PART ONE
PART ONE
Paul’s Defense of His Apostolic Qualifications
1:10–2:21
In connection with the foregoing, Paul now begins to defend his apostolic authority against the attacks directed upon it. This defense continues to the end of Chapter 2, although in 2:15–21 the objective antithesis of the gospel itself begins to come to expression also. This portion, therefore, constitutes the transition to Chapter 3, in which the opposition between the works of the law and faith in Christ is the sharply focussed issue at stake. From 1:10 to 2:21 the apostle deals directly and primarily with his credentials as an apostle. He approaches this matter from more than one point of view. The transition to the discussion of this is constituted by verses 10 and 11.
THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO MAN
1:10, 11
10 For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? or am I striving to please men? if I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ.
11 For I make known to you, brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man.
10 The rhetorical question is apparently asked in response to the proffered charge that Paul had been trying to play up to the people in order to gain effect. Considering the nature of the opposition, we conclude the charge was made against Paul in the matter of his maintaining Gentile freedom from the Jewish law over against the militant Judaizers. In this circumstance then his opponents could find a pretense ready at hand for charging that Paul was playing up to the popular wish to “let down the bars” of responsible conduct. Over against this Paul puts the question whether they would care to charge this against him now also, that is, now that he has in the preceding verses spoken as he has. There he certainly was not using language nicely calculated to give offense to no one. The question, consequently, is not without its irony. True, the charge probably took its point of departure from Paul’s attitude towards the law. And his defense now leans upon a robust maintenance of his previously proclaimed gospel. And that should be enough to prove, consequently, that Paul was not out to win people by telling them what they like to hear. Besides, his preaching of this gospel had brought him into sharp conflict with others. It was therefore the motive of obedience to God that prompted him to speak as he had spoken. But for this he would not have taken so radically thoroughgoing a position. The last part of the sentence confirms all this by pointing to the fact that human desire and the service of Christ are incompatible. This is so not merely on the basis of the general rule of Matt. 6:24, but especially also because of the nature of the service of Christ. The service of Christ goes straight against the grain of what people naturally love to hear (cf. 5:11 and 6:12); the service of Christ demands precisely a readiness to surrender everything for His sake, and most particularly this favor of men.
11 The words, For I make known to you, brethren, suggest something remarkable and impressive. They indicate that the readers do not yet know, or no longer know, the truth that is to follow, although they might well have known and reflected on it. Paul, so to speak, has to begin again at the very beginning. Although the tone is friendly, and although the vocative brethren—used sparingly in this letter—first appears in this connection, this formal announcement nevertheless has something in it that puts to shame. If they did not yet know that the gospel which the apostle had preached to them was not after men, then they had better let themselves be told this truth in a most formal manner, once and for all.
PAUL, TOO, ONCE AN ENEMY OF THE GOSPEL
1:12–14
12 For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ.
13 For ye have heard of my manner of life in time past in the Jews’ religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted the church of God, and made havoc of it:
14 and I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.
12 The apostle now begins speaking about his own past, in order the better to demonstrate the nature of the gospel and of his own apostolic qualifications and independence. The historical data are not to be thought of as a sort of partial autobiography, but rather from the objective point of view of the issue at stake in this discussion. Verse 12 constitutes a transition. What is said in verse 11 can be understood partly in terms of the fact that Paul did not receive the gospel he preached from men, nor by tradition, nor by instruction, but by revelation. For the rest, the attention is called, not so much to the way in which Paul came in contact with the gospel (he does not place himself outside the pale of Christian tradition (cf. 1 Cor. 7:10, 11:23, and 15:3), as to the origin of the gospel. Nevertheless there is emphasis on the immediacy of Paul’s calling to the gospel directly through Christ. It had been a supernatural revelation, this by which he had become serviceable to Christ. The apostle is here plainly referring to the event at Damascus (Acts 9:3 ff.). There Christ had appeared to him. It does not necessarily follow, of course, that up to that moment Paul knew nothing about Jesus; but there he was persuaded of the objective divinity and truth of the Messiah confessed by the church (cf. verse 13).
