A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
lclapshaw
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Re: A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Post by lclapshaw »

rgprice wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 5:39 am It seems to me that Galatians has been been revised multiple times, and that parts of Galatians precede Acts, while other parts were written after Acts. I think Acts and canonical Luke were produced in the mid second century. The Marcionite version of Galatians certainly precedes that. Acts was produced in reaction to Marcionism.
I for one would love to see arguments to this effect. By any chance do you have any source links to material that discusses this subject?

Thanks

Lane
John2
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Re: A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Post by John2 »

gryan wrote: Wed Jun 22, 2022 4:44 am PS. I find it interesting that after that speech in Acts, Peter is "silent" inasmuch as he is not seen again in the narrative of Acts. Paul becomes the main character. Likewise in Galatians, Paul resists Peter with a speech, and Peter does not reply. I take that as slight evidence that the author of Acts knew Galatians. But I don't think it works the other way around, i.e. as evidence that the author of Galatians knew Acts.

I suspect Peter is "silent" in Acts after his speech because the author didn't want to highlight divisions in the church and preferred to highlight the time when Peter ate with Gentiles instead of the time when he didn't.
Giuseppe
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Re: A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Post by Giuseppe »

An implicit question is raised by reading the article of McGuire:

if Galatians 2 is not based on Acts 15, pace McGuire, i.e. if Acts 2 is based on Galatians 15, then isn't it very much hard to try to prove that Galatians 2 is not genuine?

My point is that the McGuire's merit, beyond if his arguments persuade or not, is to have proved that only by reversing the relation Galatians 2--->Acts 15 in its contrary (Acts 15--->Galatians 2) one may be well titled to question the genuinity of all the rest of the epistles, so much Galatians 2 would have given us, otherwise, the minimal essence of what was historically a historical Paul (i.e. the first apostle who had dispensed the gentiles from the Torah's absurd prescriptions).
Giuseppe
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Re: A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Post by Giuseppe »

Giuseppe wrote: Fri Jul 08, 2022 1:36 am An implicit question is raised by reading the article of McGuire:

if Galatians 2 is not based on Acts 15, pace McGuire, i.e. if Acts 2 is based on Galatians 15, then isn't it very much hard to try to prove that Galatians 2 is not genuine?

My point is that the McGuire's merit, beyond if his arguments persuade or not, is to have proved that only by reversing the relation Galatians 2--->Acts 15 in its contrary (Acts 15--->Galatians 2) one may be well titled to question the genuinity of all the rest of the epistles, so much Galatians 2 would have given us, otherwise, the minimal essence of what was historically a historical Paul (i.e. the first apostle who had dispensed the gentiles from the Torah's absurd prescriptions).
remember that many minimalist Paul-historicists, i.e. Turmel, Loisy, Roger Parvus, have substantially reduced the historical Paul to the author of Galatians 2.

Without Galatians 2, you have not more a historical Paul.
Giuseppe
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Re: A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Post by Giuseppe »

Another article by McGuire on the same subject is found here:
https://depts.drew.edu/jhc/McGuireClash.pdf

The main thesis is that the false "Paul" of Galatians 2 was going to eclipse deliberately the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15.

In particular, the false "Paul" would have placed Peter in Antioch with the only goal of having him reproached by Paul.

The anonymous emissaries of James are obviously the bearers of the Apostolic Decree, identified in Acts 15:22 as Judas Barsabbas and Silas, although in Galatians they are just as silent about the Decree as they are concerning circumcision.

Acts 15:22:
Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, men who were leaders among the believers.

The article is very brilliant insofar it gives also what is for me the best explanation about why 2 Corinthians talks about the governor of Aretas (and not the Jews) being the persecutor of Paul in Damascus: by accusing the Pagan Aretas of persecution against Paul, the false "Paul" was going de facto to remove the Acts's anomaly of a Paul persecuted by the Jews in Damascus and in the same time visiting totally undisturbed Jerusalem itself, where more than any other place the Jews could have persecuted him (even more so if their longa manus against Paul could reach the distant Damascus), contra factum that they didn't.

