Re: Gal. 1:1

From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Sat Jan 11 1997 - 17:59:27 EST


At 12:23 PM -0600 1/11/97, Thomas Biddy wrote:
>Does v. 12 illuminate our quest for the double point.
>
> 12
> For I neither received it of man,
> neither was I taught [it],
>
> but by the revelation of Jesus
> Christ.

Precisely--very precisely; nice observation. Paul is especially concerned
to emphasize the independence of his apostleship from the Jerusalem church
in Galatians because he suspects that the "apostles" who are troubling the
Galatian congregation may have come from the Jerusalem church or from a
faction within it--the people he claims are behind the "false" behavior of
Peter at the tables in Antioch. I don't think there's any other letter in
which Paul is so vitally insistent upon his credentials not being mediated
by any human authorities.

>On 11 Jan 1997, Adrian Popa wrote:
>
>> > Actually, Paul clarifies this himself in the remainder of chapers 1 and 2.
>> > But specifically, he means to say that it wasn't human beings who
>> > commissioned him (OUK AP' ANQRWPWN) nor was it a human intermediary of
>> > (divine) authority (OUDE DI' ANQRWPOU). Rather it was Jesus Christ himself
>> > and God the father who raised him from the dead.
>>
>> But why did Paul use AP' ANQRWPWN as well as DI' ANQRWPOU, when one
>>would have
>> probably been enough? Perhaps Carl is right to understand the former in
>>terms of
>> origin and the latter in terms of mediation. Or, as Dan Wallace would say,
>> ultimate and intermediate agency. But I have noted that the initial
>>negation is
>> counter-balanced only by one positive DIA phrase in reference to Jesus
>>Christ
>> and God the Father. Is this because Paul regarded AP' ANQRWPWN and DI'
>>ANQRWPOU
>> roughly synonymous? Is it because his second DIA covered by implication
>>both the
>> idea of origin and mediatian? Did he deliberately place the four
>>prepositions
>> chiastically -- i.e., APO, DIA, DIA, EK -- and thus managed to round off a
>> slightly imbalanced sentence? Or (and this is quite likely) am I
>>splitting hair?

OUK AP' ANQRWPWN OUDE DI' ANQRWPOU ALLA DIA IHSOU CRISTOU KAI QEOU PATROS
TOU EGEIRANTOS AUTON EK NEKRWN

It can't really be a chiasmus because the EK NEKRWN does not really
construe with the quasi-participial APOSTOLOS (as if APOSTALEIS) but rather
with EGEIRANTOS. I do think, however, that the DIA is deliberately repeated
because Paul understands Jesus Christ as the mediator of his apostolic
authority. As the sentence stands QEOU PATROS is also governed by the DIA;
I think that if Paul had been aiming for a neat chiastic balance he might
have written ALLA DIA IHSOU CRISTOU KAI APO QEOU PATROS. But I think his
primary concern here is to reject as emphatically as possible the notion
that his apostleship has involved any human commissioning.

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
One Brookings Drive, St. Louis, MO, USA 63130
(314) 935-4018
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu OR cwc@oui.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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