13 This verse carries us still farther into Paul’s past, and speaks of his activity against the church of Christ before his conversion. His narration of this is designed to drive home the more tellingly that his apostleship rests upon God’s own intervention. In this connection, Paul makes his appeal to what the Galatians themselves had heard concerning him, whether from Paul himself, from others, or, as is probable, from both (cf. 1 Cor. 15:9, 1 Tim. 1:12 ff., and Phil. 3:5 ff.). First the apostle gives a general designation of this past as my manner of life in time past in the Jews’ religion, then a more specific reference to his extraordinary persecution of the church of God and to his devastation of it. We are to think of what is told us in Acts 8:1 ff., 9:1 ff. and 13 ff., 22:4 ff., and 16:9 ff. The term church is not to be thought of in the regional sense of verse 2, but in a general sense. By calling it the church of God, the apostle makes the frightfulness of his former activity the more manifest. At the same time, the phrase communicates the idea that the believers in Christ are the continuation of Israel as the people chosen of God. Indirectly this implies that the criterion for belonging to the people of God lies in faith and in nothing else.
14 Besides being a persecutor of the church, Paul had been a fanatic zealot for the Jewish institutions. This, too, can serve to demonstrate once more how little his current zeal for Christ is the result of human deliberation. More and more meticulously he had worked himself into and made the Jewish religion and prescriptions his own and had accommodated his conduct to them. He passed his contemporaries by, as though in competition with them. His zeal converged particularly upon the tradition of (his) fathers. This tradition refers to the so-called halacha, the compilation of ethical and other rules which took their point of departure from the Torah, and, by all sorts of addition and casuistical glossing, finally constituted a regimen for the whole of life (cf. Matt. 5:21 ff., 15:2, and 23:2 ff.).
PAUL INDEPENDENT OF MEN IN HIS APOSTOLIC COMMISSION
1:15–17
15 But when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother’s womb, and called me through his grace,
16 to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles; straightway I conferred not with flesh and blood:
17 neither went I up to Jerusalem to them that were apostles before me: but I went away into Arabia; and again I returned unto Damascus.
After a renewed and fulsome testimony to having been called of God (verses 15, 16), the apostle tells of his “manner of life” after he had become heir to the divine revelation. This demonstrates the complete independence of his apostleship and constitutes an unimpeachable refutation of his opponents, who were obviously trying to discredit him as a sort of “second-hand” apostle.
15 The good pleasure gives expression to the sovereign freedom as well as the infinite riches of the divine disposition which is represented at this point, not as preceding, but as coinciding, with the culmination: to reveal. The emphasis falls on the sovereignty of the divine grace manifested to Paul. At the same time, however, the apostle stresses the fact that God had much earlier—from his mother’s womb, as a matter of fact—appointed him for apostleship. Whatever impediments, therefore, he had himself interposed, these could not nullify God’s plan for him. For the rest, the certainty of a special separation of his life from birth onward need not rest on a special revelation. What the apostle is talking about here is the counsel of God which governs all things, most especially his work of redemption and the preparation and training of His agents. Jeremiah 1:5 tells us of this, and the fact that Paul is obviously alluding to it shows how greatly he was convinced by God of his special election and appointment. The calling of which he speaks afterward is not identical with this separation, but refers to the event at Damascus. The grace of God, through which this calling took place, was not only its motive but also its means. This grace it was that operated in Paul’s calling and made him willing and fit to carry it out.
16, 17 The first effect of God’s calling was that He revealed His Son in Paul. Paul’s knowledge of Christ as the Son of God rested on God’s immediate intervention. The film was, so to speak, removed from his eyes. Then he understood that the Jesus, whom he persecuted and whose name he had up to this point hated and despised, was the Son of God. These verses ascribe the revelation to God, although it had been the Son of God Himself who spoke to him en route to Damascus. This circumstance does not, of course, gainsay the fact that this revelation found its basis in God’s good pleasure not only, but can also be named a revelation of the Son by the Father.
More difficult is the exposition of the in me. It does not mean to say that the revelation consisted solely of an internal experience. According to all the data, it also had an external-objective side. The problem, however, is whether the in me stresses especially the internal knowledge and change, consequent upon the revelation in Paul, or whether it could be translated simply as to me or, again, be regarded as supplanting the single dative. In support of the first interpretation, scholars point to Rom. 8:23, Gal. 2:20, Col. 1:19, and Rom. 1:18. For the second, they refer to verse 24, and to 1 Tim. 1:16. And, for the third view, they cite Rom. 1:19, 1 Cor. 14:11, and 2 Cor. 4:3. As we see it, too much emphasis ought not to be placed on the internal character of the revelation, and to me, or simply me, is preferable to in me as a translation.
