PER A APROFUNDIR

The thrust of this study is encapsulated in the title – Paul, Jerusalem and the Judaisers:

The Galatian Crisis in Its Broader Historical Context – which reflects what I believe to be the way forward in identifying the nature of the situation addressed by Paul in his letter to the Galatians. No event in history occurs in isolation, and no adequate appreciation of any single historical event is possible without a consideration of other related events that have either contributed to or derived from that event. The position taken in this study is that the Galatian crisis was initiated by a group of Judaising opponents of whose ilk Paul knew from previous conflicts with the Jerusalem church.

Paul’s defence of himself as the divinely appointed Apostle to the Gentiles involves his negative response to the claims and accusations made by the Judaisers at Galatia. It also raises questions about both the origins of the Gentile mission and Paul’s conversion, two issues that Paul explicitly introduces into his apologetic response to the charges. However, Paul’s few autobiographical comments in Galatians tell us very little of the events that transpired prior to his conversion (c. 34 C.E.) and his initial association with the communities in Jerusalem (Gal 1:11-20; 2:1-10), Syria and Cilicia (Gal 1:21),

132 Betz, Galatians, 5.

133 Longenecker, Galatians, lxxxix.

and Antioch (Gal 2:11-14). Our only other, significant source of information on the earliest period is the initial eleven chapters of the Acts of the Apostles which, as we noted above, carry a number of inherent interpretive difficulties. Each stage and circumstance related by Luke in these chapters must be assessed independently on its own historical merits and checked against other contemporary sources, both canonical and non-canonical. In the first chapter, therefore, we set out to consider the material in Acts 1-11, in conjunction with Galatians and other significant data in the Pauline corpus, in an attempt to reconstruct developments within the earliest communities of believers in Jesus Messiah, from the time of the nascent apostolic association at Jerusalem through to the period of Paul’s involvement with the Antiochene church. The purpose of this enterprise is to establish a backdrop against which we can later explore the charges laid against Paul by his opponents.

The aim is to uncover and reconstruct the roots of the Galatian crisis.

Paul’s opponents apparently cited Jerusalem as the source of and the warrant for their Law-observant gospel. In Galatians, Paul alludes to events involving Jerusalem that transpired prior to the outbreak of the crisis at Galatia. However, Paul provides only scant details of these events. Our only significant source of supplementary data is again found in Acts. Chapter two will therefore introduce the accounts of the Jerusalem Council (Gal 2:1-10; Acts 15:1-29). These will be compared, contrasted and used to attempt a reconstruction of all the events that surround these intriguing episodes that appear prominently in Paul’s defence of his apostolate in Galatians. In addition several background issues will be discussed. These include the issue of chronology, the advent of the Antiochene mission to Cyprus and Asia Minor, as well as the rise of Jesus’ brother James to the leadership in Jerusalem. It will be argued here that one of the chief causes of the Jerusalem Council was the Antiochene initiative to widen the scope of the Law-free mission into Cyprus and Galatia.

In the second half of this chapter, the Antiochene dispute (Gal 2:11-14) will occupy our attention as we try to reconstruct the events that contributed to this divisive debate. We will attempt to determine how this event in Antioch relates to the foregoing Jerusalem Council, and what it tells us about the outcome of the Council. We are interested in exploring here the possibility that these events led to a decisive and irrevocable split between Paul and Jerusalem. The evidence seems to suggest that from

this point onwards in his career, Paul operated as an independent missionary with no vestigial links to his former associates at Antioch or Jerusalem. Thus, it will be argued in this chapter that the Antiochene dispute that arose in the wake of the Jerusalem Council constitutes the immediate background to the Galatian crisis. The same people who caused the problem at both Jerusalem and Antioch are likely to be related in some way to those who later invaded Paul’s Galatian communities.

The conflict in Galatia itself will be the focus of the third chapter as we attempt to explore the links between events at Jerusalem and Antioch with those at Galatia. The primary avenue for this examination will be via a consideration of Paul’s argument in Galatians. By the careful use of the mirror-reading technique, we will attempt to discover the message and the origins of Paul’s opponents. Here again the issue of chronology plays a significant role, as well as the issues of provenance. If we can establish clear chronological and thematic links between the composition of Galatians and the events surrounding Paul’s earlier problems, that in itself might help flesh out our picture of the Galatian opponents. This chapter, therefore, begins with an exploration of questions surrounding the location of the Galatian churches and the date of the letter’s composition.

It will be suggested that the churches of Galatia were located in the southern regions of the Roman province of that name; therefore, they represented communities established under the auspices of the Antiochene church during Paul’s first missionary journey. This conclusion will form the basis for relating the subjects discussed in the previous chapters to the central issues raised by this study: the relationship between the Galatian crisis and previous conflicts at Jerusalem and Antioch; the relationship between the Judaisers and Paul; as well as the Judaisers’ relationship with Jerusalem.

