Gal 1:19 : What if Paul didn't want to meet the other apostles?
Posted: Wed Feb 06, 2019 2:24 am
I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord's brother.
(Gal. 1:19)
Assuming that Paul was already in (implicit or latent) conflict with the Christians of Jerusalem before the his first visit to Peter & company, then it would be expected that he wanted to have a contact only with Peter, by avoiding any relation with the other apostles, even if they were in Jerusalem in that moment.
He didn't see them because he didn't like them, and not because they were out of Jerusalem.
Peter, in virtue of the his relative openness of mind (towards Paul's plan for the future), was the only, among the apostles, whom Paul wanted to consider worthy of a visit by him (note en passant the great pride of the man at work).
So there are under this premise two possible options about ''brother of the Lord'':
1) James was only a mere Christian, so Paul saw him just as he could see a slave in the house of Peter doing his work. This would give more force to Richard Carrier's argument (James of Gal. 1:19 as mere brother) and so this James would be different from the James Pillar.
2) alternatively, the entire allusion to James, ''but only James, the brother of the Lord'', was an astute proto-catholic interpolation designed to correct the prideful isolationism of Paul. If Paul met also the carnal brother of Jesus - as the mind of the interpolator would have thought - then he was not the independent Apostle who wanted to visit Peter and only Peter (not caring about everyone else, as unworthy of him).
I lean to follow this latter option, since in Mark, assuming that the Jesus of Mark is sometimes Paul himself (per Dykstra, Adamczewski, RG. Price, etc), when Jesus avoids deliberately to meet the his brothers and the his mother, he is really Paul who didn't like to meet other brothers in Jerusalem, apart Peter.
So the interpolator had more than a reason to add the reference to a brother of the Lord in Gal 1.19. What was in discussion was the relation between Jesus and the his relatives (and the his mother). If Paul met a brother of Jesus, then afterall, also Jesus could have met the brother of Jesus, pace Mark.