The apostle goes on to say, in the final sentence, to what end this revelation took place. In other words, he is busy here, telling the story, not of his conversion, but of his calling. His special appointment was to preach the gospel to the Gentiles (cf. Acts 26:17, 18 and Gal. 2:8). In carrying out this commission, he immediately adopted the policy not to turn to men for counsel; so he could remain independent of them. As a matter of fact he even chose not to go to Jerusalem where those were who were apostles before (him). In one sense this last utterance of his fully acknowledges the calling and authority of the apostles at Jerusalem; in another sense, Paul immediately puts himself on one and the same level with them, even though they were called earlier. However, by now withdrawing into Arabia, a thinly inhabited terrain, extending from the Euphrates in the west far to the north, he immediately turned away from all human influence in order to reflect in solitude on the matter of his calling, and on the turn which his life was now taking.
How long Paul stayed there is something that cannot be made out from this context with certainty. If we are right in concluding that it was not the preaching of the gospel but personal motives, rather, that prompted him to go there, we can more readily conclude that his stay there was comparatively short, and that it took place between his conversion and his preaching at Damascus (of which we read in Acts 9:19, 20). To Damascus, at any rate, he returned, also according to the indications of our text. The name Damascus is here first named in connection with that return. Paul writes about this period of his life as he would about a matter whose background (the event on the way to Damascus) his readers already knew about in broad outline. Anyhow, the main concern is not fulsomeness of biographical detail, but the evidence that in his apostleship he took an independent position. After his stay in Arabia, too, he did not go to Jerusalem forthwith but remained a while at Damascus. This becomes apparent not only from Acts 9:20 ff. but also from the next following verse of this letter.
ONLY LATER, AND BUT FOR A SHORT TIME, DID PAUL MEET CERTAIN OF THE APOSTLES AT JERUSALEM
1:18–20
18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas, and tarried with him fifteen days.
19 But other of the apostles saw I none, save James the Lord’s brother.
20 Now touching the things which I write unto you, behold, before God, I lie not.
18 The following verses also serve to confirm Paul’s apostolic independence. Eventually he went to Jerusalem, but only after three years (reckoned from the date of his conversion and calling). In ancient times part of a unit of time (de termini a quo et ad quem) was sometimes reckoned a full unit. We cannot say precisely, therefore, how long Paul remained in Damascus (inclusive of his Arabian journey). We can deduce from Acts 9:23 (cf. 2 Cor. 11:32–33) that his leaving Damascus took place partly under duress. Otherwise he might have remained at Damascus longer, without visiting Jerusalem. In any event, it took quite a while before he established contact with Peter, and when he did go his purpose was not to secure his authorization as an apostle, or to get instructions from Peter. Such becomes apparent, too, from the word to visit, a word which, since it is used in connection with a person, might also have been translated to make the acquaintance of, and, at any rate, serves to designate a first meeting. The visit was of a temporary and informative nature. The period is designated plainly as fifteen days. That Paul should have gone to Jerusalem especially to see Peter, and that he spent his time there with Peter, was probably owing to the latter’s peculiar position in the first Christian church. From the whole narrative, with its meticulous citation of time, persons, and the like, it is evident that Paul was and remained fully conscious of his own independence in the preaching of the gospel.
19 The next following communication, namely, that Paul saw none of the other apostles (besides Peter) except James, the brother of the Lord, has the same bearing. James was not one of the twelve. Moreover, the expression used in the Greek does not necessarily imply that Paul is here reckoning him as one of the apostles; it would, in fact, tend to point the other way. Still, on the basis of general considerations, one could accept the view that Paul was here counting him among the apostles. A particular appearance of the Risen One had fallen to his share (1 Cor. 15:7; cf. 1 Cor. 14:1–5). In part, surely, on the basis of that fact, he had a special place in the church at Jerusalem. The addendum, the Lord’s brother, distinguishes him from other persons of that name, among whom there were or had been apostles (namely, James, the son of Zebedee; and James, the son of Alphaeus). But James is an honorable name. We read of this James’ special position in Acts 12:17, 15:13, 21:18, and in Gal. 2:9, 12.
20 In this verse Paul confirms everything he has said with an oath. After all, nothing less is at stake than the validity and independence of his apostleship. And he defends these against the attacks made against him by an appeal to the highest Judge.
TO THE CHURCHES IN JUDAEA ALSO PAUL WAS PERSONALLY UNKNOWN
1:21–24
21 Then I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia.
22 And I was still unknown by face unto the churches of Judaea which were in Christ:
23 but they only heard say, He that once persecuted us now preacheth the faith of which he once made havoc;
24 and they glorified God in me.
