian faith required Torah piety, and they insisted that (male) Christians undergo circumcision in consonance with God’s instructions to Abraham in Gen 17. Paul angrily accuses these teachers of perverting the gospel (1.6–9), of being unprincipled and of demanding circumcision merely to avoid persecution (6.12), and to provide an occasion for boasting (6.13). Because these rivals attacked Paul’s apostolic credibility, Paul not only responds in kind, but offers an autobiographical defense of his beginnings in the faith and his relations with the pillars of the Jerusalem church (1.10–2.14). He also provides empirical proof for his legitimacy: after believing in Christ as Paul taught them, the Galatian Christians received the Holy Spirit and the ability to do miracles, gifts they did not receive by observing works of law (3.2–5).

This letter, prompted by the specific situation of the churches in Galatia, contains some of the most enduring and influential formulations of the Christian faith. Later Christians learned from this letter that Judaism, that is, the observance of the commandments of the Torah and the refusal to believe in Jesus as the son of God, had and has no value. In the sixteenth century this letter gave Protestant reformers the rhetoric of “faith vs. works” that they would turn against both Judaism and Roman Catholicism. In recent times scholars have softened the polemical edge of this letter by observing that Paul’s attack on the law was addressed to Gentile believers in Christ; his primary concern was to make sure that they did not begin to observe the Torah. Nowhere in his letters, either in Galatians or elsewhere, does Paul attempt to convince Jews to abandon the Torah.

Shaye J. D. Cohen

1
Paul an apostle—sent neither by human commission nor from human authorities, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead—
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and all the members of God’s family
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who are with me,

   To the churches of Galatia:
       
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Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,
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who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father,
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to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

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I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—
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not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ.
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But even if we or an angel
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from heaven should proclaim to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed to you, let that one be accursed!
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As we have said before, so now I repeat, if anyone proclaims to you a gospel contrary to what you received, let that one be accursed!

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Am I now seeking human approval, or God’s approval? Or am I trying to please people? If I were still pleasing people, I would not be a servant
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of Christ.

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For I want you to know, brothers and sisters,
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that the gospel that was proclaimed by me is not of human origin;
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for I did not receive it from a human source, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ.

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You have heard, no doubt, of my earlier life in Judaism. I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it.
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I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.
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But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased
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to reveal his Son to me,
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so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being,
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nor did I go up to Jerusalem to those who were already apostles before me, but I went away at once into Arabia, and afterwards I returned to Damascus.

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Then after three years I did go up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas and stayed with him fifteen days;
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but I did not see any other apostle except James the Lord’s brother.
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In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!
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Then I went into the regions of Syria and Cilicia,
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and I was still unknown by sight to the churches of Judea that are in Christ;
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they only heard it said, “The one who formerly was persecuting us is now proclaiming the faith he once tried to destroy.”
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And they glorified God because of me.

Places mentioned in Galatians 1–2.

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Then after fourteen years I went up again to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking Titus along with me.
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I went up in response to a revelation. Then I laid before them (though only in a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders) the gospel that I proclaim among the Gentiles, in order to make sure that I was not running, or had not run, in vain.
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But even Titus, who was with me, was not compelled to be circumcised, though he was a Greek.
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But because of false believers
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secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us—
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we did not submit to them even for a moment, so that the truth of the gospel might always remain with you.
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And from those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders (what they actually were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those leaders contributed nothing to me.
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On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel for the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel for the circumcised
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(for he who worked through Peter making him an apostle to the circumcised also worked through me in sending me to the Gentiles),
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and when James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.
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They asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was
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eager to do.