Alan Garrow's Blog

The Didache: Key to the Acts-Galatians Conundrum

25/8/2017

If you have questions arising from the video 'The Didache: Key to the Acts-Galatians Conundrum' please post them here.

19/12/2017 02:04:03 am

Alan, here are some comments on your video on Galatians.

It is not clear that "Paul is adamant that he has had no contact with Jerusalem apostles in the preceding 14 years." This assumes that Paul's point is that he had minimal contact with Jerusalem, but Debbie Hunn has shown that Paul is actually arguing that he stopped being a people pleaser when he was called: he did not try to ingratiate himself with the church leaders with a view to rising through their ranks.

Paul's first visit to Corinth was in 50. Acts 15 therefore belongs to 48 or 49 at the latests. You place the famine visit two years earlier, which is 46-47. You place Paul's Jerusalem visit of Gal 1:18-19 14 years earlier, which is 32-33. You place Paul's conversion 3 years earlier still, which is 29-30. This puts Paul's conversion before the crucifixion, which is not possible.

The idea that Paul would have appealed to the decree assumes that the Galatians were not already fully aware that the Jerusalem apostles had decreed in favour of Gentile liberty.

Acts would not have been able to get away with presenting only one side of a double-edged document, especially if you are right that the document circulated widely.

The words "Perfected at the final hour" would hardly lead the hearers to believe that the speaker supported the need for circumcision. This is a stretch. The circumcision of Timothy is what led the Galatians to believe that Paul believed in circumcision. We know this because in Gal 2:4-5 Paul says that, in circumcising Titus (which was Timothy's praenomen), he was not yielding the principle, but it was only because the false brothers had found out (by spying on a private meeting) that Titus was uncircumcised.

The discussion of layers to the Didache adds complexity to the theory.

It is not at all clear that participation in the eucharist was the issue at contest in Galatians.

It would be helpful to post the text and translation of the original Didache, you reconstruct it, so that readers can make up their minds on whether it could have a relationship with the decree.

I like that you take Gal 5:11; 1:8 and similar texts seriously.

You ask how anyone could persuade the Galatians that Paul supported circumcision for Gentiles. You say "the only way that they could do that is if they were able to point to a document...". Not so. Paul's circumcision of Timothy explains it. How did the agitators explain why Paul delivered the decree that confirmed Gentile liberty? They said that Paul did so only to please Jerusalem.

If Titus was an ordinary Gentile, then Gal 2:3 does not tell the Galatians that the apostles were supportive of Gentile liberty. This text is ambiguous about whether the apostles asked Paul to circumcise Titus. Indeed, if the Galatians had no prior knowledge of the Titus incident, then the text does not tell them whether he was circumcised.

Peter's eating with Gentiles in Antioch was BEFORE the Jerusalem meeting of Gal 2:1-10, though his withdrawal was after it. See Stephen Carlson's work on the textual variants at Gal 2:12.

If a double-edged decree was the issue, the I WOULD expect Paul to discuss it.

You are right that Acts is historical and independent of Paul's letters.

All in all, you find some important problems with conventional understandings of Galatians, but the solution is to be found in the circumcision of Titus-Timothy, not in an ambiguous decree.

Alan Garrow

19/12/2017 03:11:53 pm

Hi Richard, thank you for your detailed engagement with the paper - and for these interesting ideas to think about and follow up.

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.

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The Didache: Key to the Acts-Galatians Conundrum

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