21 Also this conclusion of Chapter 1, beginning as it does with verse 1, serves to point up the independence of Paul’s apostleship over against the other apostles. After the visit to Jerusalem narrated in verse 18, Paul went into distant lands as a preacher of the gospel, outside the direct sphere of influence of the apostles. The expression, the regions of Syria and Cilicia, is very general. Presumably we are not to take this Syria as referring to the whole Roman province of that name (to which Palestine also belonged: cf. Luke 2:2, and other places), but rather as designating Antioch and its environs, where Paul preached the gospel (cf. Acts 11:25). Of his stay in Cilicia, the Acts also give an account (9:30). He tarried there a while, that is, in Tarsus; this was before Barnabas invited him to Antioch. Because, however, Paul speaks first in this connection of Syria, and then of Cilicia, we may suppose that he is not concerned to give a chronologically arranged narrative of his experiences in the fourteen years preceding his trip to Jerusalem (referred to in 2:1), but only to give a general idea of the places in which he was occupied during that time. So construed, and viewed from the vantage point of Jerusalem, the geographical order, Syria-Cilicia, was a natural one. Nor does Paul speak of the circumstances under which he left Jerusalem, and of his first missionary journey, which must have taken place during his stay in Syria, and within these fourteen years (see the Exposition for 2:1 below). But such considerations are not relevant here. The issue at present is his relationship with the other apostles, and the great distance that separated him from them for years.
22 Paul had moved so little within the sphere of influence of the apostles that the churches in Judaea did not know him personally. This unfamiliarity in no way conflicts with what is reported in Acts 8:3 and 9:1 concerning the scope of Paul’s persecution of the Christians—a scope which extended beyond the pale of Jerusalem. For, even though here and there a person in the church may have known him, Paul certainly as a persecutor never put in his appearance in the assemblies of the churches of Judaea. Moreover, he is speaking at the moment of a much later state of affairs, and of the fact that as a preacher of the gospel he had never presented himself to these Judaean churches.
The words, which were in Christ, in general indicate the Christian character of these churches, in distinction from the Jewish communions. The expression in Christ, which Paul uses in all kinds of connections, and appears now for the first time in this letter, must be taken corporatively: it states that the church is included in the redemptive work of Christ and is subjectively governed and moved by Him.
Of importance, further, is what is to be understood by Judaea as it is here used. The agreement between this passage and that of Acts 9:28–29 depends to a considerable extent upon how this Judaea is interpreted. If Jerusalem is included in it, the agreement is hard to come by. The problem, however, is whether we can, within the pale of our text, rule Jerusalem out, and not become arbitrary in doing so. It is generally denied that this can be done. But we can also ask the question whether we are not contradicting Paul himself when, in view of what is told us in verses 28 and 29, we propose to include Jerusalem within the pale of Judaea. We certainly read nothing about Paul keeping himself in hiding during his visit to Peter or travelling incognito into Jerusalem. Nor is there the least occasion to suppose that he did so. He met only a few of the apostles. But the most natural assumption would be that he also had contact with the church at Jerusalem. Hence, in view of the fact that in verse 18 we read only about Jerusalem, we can without arbitrariness and with all plausibility construe the Judaea of verse 22 as referring to the Jewish country, and leave Jerusalem out of consideration here. In other words what Paul wants to say in verse 22 is that, after his brief stay in Jerusalem, he had not lingered in the vicinity, but immediately taken off for remote areas.
23 This verse adds to the foregoing the thought that the churches in Jewish Judaea had learned of Paul’s conversion and preaching only by hearsay. There is no point in making a problem out of who the speakers are that are represented here as talking in direct discourse. Such things as these—the idea is—the people were saying among each other. Probably there were some among them who had been the personal victims of Paul’s persecuting zeal; these would then have been outside of the city either because they fled there (cf. Acts 8:1–3), or because they were there when Paul molested them (cf. Acts 9:1–2).
By faith which is used here as the object of the preaching (he preacheth the faith) the content of faith is presumably intended (fides quae creditur). On the other hand, the subjective meaning of the faith, (fides qua creditur), would serve better as the object of the persecution (of which he once made havoc). Apparently the exclusive-objective significance of the faith (cf., e.g., Jude 20) is not what we have here, but, rather, a transition towards it.
