Nanos, Mark D, editor. The Galatians Debate: Contemporary Issues in Rhetorical and Historical Interpretation - Book Review

Biblical Theology Bulletin, Fall, 2003 by Richard B. Cook

If history always comes to us refracted through the mind of the historian, then history is "made" by none other than the historian. History is not about what is over and done with but rather is about the present and its needs. This may help explain why the historian, in the guise of poet or prophet, often got into trouble back in the day.

And so, Barclay's caution is fine for Barclay--but not for J. Louis Martyn, who has contributed a 1985 essay, much supplemented in recent years, which has culminated in a commentary (GALATIANS, Doubleday 1997). In his commentary, Martyn has taken "mirror reading" about as far as it can be taken. He has created hypothetical "sermons," suggesting they are similar to those which must have been composed and delivered by Christian Jewish "teachers" who allegedly followed Paul into Galatia, and who, according to Martyn, wanted to supplement for the Galatian believers the misleading inadequacies they perceived in Paul. Barclay, not surprisingly, found fault (p. 378) with this approach even before Martyn used it to full effect. One of Martyn's inventions, reproduced (pp. 358-61) in THE GALATIANS DEBATE, demonstrates that the past can be as unpredictable as the future.

These essays (some more than thirty years old, almost all collected from scholarly publications) are inventive and diverse treatments gathered under three headings: Pauline Rhetoric, Pauline Autobiography, and The Situation in Galatia. Some conclusions are plausible. Some not. No doubt, future scholars will chase down several of these proposals with the instincts of a beagle.

Until then, you will have to read the arguments and judge for yourself. Is Paul in Galatia confronting concrete charges concerning his apostolate ? Not so, according to Johan S. Vos (p. 180). Is it the case that for Paul "justification through faith" and "covenantal nomism" were "in direct antithesis to each other," as James D. G. Dunn suggests (p. 234)? Do you think "from its inception, the Christian movement admitted Gentiles without demanding that they be circumcised and observe the law," as Paula Fredirksen asserts (p. 255)? Did Peter in Antioch "demand circumcision" of Gentiles as Philip F. Esler has concluded (p. 281)? Did Peter in Antioch engage in "obsequious behavior" when he "withdrew from these mixed meals" as Mark Nanos says (p. 317)? Or (door number three) was Peter in Antioch actually "passive-aggressive" ("compelling" the Gentile believers by withdrawing from them), as Fredriksen concludes (p. 258)? Is it probable that "Jewish Christians in Judea were stimulated by Zealotic pressures into a nomistic campaign among their fellow Christians," as Robert Jewett argues (p. 340), or was Paul contending in Galatia with a "Jewish countermission," as uncovered by Nikolaus Walter (p. 362)? Were Paul's opponents "very successful" in convincing the Galatians "to obey the Torah and adopt a Jewish way of life," as B. C. Lategan

maintains (p. 395)? Or (as Nanos would have it-p. 405) are the Galarians whom Paul addresses "members of Christ-believing sub-groups within larger Jewish communities" who see Paul as "a Torah-observant Jew"? Were there "circumcised people in Galatia who were advocating circumcision of Gentiles not for the purpose of keeping the law but for the purpose of avoiding persecution," as Dieter Mitternacht asserts (p. 409)?