Chapter 1
MSB introductory notes on Galatians:
Addressed to the churches, plural, in Galatia. It is Paul's only letter addressed to multiple churches. Paul mentions his attendance at the Jerusalem Council in this book, so Galatians must have been written after that.. The Jerusalem Council is often dated in 49 AD.
Churches included in the Roman province of Galatia include Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe. These were in the Roman province of Galatia, though not in the ethnic section of the province that was Galatia before the Romans arrived. The ethnic Galatians were mostly Celts who had migrated from France in the 3rd century BC. There is no record of Paul visiting the Celtic part of Galatia.
MSB says "Paul wrote Galatians to counter judaizing false teachers who were undermining the central NT doctrine of justification by faith." These false teachers persisted, ignoring the edict of the Jerusalem Council by continuing to teach that one needed first to convert to Judaism and practice the Mosaic law in order to become Christians.
Many use a verse or two in Galatians as part of their foundation for believing certain things. That is, many controversial doctrines that in our day divide one denomination from another find proof texts in this short little book to the Galatians. Among them
1. Those who support the doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration - the teaching that you must be baptized to be saved, use 3:27 as a supporting verse.
2. Those who attack traditional Biblical roles of men and women (and so support a more modern, equal view), use 3:28 for support, and to negate the traditional roles of authority and submission.
3. Those who do not believe in Calvin's Perseverance of the Saints use 5:4, "You have fallen from grace..."
4. Those who argue that Israel and the church are now one use 6:16 for support.
These are all pretty big issues. Think of the divisions within the church that have resulted because of the passionate disagreement on these four issues!
MSB says the notes on these verses will address the controversies.
Seems to me that this would be the first letter Paul wrote. James was the oldest book of the NT, and since I am reading in a chronological Bible and this is the first of Paul's letters to be introduced, I think I am on firm ground saying that. So it would seem a good idea to take the four "controversies" listed above as not being issues at all when Paul first wrote about them, and so to look in later letters to the ones he came back to and addressed as they grew in acceptance or became controversial in the early church. We today see them as very controversial, but the very fact that they are all mentioned more "in passing" than as huge doctrinal matters implies that they were not issues at the time of this writing.
First five verses are introduction. Paul is sending this letter, with other brethren.
2021-2, Here is the outline of Biblical usage of the word "adelphos", here translated "brothers":
a brother, whether born of the same two parents or only of the same father or mother
having the same national ancestor, belonging to the same people, or countryman
any fellow or man
a fellow believer, united to another by the bond of affection
an associate in employment or office
brethren in Christ
his brothers by blood
all men
apostles
Christians, as those who are exalted to the same heavenly place
I get it. Yet every single time the word is used in the TCR ESV, there is this footnote: Or "brothers and sisters". In New Testament usage, depending on the context, the plural Greek word adelphoi (translated brothers) may refer either to brothers or to brothers and sisters. They put this in EVERY TIME. For who? Who is this in here to pacify? Is it a critical point of translation that must be made clear every time it comes up so that there can never be any mistake about what it means? Is it a point of doctrine? Is it crucial to relating the true gospel? When Paul wrote this, did he think "Now I'm gonna use "adelphos" here, instead of writing brothers and sisters all the way out, but I'm sure they will understand that I am writing not just from us guys here in where ever, but also from the women that are here"? Did he worry about hurt feelings or did he have much bigger matters to deal with . I despise this "nod" to feminism, not because it is here once, but because it is here so very many times, and is in my opinion irrelevant to the point of the letters, and an addition to the inspired scripture. Ok. Enough. Last time I'm ranting about that.
2021 - Perhaps due to the current situation with the apologetics class, and my "inserting myself" into their business, this verse and the footnote with it really jumped out at me:
2 and all the brothers who are with me, To the churches of Galatia: [Gal 1:2 ESV] This letter is from Paul, and he adds this phrase to say it is not from him alone. Here is the note in Blue Letter Bible: "Or brothers and sisters. In New Testament usage, depending on the context, the plural Greek word adelphoi (translated “brothers”) may refer either to brothers or to brothers and sisters; also verse 11." So. Depending on context...This is pretty much word for word the note in my TCR ESV version. So the note is a translation note to the ESV translation. It is not from Thompson, nor is it from BLB, it is from those who translated it. The NASB has no such note here. So, Paul did not put this note in. If we take the note as relevant, then we need to look at the context of the verse to determine whether it truly did mean male brothers only, or it meant the whole church from which Paul was writing. But...he doesn't name any church. In fact, he goes to great lengths later in the book to establish his own credentials, and not the credentials of anyone else who is with him, of whatever sex. So the obvious way to read this is that the greeting is from Paul and many others - it is a communication from one group to another group. In that sense, brothers and sisters as the correct translation does make sense. But in vs 6, when the book really starts, it does NOT say WE are astonished, it says I. So that sets the greeting off even more.