24 The final thought, namely, that these churches glorified God in Paul, incidentally suggests that these churches did not doubt the genuineness and integrity of Paul’s calling and preaching. And that, if you please, from those who had suffered so much on his account! How different the attitude in the churches of Galatia, even though these had experienced only good from him, and had not the slightest reason to doubt his apostolic calling and authority!
Ἄρτι with accent at the beginning: now, that is, now that I pronounce this judgment (of verses 8 and 9).
The question is first of all one which shows reason or cause (γάρ): one can make out from it why the apostle dared speak as unequivocally as he did. Further, the question invites the attention to something new: Paul’s apostolic independence.
Always men, generic man, without the article: anyone, whoever it might be. The challengers meant the Gentiles by it. Paul by his independent attitude over against the heretical teachers, proves that he is currying neither their favor, nor that of people in general.
First we have πείθω, then ἀρέσκω. The first must be construed in agreement with the second, and so the force of the statement becomes: to gain someone for one’s self by playing up to what he wants. The tense suggests a continuing habit, typical of the agent.
The added ἢ τὸν Θεόν as an alternative has something gratifying in it. That Paul’s way of doing aimed at quite the opposite of what the plaintiffs are charging him with is thus sharply focussed upon the attention.
After the rhetorical question, comes a condition: εἰ … ἤρεσκον The adverbial still points not so much to details of Paul’s earlier life as to the inclination present in every man to ingratiate himself with others; hence “if I had not unlearnt it.”
The Greek construction is somewhat irregular, because the ὅτι does not precede but follows the τὸ εὐαγγέλιον … All the same, the logical object of γνωρίζω is not the noun to τὸ εὐαγγέλιον, but the objective clause, namely, that it is not after men (cf. verse 13). Hence the translation: as touching the gospel …
The words which was preached by me communicate two things: that the Galatians had heard it and might thus have known it; and that the apostle is taking no responsibility for what others had eventually preached to them as gospel.
The force of the not after men is that what Paul preached to them is not determined by human approbation, taste, or preference.
Presumably the οὐδέ in the first place modifies the verb. Nevertheless, the ἐγώ which is expressly added, also gets some of the emphasis. Paul, too, required a revelation in order to appropriate the gospel.
The παρέλαβον of the did I receive is the technical term for oral tradition, as it was exercised particularly also in the rabbinical schools and also was taught to the people.
The nor was I taught it is a specific reference to academic instruction. In this connection, the immediately preceding receive is presumably to be taken as referring to the general, as distinguished from the school, tradition. The words from man modify also the nor was I taught it. Otherwise the ἐδιδάχθην would be too absolute, and the conclusion of the clause would be too loosely independent from the rest of the predication.
In general, revelation (ἀποκάλυψις) means this: announcement from God’s side of what lies beyond human reach. It assumes, often, not merely a manifestation, a disclosing in the objective sense, but also an influencing of the human spirit in such a way that it can distinguish the divine revelation as being such (cf. Mt. 16:17). In this verse it means not merely a change that has invaded and seized upon Paul’s mind, but also and primarily the objective intervention of Christ. In other places, Paul puts this event on the same level of fact as the appearances of the Risen One (1 Cor. 9:1 and 15:8).
The genitive Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is here to be regarded as constituting the general subject (compare the Exposition of verse 16).
The ἀναστροφήν refers to his ethical conduct.
The Ἰουδαϊσμῷ can mean both the objective Jewish life and work and the subjective embodiment of living as a Jew. Here, very probably, the objective sense obtains: my performance when I still belonged to the Jewish communion and was committed to the Jewish life-view.
The objective clause, which is introduced by ὅτι, announces what Paul really means to say. See, for this construction, verse 11 also.
The imperfect tenses here stress the continuing and the intensive character of the persecution and the making havoc; the form is ἐπόρθουν (for which, in some manuscripts, the more ordinary ἐπολέμουν is given), de conatu, although the effort partly succeeded: hence the translation: to make havoc of. The verb really means to devastate or lay waste, and is also applied to persons.
Concerning the relationship of these two it can be said that the local church is not merely a sub-division of the general ekklesia. The basic thought is rather that the total church represents itself in each local church, however small it may be. On the one hand, accordingly, the existence of the local church is not dependent upon the ekklesia in general; and, on the other hand, there is no room for congregational self-direction and individualism. Each church is ekklesia only and truly in so far as it represents the church of God in the general and ideal sense of the word (cf. also K. L. Schmidt, TWNT, III, pp. 504, 508, and elsewhere).
