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Using the Septuagint as an example, this article supports Teresa Morgan’s recent contention that πίστις is essentially relational. On the basis of the prevalence of relationality, the article offers a critique of readings of Galatians that privilege other concepts, such as Benjamin Schliesser’s emphasis on spatiality. The study then argues that, instead of Morgan’s ‘pistis is a relationship’, it would be more accurate and exegetically useful to bring out the action-reference of πίστις with an expression such as ‘πίστις is a relational way of life’. The article will argue that the most likely relational reading of πίστις in Galatians is one in which πίστις primarily represents trust, loyalty and/or trustworthiness in the relationship between the current Christ and people. This raises questions over the focus of πίστις on past events in the work of scholars such as Richard Hays and John Barclay. If πίστις Χριστοῦ is to be read as involving an ‘objective genitive’ it probably denotes people’s trust in and loyalty to Christ and also possibly to God through Christ. If it is to be read as a ‘subjective genitive’, it would probably primarily denote Christ’s current reliability and loyalty in his relationship to people, and conceivably also to God. Various directions of πίστις between people, Christ and God are possible in Galatians but the one most often clearly evidenced is between people and Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Galatians 1:15, Paul uniquely presents his appointment and apostleship as God's separating him from his mother's womb and calling him by grace. However, Paul's meaning behind the phrase, “separated from his mother's womb,” has been speculated with little biblical-theological substance. Thus, this article presents a fresh argument that in this phrase Paul alludes to his birth as a Roman citizen, which is later followed by his calling to be an apostle to the Gentiles. This study also concludes that Galatians 1:15 functions as the center of Paul's argument in 1:6–2:10 with 2:11–21 as its illustration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article compares the Apocalypse of Weeks with Galatians to examine whether the motif of creatio e contrario is apocalyptic. While reviewing the themes of revelation, salvation and eschatology in each text, it argues that creatio e contrario is absent from and theologically foreign to the Apocalypse; by contrast, this motif permeates Galatians, not because Paul retrieves it from the apocalypses but because for him the divine economy is shaped by the disjunctive, e contrario history of the crucified and risen Christ. Thus, creatio e contrario should be classified not as apocalyptic but as christomorphic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul makes a plea for 'unity in Christ', over and above the factors of ethnicity, social status and gender that tended to divide the Galatians. Did he understand this 'unity' to mean the abolition of all ethnic, cultural, religious and other forms of differentiation? Is not Christianity rather founded on a genuine appreciation of differentiation, before it can serve a factor for unity at all? The differentiation of Jesus as male, a Jew, a Galilean, a carpenter, etc. is part of the very mystery itself of the incarnation. It is a mystery that the Church itself has to learn to embrace at each time the faith is appropriated by peoples of new religious, cultural, economic and political world views. A colonial reading of Gal. 3:2 can conveniently serve to justify the religious, cultural, political and economic hegemony of Western Christianity into non-Christian civilizations as a 'manifest destiny'. This sort of triumphalism, of thinking one's own worldview as superior, of patronizing those who are deemed culturally inferior, of forcing one's civilization on the rest of the world, as pedagogy for unity, is neither in keeping with, nor a sound exegesis of Gal. 3:2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article firstly evaluates the Radical New Perspective on Paul and the Messianic Judaist approach to the letter to the Galatians, which can be seen as similar approaches. In these approaches, the rhetoric in the letter to the Galatians is perceived to be directed to gentile believers only, which converges with the view that a continuing distinction between gentile and Judaean believers is upheld in the Pauline corpus. This evaluation involves testing this kind of approach in terms of its methodology and implications, with a specific focus on Paul's use of the first person singular and first person plural in the letter. Secondly, in answer to