2024 - If this word is to mean "brothers and sisters", if it is to mean "everyone" instead of the more usual "brothers", then there should be something in the context that points us to the broader meaning. There should be an obvious inference of some kind that the term is being used in a more inclusive way than a a masculine noun would normally be used. But that isn't found here. From Paul and the brothers with him. That word "all" is definitely there. It is our old friend "panthes", from which pantheon is derived in English. So our choices are that Paul means all the men with him, not just those on the deacon board, or those of the elder board, but all the men in that church. Why would he mean that? Why would he go to the trouble of saying not JUST the church leadership, but ALL the men? I don't know, but as worded, it certainly could mean that. On the other hand, he may have used ALL the brothers to include the entire church - men and women. It is a masculine noun. In Greek, how do they say "men and women"??? Nouns are either masculine, feminine, or neuter. You would think if he meant both, he'd go with neuter - to make it clear that he means all. But it may be that it is the noun itself that determines the gender. Maybe in Greek you cannot do what you can do in Latin and Spanish where pero is a male dog and pera is a female dog. Perhaps Greek does not allow us to choose what "gender" we want the word to portray? This shouldn't be controversial. Where are the examples that show beyond doubt that this masculine word sometimes includes women? Show me one, don't just tell me they're there! And where are the statistics? How often is adelphoi used inclusively as compared to it's usage in accordance with the masculine gender attached to the word?
2024 - Here is a better way to think about it. When Paul wrote "and all the brethren", he meant the men. He meant that because in that day and in that culture, in fact in Biblically prescribed relationships of all kinds, Christ is head of man, and man is head of woman. So when Paul says brethren or brothers, he is referring to the authority that is that church. Here in Galatians especially he is appealing to authority. He will say that he has apostolic authority later, but for now, the authority of the men in the place from which he is writing fully support all he is about to say. He is not saying that the democratic whole of those with me all agree with me. He is saying that the authority - which is held by men, both in this Greek culture in which he is writing and as in the order ordained by God (Here are the verses: 3 But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a wife is her husband, and the head of Christ is God. [1Co 11:3 ESV]; 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. [Eph 5:23 ESV]. Equal, because the submission is entirely voluntary and not based on a "better than" position. Jesus submitted to the Father, though Jesus was in all respects equal to the Father. Same here. Man is not "better", but there must be an order, and God created Adam first. And this is what 3:28 means also!) - of this whole church, all of them, agree with what he is about to say. That's what it means. I think it almost ALWAYS means that!
In verse 6 Paul gets right to the point: "I am amazed that you are so quickly deserting Him who called you...". These churches have been deceived by false teachers almost immediately. The judaizers seem almost to be a well-oiled machine in their efforts to undermine the gospel in these areas. Indeed they may have been. They had synagogues, hierarchy, and committed "soldiers". He goes on to say that what they are being taught is not "another gospel" but a distortion. He is telling them this teaching they have adopted will not be efficacious to salvation. It isn't a "modification" or an "accommodation" only, but is a distortion to the point of "hiding" salvation from those who are seeking it. Paul says those who are teaching this distortion are to be accursed. Paul wants them to go back to what they heard at the first - the original teaching from him as he came through there establishing churches, and stick with that - unmodified, unchanged, un-interpreted, un-amplified. The teachings of another group, another culture, and by extension civil government, are NOT to be superimposed on the original teaching of the gospel. The closer to the original intent you can get, the more accurately you will understand the apostolic teaching about the gospel. That is what he is saying. Do not add to the original.
2025 - In verse six still, as above:
Note that Paul gets right to the point by accusing the Galatian churches of deserting God himself. This is not some minor matter of overturning a doctrine Paul had given them, not a matter of preferring the teaching details from a different apostle. Paul says the teachings they have adopted affront God himself. This is serious. This is rebellion at Meribah!
Paul now turns to his credentials, to his own credibility, as the true teacher contrasted with these judaizers who seek to please men but not God. It is likely that the judaizers had tried to undermine Paul's teaching by undermining his credibility. Paul is about to say he has authority as an apostle - as the original 11 then 12. His teaching is not based just on his studying the word, but on truth revealed directly to him by Jesus Christ.