The word ekklesia is also used to designate a profane popular assembly in the Hellenistic world (cf. Acts 19:32, 39 ff.). Whether the word is also used in a non-Christian cultic sense cannot be ascertained, but it is untenable that Paul would have appropriated such a use for designating the church of God. For ἐκκλησία is continuously used in LXX as the translation of kahal, particularly, too, in the combination kehal Jahwe, designating the theocratic popular assembly of Israel, and thus generally the Old Testament people of God. By now using the nomenclature ekklesia of God in distinction from Judaism, these two are already being denominated two entirely different communions. The ekklesia of God, although coming up out of, and constituting a unity with, the true, Old Testament people of God, is now an independent magnitude, standing next to and over against Jewry in the external sense of that word.
προέκοπτον: imperfect tense, as above; the force of the advanced is to hew out a path as a pioneer.
The ἐν τῷ γένει μου has the specific connotation: of my people (cf. Phil. 3:5).
The zealous is not to be construed in a political sense (cf. Luke 6:15 and Acts 1:13) but as religious ardor (cf. what follows).
The original δέ is here translated adversatively, as representing a contrast to Paul’s own activity; it can also, however, be interpreted conjunctively, inasmuch as in the sequel the preceding is simply continued.
In many important manuscripts, the ὁ Θεός is missing.
ἀφορίζω: to separate in the sense of: to set aside for special purpose. The emphasis here falls on this last sense.
Hence there is no basis here for the meaning put forth by some of the old Reformed theologians (Voetius, among others) that Paul was regenerated from childhood onward.
διὰ τῆς χάριτος.
The usage occurs more frequently in verbs of knowing, and making known; the ἐν then designates not only the person through whom the communication comes, but also the one who receives it (cf. Bl.-Debr., par. 220, I; Preuschen-Bauer, Sp. 406, IV, 4a; Oepke, TWNT, III, p. 535, among other places).
τοῖς ἔθνεσιν: here presumably used in the qualified sense of: heathen.
εὐθέως οὐ is stronger than οὐκ εὐθέως. It means to say that Paul at once, right from the beginning, was aware of his independence, and that he acted accordingly. This is to say more than that he did not immediately turn to others.
προσανατίθεσθαι τινί: to take counsel with someone, to turn to someone in order to learn his attitude.
Literally flesh and blood (cf. Eph. 6:12 and Matt. 16:17). It means the human, the creaturely, in itself, in its frailty (cf. Acts 2:17—where, however, flesh stands alone); it corresponds to the rabbinical basjar wedam.
The force of the οὐδέ is not that the apostles could not be reckoned as flesh and blood; it speaks of them rather as the ones who would seem first of all to come to mind.
ἀνῆλθον (in other manuscripts: ἀπ-). ἀνά is, especially in the compound ἀναβαίνω, the regular form for going to Jerusalem.
ἀπῆλθον.
This Arabia is not to be thought of as the peninsula stretching far into the south; were that so, one would have to ask whether Paul may have gone to Sinai (cf. 4:25). See for the explanation given in the text above Wright-Filson. The Westminster Historical Atlas to the Bible, 1945, p. 87.
This interpretation in connection with the contrast (I conferred not with flesh and blood) seems more acceptable than the one which has it that we are to think of a tour of gospel preaching.
πάλιν is then construed as having a more or less pleonastic sense, but this can easily be the case in the non-literary linguistic usage (cf. Acts 18:21: Bl.-Debr., par. 484).
ἱστορῆσαι (compare ἵστωρ and οἶδα).
πρός with the accusative, unlike παρά plus the dative, suggests an active association (cf. John 1:1).
In other words, we need not regard the εἰ μή as designating an exception (to ἕτερον τῶν ἀποστόλων); it can also be taken as the equivalent of ἀλλά, a contrasting complement in the sense of: except that I did see (cf. Mt. 12:4, Mark 13:32, and see Bl.-Debr., par. 448). The mention of James in this connection would then be motivated by his important position (see text of Exposition).