the above evaluation, the criteria for identity and covenant membership are pursued by focusing on Gal 3. The Spirit-flesh contrast, which converges with the faith-works contrast, as well as the contrast between the new era in Christ and the eschatologically old era under the Law, is argued to be the controlling paradigm for determining identity and covenant membership in the letter. Although this new identity stands in continuity with the promise to Abraham, it is understood in a redrawn and renewed way. Believers' position toward the Law and Paul's rhetorical aims in Gal 3 are reconsidered in light of the above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alongside ‘Mosaic discourse’, Second Temple period authors increasingly looked to Abraham as a source of instruction and authority. This article focuses on the growing importance of the Abrahamic covenant through the lens of five re-tellings of Israel's history that link the past with the present: the Damascus Document, the Apocalypse of Weeks, 4 Ezra, Nehemiah 9, and Galatians. This article argues that various authors placed themselves within a historical narrative that spotlighted the Abrahamic covenant in order to identify themselves as the elect and demarcate the boundaries separating them from the non-elect. The ideological orientation of each text can account for why the Abrahamic covenant, rather than the later Mosaic pact, became the basis for identity politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies the theoretical framework of ‘ritual failure’, a sub-discipline of ritual criticism, to Paul’s discussion of circumcision in his letter to the Galatians, Philippians and Romans. It is argued that the application of this theoretical perspective clarifies the dynamics at stake and provides a new way of understanding the development in Paul’s position regarding circumcision. There is movement from an attitude of strong propagation, by way of indifference and a subsequent attitude of rejection, to one of modified reintegration into Paul’s thinking. At every turn of this development, ritual failure plays a pivotal role and functions as a catalyst for the development of Paul’s theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From a sociological perspective, the fundamental elements necessary for speech to be considered gossip are “face-to-face” evaluative communication between/among persons about an absent third party. Given that Paul was not present when the Galatians—and the “agitators” with them—experienced the initial audition of the epistle via Paul's surrogate, this project will consider the text through the lens of social-semiotics and performance, as well as honor-shame, to underscore why Paul gossips, how he does it, and the risks he takes doing so. It is hoped that some light will be shed on the complex intersection between scribality, orality, performance, and honor when considering the Incident at Antioch, the situation in the Galatian congregations, and Paul's determination to carry on westward with his gospel. I will suggest that Paul's recollection of his altercation with Peter in Antioch at Galatians 2:11-14 amounting to agonistic “epistolary gossip,” constitutes a public challenge to both the “agitators” in Galatia, and perhaps even the “seeming to be leaders/pillars” in Jerusalem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the discipline of missiology and mission over the last century since Edinburgh 1910 followed by two world wars to Edinburgh 2010, as a long walk to obedience - a walk in discerning God's will. Even in biblical times, mission as spreading the gospel to those who do not yet believe in the Trinitarian God, was under scrutiny from within and outside the church (cf. Ac 10-11, 15 and Galatians). Throughout history until today it was never different. This article looks at the development of mission over the last 100 years from a Western (mainline missionary churches - MMCs) perspective. The development of missiology as a subject and theological discipline will be described along the lines of some of the mission conferences. Attention will be given to the following questions: What does it mean to be obedient to the mission calling in a broken and traumatised world? Is there a credible way of redeeming mission and missiology from its own past?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