Hence, the Aretas passage alone betrayes blatantly knowledge (and correction) of Acts by "Paul".
Giuseppe
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Re: A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Post by Giuseppe »

McGuire notes this strange anomaly, assuming the traditional view of Acts being based on Galatians:
  • In Galatians, the Pillars impose on Paul the collection for the poor;
  • In Acts, the apostles of Jerusalem don't require from Paul the collection for the poor.
There would be nothing of embarrassing, from a Catholic POV, in the fact that the Pillars commanded Paul to remember about the poor ones. Even so, in Acts there is not a such request, even if we are said that Acts was based on Galatians.

The solution of the enigma, according to McBride, is that the collection for the poor is a total invention by the false "Paul" to eclipse totally the real imposition imparted by the Pillars on Paul in Acts 15: the Apostolic Decree.
Giuseppe
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Re: A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Post by Giuseppe »

Robert M. Price agrees fully with McGuire when he writes:

But the real point of mentioning that the collection was the only proviso stipulated by the pillars is to exclude the so-called Apostolic Decree issued by the same group in Acts 15:23-29. That document promulgates a compromise by which gentile Christians need not trouble themselves to keep all the measures of the Torah, which would entail adopting an alien lifestyle. Rather, gentile Christians only need live by the much more modest Tetralogue: no eating blood, no eating strangled animals, no eating the meat offered to idols, no temple prostitution or perhaps consanguineous marriage. These seem to be concessions to sensitivities of observant Jews and Jewish Christians (Acts 15:21). The author of Galatians 1-2 evidently viewed such a compromise as beneath Paul and thus would have nothing to do with it. Yet, his own subsequent narrative makes more sense on the assumption that the Tetralogue was accepted. [13] On the other hand, Van Manen judged verse 10 to be an interpolation, presumably because he thought the writer would never countenance Paul accepting any stipulations from the pillars, as this would appear to compromise his independence.

(Amazing colossal apostle)

Note 13 refers precisely to the article of McGuire I am dealing with here.

Yet, his own subsequent narrative makes more sense on the assumption that the Tetralogue was accepted That is the exact point of McGuire, against Wells's objection that after the incident of Antioch the conflict on the Torah was still unresolved. After that Paul reproaches Peter, everything happens as if the idealized peace implied by the Apostolic Decree rules in the communities.

This point definitely persuades me that the epistles are from second century CE, so much I had based previously my confidence on the apparent historical "realism" of the drama of the Antioch incident as described in Galatians 2.
Giuseppe
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Re: A strong argument against the authenticity of Galatians

Post by Giuseppe »

McGuire doesn't think that Marcion invented the incident of Antiochia.

Van Manen thought that Marcion invented it, since he considers the verse 2:10 a catholic interpolation:

All they asked was that we should continue to remember the poor, the very thing I had been eager to do all along.

...meaning that (for Van Manen) in Marcion the Pillars didn't impose nothing.
At contrary, for McGuire to remember the poor is the expedient by the author (not Marcion) to eclipse the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15.

Accordingly MGuire concludes that Marcion couldn't invent an episode where the Pillars imposed at least something on Paul, even if to remember the poor is less onerous than the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15.

The corollary is that the inventor of the incident of Antiochia has to be someone
  • 1) who wanted to invent a final peace between Paul and Peter (modelled on the same idyllic peace found in Acts 15 after the Apostolic Decree);
  • 2) ...and who wanted an independent Paul.
Hence, according to McGuire, a moderate Paulinist à la "Mark" was the inventor of Galatians 2, not Marcion (a radical Paulinist).

Also "Mark" was a paulinist (hence, opposed by definition to the anti-pauline propaganda of Acts) with all the interest to invent Galatians 2.
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