After all, what we really have in the text is this: “other (than Peter) of the apostles I saw none.” If we accept the view that Paul is also including James among the apostles in his last clause, we are really saying that Paul in that clause is retracting what he said in his first clause (so, e.g., Zahn, Greijdanus, and others). Still, as we see it, it remains questionable whether we can justifiably take the syntax with this kind of logical severity. For this would mean that besides Peter and James Paul had met nobody in Jerusalem—a conclusion which, on the basis of other considerations, is less acceptable. Moreover, the second clause can be regarded as an exception to what has been predicated in the first, without sacrificing the meaning of the first. After all, there were many apostles besides Peter (and James): compare verse 17. That Paul did not immediately think of James may be owing to the fact that a kind of difference still obtained between Peter and the other apostles, on the one hand, and James, on the other. The argument based on the syntax seems to us, therefore, too subtle to determine the matter.
There is no fixed and regular mode of designation. In the Acts (14:4 and 14) Paul and Barnabas are also named apostles, just as Paul himself repeatedly calls himself an apostle. In 1 Cor. 15:5, 7 the apostles and the twelve are clearly distinguished from each other. A looser mode of designation occurs also in such places as Rom. 16:7, 2 Cor. 11:5, 13, and 1 Thess. 2:7. The problem is whether one can adopt the principle that by the ἀπόστολοι in this broader sense only those persons are intended who were personally called to the preaching of the gospel by the Risen One (cf. Rengstorf, TWNT, I, p. 423, under ἀπόστολος). Others think that itinerant Christian preachers of various kinds also were called apostles, or, at least, laid claim to the title (cf. 2 Cor. 11:5–13, 12:11: see, e.g., Oepke, op. cit., p. 27). The inference then is that there was a broader and a narrower sense in which the term apostles was used. No satisfactory solution to the problem has yet been given (for the various opinions, see, e.g., Holger Mosbeck, Apostolos in the New Testament, Studia Theologica, Lund, 1947, pp. 166–200). In any event it is not strange at all that James, the brother of the Lord, to whom Jesus appeared after His resurrection, should here be reckoned alongside of Peter among the apostles.
Despite some variant textual evidence, we shall have to read the Κιλικίας as accompanied by the article. In that way Cilicia takes on an independence of its own alongside of Syria, with which it constituted a kind of political unit. Actually, Cilicia was an independent province, but one which, owing to its modest size, was not granted an independent government by the first caesars, and therefore came under the jurisdiction of the governor of Syria (cf. J. Weiss, HRE, X, 3rd edit., 1901, p. 561). This more modest significance of Cilicia may account for its being named second in the text.
ἤμην ἀγνούμενος: periphrastic, designating a continuous condition.
τῷ προσώπῳ: dative of relation: by face, in person.
The preposition ἐν would seem according to the original sense to imply designation of place, but is not here intended in a spatial-mystical sense, as though Christ were being represented as the spiritual element or medium in which the believers move (as is held by A. Deissmann, Paulus, 2, 1952, p. 106 ff.). It is intended in the corporative sense. Christ is the second Adam, in whom the believers are incorporated in the sense that they belong to the new order of life and of grace as distinguished from the order represented by the first Adam (cf. Oepke, TWNT, II, pp. 536–538 under ἐν). The unintermittent use of this phrase gives it a stereotyped character, and it is, of course, a question in how far the original force of place-designation is to be observed in it. As a matter of fact this in Christ represents, in a remarkable and comprehensive way, the whole profound view Paul unfolds in his letters concerning the significance for the believers of the salvation that has appeared in Christ.
Compare Mt. 3:5, 4:25, John 3:22, Acts 1:8, 8:1, and 26:20. A further problem is whether the Ἰουδαία used here refers solely to Judaea or also to the entire Jewish country, inclusive, e.g., of Samaria and Galilee. The name is not always used in the same sense, and sometimes denominates the original territory of Judaea, sometimes the Roman province in the time of Pilate (Judaea and Idumea), and then again the whole of Palestine, such as, e.g., was governed by Herod the Great and Agrippa I (cf., e.g., De Witt Burton, Galatians (ICC), pp. 435–436). Presumably the designation in this context ought not to be taken in a too restricted sense, in view of the spread of the Christian faith in the time of which Paul is writing (cf. Acts 9:31), and the nature of the subject matter with which he is dealing. Not only in the immediate vicinity of Jerusalem, but also farther to the north, gospel work was going on out of the Jerusalem base, and there too contact with the apostles had been established. Moreover, Paul is taking pains to make the point that all these years he has been standing outside of this activity.
The periphrastic again, as in Note 2 given above.
The ὅτι is to be taken as direct discourse.
ἐπόρθει: compare the Exposition of verse 13.