E. P. Sanders criticized the previous New Testament scholarship's stereotypical portrait of Second Temple Judaism as a legalistic religion, proposing that it can be typically described in what he calls 'covenantal nomism', that is, one 'gets in' the covenant by God's gracious election and 'stays in' the covenant by obedience to the law. However, this does not describe the Qumran sectarian group who required the works of the law and their particular halakhoth not only to 'stay in' but also to 'get in' the sectarian covenant. Comparison between 4QMMT and Galatians, and a mirror reading of Galatians suggest that Paul's opponents persuaded the Galatians to do the works of the law not only to 'stay in' but also to 'get in' the true covenant of God, to become full members of God's covenant people, for one is justified by the works of the law, in addition to faith in Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a review article on John M.G. Barclay, Paul and the Gift (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2015) that critically examines the methodological choice to study ‘perfections’ (as conceptualized by Kenneth Burke) of the gift, asking both about how this works to provide a taxonomy of ancient Mediterranean views, and how it fits the argument of Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Concluding thoughts are offered about the implications of John Barclay’s reading of Paul, both in terms of Paul’s situation within his own time and in terms of contemporary theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J. Louis Martyn was not anti-Judaic but a lover of Jews and Judaism. But his passion for Paul, especially for Galatians, transcended his love for Judaism and may have caused him to downplay some of the difficulties in that letter. This article focuses on Martyn's exegesis of the Sarah/Hagar allegory in Gal 4:21-5:1, which interprets the opposition not as Christianity versus Judaism but as the Torah-free Christian mission to Gentiles versus the Torah-observant mission-an interpretation that this article finds indefensible. The article concludes with some reflections on Martyn's attitude toward Rom 9-11. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ancient history of Turkey testified massive migrations, with intervals of a thousand years each. The first of these migrations occurred in last centuries of the Third millennium BC and the second migration towards the last two centuries of the second millennium BC. After about a thousand years from the latter, another massive migration, which composed the topic of my paper, spread to the areas of modern Balkan States. There are accounts relating to this migration in ancient literary sources written in Greek and Latin languages. A discussion referring to the ethnicities of these immigrants, will not be made because they were the first indigenous people and they are mentioned as Celts (Keltoi) and Gauls (Galli) by ancient Greeks and Romans respectively. A groups of them that passed to Anatolia, were especially mentioned as the Galatians in ancient literary sources. They settled northern Phrygia including the upper region of Halys (modern Kızılırmak), and later this area was named Galatia after the Galatians. Nevertheless accounts in ancient literary sources are inadequate or inconsistent with their deeds after passing to Anatolia, where they came from? Why and how they did? Which paths they used? The aim in this paper is to research the reason, developments and paths of the Celtic/Galatian migration, and their deeds after the migration by using literary sources and epigraphic, numismatic and modern studies.

The fact that the New Testament authors often referred or alluded to, or quoted from their Scriptures (roughly what is known today as ‘the OT’), and then very often linked those quotations, references, and allusions from their Jewish Scriptures to the Christ-event, has led to the viewpoint of some that ‘Christ is found in the OT’ – that is, that the OT prophesised about the events that took place regarding the person, Jesus of Nazareth. It is the intention of this contribution to confirm the position of mainstream biblical scholarship that the Old Testament does not predict the events surrounding Jesus of Nazareth, but that the New Testament writers interpreted the Jesus-events in hindsight in the light of the Scriptures of Israel. The current study attempts to firstly unfold the meta-narrative of the New Testament in five acts. Against the backdrop of the last of these acts, the case of the crucifixion of Jesus as interpreted by Paul to the early Christians in Galatia receives particular attention. It is argued that Paul’s presentation of the crucifixion in Galatians – as based on Deuteronomy 21:23 – is done retrodictively to portray Yehoshua ben Yoseph as liberator of the law in Asia Minor. This study proposes the coinage of a new term in canonical biblical scholarship, namely the term ‘retrodiction’ – in opposition to the term ‘prediction’.