2021-2, this verse:
[Gal 1:12 ESV] For I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. Paul's claim is that he is not a student of the gospel, as are the Galatians, and all those who set themselves up to teach the Galatians. They all studied it, learned it from others. Paul claims he was given the gospel directly from Jesus, as did the rest of the apostles. He is certainly, indisputably unique in the time and manner of receiving. This is surely the basis for many attacks against him. And you can see why it would be. It never goes away, and he is constantly defending his apostleship.
2024 - When trying to decide whether an idea is part of the gospel or is of human origin, it would be good to trace the idea back to it's origin. It seems to me that Paul is telling us here that if it came about after the apostles were gone, then it is the teaching of man, and is a distortion that ought not be heeded. That seems quite drastic. I am think of the Athanasian Creed and the Nicene Creed. The difference though is that these creeds went back and tried to extract the original teaching of the apostles, rather than they formed a committee and deduced the doctrine from the text themselves, as inspired study. Grudem used this same kind of argument as to the eternal submission of the Son. His argument was that nowhere in church history was it taught that Christ submitted to the Father ONLY during the incarnation. And if that is nowhere in the writings of the early church, and no scripture establishing it can be produced, then it must be wrong - it must be the uninspired, unholy teaching of men. And so that is why the "traditional male female roles" people seize on this one verse in Galatians. None of the early church fathers taught gender equality on such a level. None. So if we cannot find it there, we must find it in scripture. And so they go with Gal 3:28.
2021 - What the Judaizers are likely saying is that they are men and Paul's a man, and so they have as much authority to "interpret" the gospel as Paul did. They were probably saying that Paul had in fact made interpretations and had come to a wrong conclusion. He was in error, because he was just a man, and maybe those who taught Paul the gospel had done a poor job or something had been lost in the interpretation so Paul's presentation of the gospel to the Galatians was wrong to start with. So Paul starts out saying that he wasn't taught the gospel by any man, not even by the original 11. There have been no "human" filters placed on what Paul preached as gospel. It came to him direct from God, pure and untouched by the mind of intervening teachers.
Paul tells us about what happened after the Damascus road conversion. He went to Arabia before consulting with anyone in Jerusalem, then went back to Damascus afterward. He is using this argument to say that the apostles in Jerusalem didn't educate him in the gospel and then send him out to teach. He says his knowledge came from a higher source. Only after three years did Paul go to Jerusalem and there he only saw Peter and James (James the brother of Jesus, here called "apostle", since John's brother James had been killed by Herod already when Paul went to Jerusalem). Then he headed out to Syria and Cilicia on his missionary journey, still not recognized by sight to the Jerusalem Church as a whole.
2021-2, Hmm. Paul does clearly endow James the brother of Jesus as an apostle also here. MSB does not address this label at all. It seems to open up a whole new box of problems for Paul to state it this way. And there is no one to tell me why.
2023 - This is an extremely important aspect of all that we have in the Bible from Paul. He wrote a LOT of it. He claims that he got it all directly from God, as revelation, in essentially the same way that Moses got the Pentateuch, and Isaiah got Isaiah. Paul is not a teacher, passing on what he learned from teachers before him. He claims authority to "write the book" that others are to teach. The timeline indicates that he got most of what was revealed to him in Arabia. Then he was in Damascus for three years. I don't think we are told what went on there during that time. Perhaps more revelation. In Syria! So he has said all this to show that he is not taught but has received revelation directly fro God - which by definition makes him an apostle, right? And then he turns right around and names James the brother of Jesus an apostle also. We can make this fit the definition because surely James learned directly from his brother. But he didn't travel around with Jesus. In fact, he only became a convert after the resurrection. But Jesus did speak to him directly after his resurrection. If we make THAT the criteria, then there were what 500 apostles made in these verses: 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. 7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. [1Co 15:6-7 ESV]? But there is a qualifier in 7...THEN to James, then to ALL the apostles. He does not say that those 500 are NOT apostles, but they'd have had to have been there at that vs 7b moment to qualify. Besides the 12, James, and Paul, no other apostles were named (Check that. I think Titus and Timothy are also called apostles, but from what I've seen, most consider them Apostolic Assistants, or Assisting Apostles), but we cannot know how many Paul included here. Probably there is another passage where the qualifications are delineated more clearly. MSB does say that "the 500" are mentioned only here. Remember that Paul is naming all the witnesses that saw the risen Christ. Paul is NOT giving us a list of ALL who can call themselves apostles. I am considering that the two groups might be one and the same.