Or am I seeking to please men?

~*~
"AN apostle
not from men nor through man,
but through Yeshua haMashiach &
"G*D" the Father
who raised him from
the dead!"
{GAL 1:1}.
~*~
DYADIC
opposition
is introduced in this,
the very first sentence of Galatians.
PAUL is not a human apostle
but an apostle of the
'risen' Mashiach.
~*~
AS
commentators
have pointed out,
the form of the expression is certainly strange
and very pointed
rhetorically?
~*~
ACCORDINGLY
some exegetes have argued
that Paul must be directly addressing his opponents' charge here,
that is, that they had indeed charged him with being an apostle from men,
the "CHURCH" in Yerusjalayim, and that, therefore,
he should submit to the authority
of his principals?
~*~
SOME
have already dismissed this interpretation,
as others had long before,
as there is no evidence anywhere else that THIS was the nature
of the charge, and to assume that every bit of pointed rhetoric found in Paul is in direct response to the opponents seems methodologically
unnessary and therefore
unsupportable!
~*~
FURTHER,
this reading makes sense of only ONE of the two parallel phrases {'from men'}, and not the other.
THIS INTERPRETATION does, however,
have the advantage of taking account of the energy of this expression,
which the suggestions of others
do not.
-
In my reading,
PAUL here, in the prescript,
in his very identification of himself,
provides a proleptic summary of his entire theme
and argument.
~*~
PAUL is
not an apostle form men,
that is, NOT from those who are authorities "IN THE FLESH," as it were,
those who have known
or are related physically to Yeshoshua,
"A MAN," but he is the apostle through the 'resurrected' MASHIACH
'in the spirit,' and from "G*D"
who raised
him.
~*~
THIS
INTERPRETATION,
which is plausible in itself,
not least because it makes sense
of BOTH halves of the chiasm,
does in fact provide an answer to the otherwise attested charge
against Paul, to wit, that his apostleship was inferior
because he had never had contact
with the historical
Yeshua?
~*~
PAUL's argument
is to be taken as a direct counter to such charges
as the following from
the Pseudo-Clementine
Homilies:
'You see now
how expressions of wrath
have to be made
through visions & dreams,
but discourse with friends takes place
from mouth to mouth,
openly and not through riddles,
visions, and dreams
as with an enemy.
And if our Yeshua appeared to you also
and became known
in a vision
and met you as angry
with an enemy,
yet he has spoken
only through visions and dreams
or through external revelations,
but can any one be made competent
to teach through
a vision?
And if your opinion is,
"That is possible," why then did our teacher
spend a whole year with us
who were awake?
HOW can we believe you
even if he has appeared to you,
and HOW can he have appeared to you if you desire the opposite
of what you have learned?
BUT if you were visited by him for the space of an hour
and were instructed by him and thereby have become an apostle,
then proclaim his words".
~*~
EVEN IF,
as seems plausible,
this text is a LATER Jewish Christian text written in reponse to Paul
and not the occasion of HIS response,
I think it still indicates well
what the nature of the conflict between Paul and his opponents from Yerusjalayim would
have been like?!
~*~
THERE IS,
after all, other evidence, from within Paul, for SUCH a view.
The allegory of the lower and the upper Yerusjalayim {GAL 4:21-31}
point in this direction.
~*~
MOREOVER,
in 2 Corinthians 5:16 PAUL insists that his community no longer knows
{that is, recognizes!} Mashiach according to the flesh
but ONLY recognizes Mashiach according to
the spirit.
~*~
To my mind,
THAT polemic is similar to what we have in Galatians against those who claim that their authority derives from closeness, even family ties,
with Yehoshua, the Jew
born of a woman.
~*~
FINALLY,
it has been suggested
that ROMANS 1:3-4
{"Concerning HIS SON who was born of the seed of David
according to the flesh, and declared to be the son of "G*D" in power,
according to the spirit of Holiness,
by the resurrection from
the dead"}
represents a Pauline gloss
on a liturgical formula of the early Church
{AND some Dead Sea/Qumran scripture/scrolls for describing Mashiach?!} and describing Yehoshua as the son of David
and THUS ethnically Jewish.
PAUL reverses the value of this 'formula' by insisting that this refers only
to Yeshua's birth according to the flesh,
while according to HOLY SPIRIT, Yeshu is the son of "G*D"
THUS rendering his ethnic and family ties,
if not 'worthless' - ROM 9:5 -,
of decidedly LESS
importance!
~*~
PAUL's genius
is to be found in this:
THAT which his Jewish Christian opponents
cited as the defect in his authority
becomes for him precisely its point of
greatest strength.
I am not imputing to paul a mere rhetorical or political ploy
but an argument which fits perfectly
with the entire structure
of his thought.
Maintaining the structure of binary oppositions that I have cited before,
the apostleship of Shimon/PETER & Ya'akov/James
is of an 'inferior' nature,
because it is only from Yeshu 'in the flesh' {a man};
it is the human teaching of a human teacher,
while Paul's revelatory vision
is NOT of the human Yeshu BUT
of Mashiach according to
THE SPIRIT.
verliefd
~#~
engel
08 jun 2005 - bewerkt op 03 mrt 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
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