Since late antiquity there has been diversity in the particulars of the interpretation of the Greek term Ἰουδαϊσμός in Galatians 1,13-14, but the prevailing notion in most cases is that Ἰουδαϊσμός signifies 'Judaism', the religion of the Jewish people. On the contrary, in a provocative article Steve Mason proposed a radical revision of this reading of Ἰουδαϊσμός and its cognates (cf. Gal 2,13-15; 3,28). According to him (and other scholars) there was no category of 'Judaism' in the Graeco-Roman World, no 'religion' too, and that the Ἰουδαῖοι were understood as an ethnic group comparable to other ethnic groups. Consequently Mason claims that the substantive adjective Ἰουδαῖος has always the ethnic-regional sense 'Judean', never the religious sense 'Jew'. To my opinion this view is partly right and partly wrong. Starting from the grammatical and semantic data provided by 2 and 4 Maccabees and attested in the epigraphic record this essay aims at two points: It is argued, first, that due to the fact that Ἰουδαϊσμός and its cognates obviously denote also a religious dimension it seems very unlikely to hold the view of a purely ethnic centered conception of Jewish identity. Further, that the Galatian controversy and the incident at Antioch, described in Gal 2,11-14, reflect a quarrel within the early church about the crucial question concerning the constitutive requirements in regard to the construction, formation, and performance of Christian identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates Paul’s use of the term οἱ δοκοῦντες in the letter to the Galatians. Firstly, the term is considered from the standpoint of lexical semantics. Secondly, select relevant parallels from Ancient Greek literature are adduced and studied comparatively. Based on these considerations, it is argued that Paul uses οἱ δοκοῦντες as a rhetorical device, whereby he distances himself from the Jerusalem leaders and, in so doing, turns his opponents’ argument against them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul intended to clarify the thorny questions around what constitutes the proper way to be saved in his letter to the Galatians. The Judaizers were teaching another way, in opposition to the Free lawgospel preached by Paul, to attain salvation through the additional legalistic means already in practice in Judaism. In the process, the Galatian converts became entangled in a web of confusion. Due to the old religious practice of the converted Gentiles, receiving salvation appeared to them more acceptable through the legalistic presentation of the Judaizers than the simple "justification by faith" of Paul. Therefore, Paul was pressed to clarify the matter in order to save Galatians from being bewitched and remaining under the curse of the law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents and discusses the main arguments that have been used to argue either that non-Jews are included or excluded from God’s Israel. The arguments in favour of the view that non-Jews are excluded focus on: (i) the syntax and translation; (ii) possible influence from a Jewish synagogue prayer; (iii) the combination of the terms ‘mercy’ and ‘Israel’; and (iv) Paul’s regular use of the term ‘Israel’. The arguments for the view that non-Jews are included in God’s Israel are: (i) that non-Jewish members of God’s Israel seem to be a possibility in Galatians; (ii) that an exclusively Jewish Israel is theologically impossible in Galatians; (iii) that an exclusively Jewish Israel in Galatians would have been confusing for the addressees; (iv) the fact that Galatians seems to provide insufficient material for deciding which Jews God’s Israel is supposed to denote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his lectures on the Phenomenology of Religious Life (1920-21), Martin Heidegger offers a phenomenological reading of Paul's Galatian and Thessalonian letters, seeing these as themselves proclaiming the phenomenological attitude. Curiously, however, Heidegger's analysis of Thessalonian facticity appears to separate the factical status of Thessalonian 'having-become' from that of its faith content. This article sees that decision as itself displaying elements of theorization, and abandonment of the phenomenological aim of allowing experience to show itself out of itself. More, Heidegger's approach misses an opportunity to notice the 'in Christ' as constitutive of a structural 'incursion of an absolute other' that sustains the phenomenological approach, saving it from falling into its theorizing other, the scientific worldview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While a growing body of scholarship suggests that Paul's scriptural hermeneutics may fruitfully be illuminated "backwards" in the light of his early Christian reception and interpretation, the enigma of the precise Jewish character of his exegetical method remains tantalizingly unsolved. Any attempt to illuminate this obscurity by way of Paul's Jewish matrix must wrestle with one intractable fact and its correlative question: Paul was a Pharisee (Phil 3:5), but what kind of Pharisee? Past answers to this question in terms of various first-century rabbis-- as exemplified by the studies of