Accordingly, this third chapter forms the key component of the thesis. It will be argued in this chapter that following their success at Antioch, the Judaisers moved on to the churches in Galatia with a view to bringing these communities under the authority of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem authorities would have been keen, not only to reclaim the Antiochene community for the Law-observant mission, but also to gain control of the communities beyond Antioch, which had been established and continued to operate under the authority of the Antiochene mission. Paul had previously warned the Galatians of a possible incursion by rival missionaries preaching a different gospel (Gal 1:9). And the

close parallels he draws between the situations at Antioch and Galatia can only lead us to conclude that the content of the Judaisers’ gospel included the Law-observant position of James’ circumcision party at Jerusalem. Thus, if these conclusions should prove correct, then it must be the case that the conflict in Galatia be seen as a continuation of the dispute that led to the Jerusalem Council and culminated in Paul’s bitter split with Peter, Barnabas and James’ people at Antioch.

Chapter Four will take us beyond the immediate context of Galatia to examine the aftermath of the crisis. We shall explore the Corinthian correspondence and Philippians for possible echoes of an ongoing rift between Paul and the Judaisers. There is little doubt that Paul continued to experience problems with Judaising opponents at Corinth, on account of which he also warns the Philippians. But our interest will be in attempting to determine if such problems were a direct result of the earlier conflict at Galatia. In addition, in the second part of this chapter, we shall consider the data Paul supplies in Romans concerning fears about his third visit to Jerusalem. Noting the way in which Paul responds to all these threats, we will argue that his opponents were Judaisers. They seem to have been well informed of Paul’s previous difficulties with the Jerusalem church. In both Galatians and the Corinthian letters, Paul appeals to his numinous experience of the risen Jesus (Gal 1:12-16; 1 Cor 9:1; 15:8; 2 Cor 3:4-6; 5:11-21) as the legitimation of his independent apostolic status and, both explicitly in Galatians (2:1-14) and implicitly in 1 Corinthians (9:3-6; 15:9-11; cf. Phil 3:4-11), he seeks to set the record straight concerning his past problematic relationship with the Jerusalem Apostles. Taken together this conspicuous coincidence in the details that Paul supplies concerning these various opponents provides a strong cumulative argument for viewing them all, not only as representatives of a single Judaising faction, but one which had strong links to Paul’s earlier opponents at Antioch and Jerusalem.

These conclusions necessarily raise further questions – to what extent were Peter, James and the Jerusalem church directly responsible for the opposition Paul encountered following his departure from Antioch? In this concluding chapter, it will be maintained that our strongest evidence for propounding such a relationship comes from Galatians, where Paul himself expressly connects the events surrounding the roles played by Peter and James in both the Jerusalem Council and the Antiochene incident with the activities of the

troublemakers at Galatia. As to the Corinthian letters, we will find a number of explicit links in 1 Corinthians between the Cephas party at Corinth and the apostolic circle around Peter and James at Jerusalem. We will note that the language and the arguments employed by Paul in both 1 and 2 Corinthians implicitly correlate with those he used earlier against his opponents in Jerusalem, Antioch, and Galatia. On this basis, we will contend that the letters of recommendation that Paul’s opponents bore at Corinth (2 Cor 3:1) derived their authority from Jerusalem, which explains why the arrival of these people in Corinth resulted in some of Paul’s converts joining in a new allegiance to Peter and the Jerusalem church against Paul’s party of supporters. Since it is highly unlikely that Peter himself had ever visited Corinth, the only logical explanation is that Paul’s opponents at Corinth were accredited envoys of either the Jerusalem church or some other community where the Law-observant gospel of Peter and James held sway. In the light of these findings, we will assert that the various Law-observant opponents whom Paul encountered in Galatia and Corinth, and of whom he warns the Philippians, were directly commissioned by James, Peter and the Jerusalem church.

In addressing the Pauline controversies and issues raised by those disputes as outlined above, it is hoped that we might be able to provide a broader context for the study of Galatians. As we noted at the outset, the letter itself tells us very little about the troublemakers or the situation at Galatia. Accordingly, we are forced to reconstruct their identity and their Judaising program by mirror-reading Paul’s comments. This study takes a slightly different approach, utilising mirror-reading but also incorporating and taking account of material from other related sources. An important aspect of this approach is a consideration of the chronology and the order of the various events that either contributed to or complicated Paul’s response to this dispute. The ultimate aim of this study is to attempt to provide a more complete picture of the Judaisers who initiated the crisis in Galatia that impelled Paul to pen this letter.