Joachim Jeremias, Hans Hübner, and, more recently, N. T. Wright--stumble upon the methodological skandalon of the late dating of Tannaitic sources. The present article proposes a new way through this impasse, in the form of a twofold contribution. First, a comparison of the scriptural hermeneutics of the Pauline letters--particularly Galatians--and the midrash attributed to the school of Rabbi Ishmael reveals an important and overlooked similarity: their common personification of "Scripture" as a selfinterpreting authority. Triangulating between this common complex of hermeneutical features and Essene and Alexandrian exegetical methods, one can then recover with reasonable probability some contours of Paul's first-century Pharisaism that have ramifications for understanding Paul's Jewish education, his relationship to Torah, and his apocalypticism and mysticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reconsideration of the Antioch incident of Gal 2:11-21, arguing that Paul's issue with Peter and the Jewish believers in Jesus in Antioch was not theological, but halakhic, that is, how to live as a Messianic Jew particularly in relationship to Gentile Messiah believers. Paul's use of the story from his days in Antioch analogically served his purpose among Galatian Gentile Messiah-believers by both asserting his apostolic authority and by instructing them to resist any attempt to embrace an ethnically Jewish identity in Messiah. Such an interpretation of this significant Pauline crux derives from two factors. First, the study assumes that Paul was still firmly within the diverse Judaism of the late Second Temple period. Thus, the study considers the meaning of the Antioch incident within the frame-work of a "Paul within Judaism." Second, the study applies narratology to the interpretation of Gal 2:11-21. Taking notice of the storied structure of the passage, consisting of a beginning, middle, and end, this article reads the parts of the story in relationship to the whole. The consequence of these two factors is (1) a plausible historical interpretation of the events of Antioch, albeit from Paul's perspective, and (2) a reading of the passage that is sensitive to its literary character. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the religious ideas and the religious laws related to Galatians and Romans. Topics discussed include circumcision, commandments of God, Jesus Christ, religious faith, Corinthians, righteousness of God and Circumcision. The role of Ephesians a bible book and the belief regarding the God as a supreme power is also discussed.

The article reports on the new testament books and the religious ideas included regarding Galatians. Topics discussed include bible books, religious faith, history of Judaism, Old Testament, religious preaching in churches, Christianity and the role of teaching laws to Jews. The similarity between Galatians and Romans is also discussed.

Scholars rarely appeal to Gal 5.5-6 in the πίστις Χριστοῦ debate. However, two points show the relevance of these verses to the discussion: (1) in 5.1-6 Paul picks up the contrast between πίστις and νόμος he developed in chs. 2-3 so that πίστις in 5.5-6 is equivalent to πίστις Χριστοῦ in the earlier chapters, and (2) πίστις in vv. 5-6 is human faith because it works through human love. Gal 5.5-6 therefore supports the position that πίστις Χριστοῦ is an objective genitive meaning faith in Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As he admonishes the Galatians for their alleged sympathy to a different gospel, Paul makes a curious statement in 3:1b about having visually portrayed Jesus Christ crucified while among them. The meaning of the clause hinges on the sense of the verb .... Despite an exact parallel in Rom 15:4 in reference to prophecies "forewritten" in the Judean writings, an overwhelming scholarly consensus construes this clause as "to proclaim or exhibit publicly" and, in turn, views it as an illustration of Paul's vivid rhetorical style. This interpretation has a long history but has gained further support in recent decades, as numerous Pauline scholars have argued for the apostle's familiarity with conventions of classical rhetoric. I argue, however, that the verse's immediate and wider context supports a predictive rendering of the key verb and also that this sense has in the past been excluded on questionable grounds that anticipate its rhetorical framework. Rather, I consider 3:1b an important piece of evidence for the role of textual practices within Paul's religious program, one that aids in situating him amid a broader phenomenon of divination from ostensibly prophetic literary corpora as well as a particular class of religious activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pistis Christou debate involves numerous debate partners and a shockingly voluminous amount of secondary literature. At this point, I thought it necessary to provide a survey of the current state of the debate, not least so as to summarize in one place the main arguments for both sides of the debate. At the beginning of the article I gather together and present the main arguments for those advocating an objective reading of the phrase, while the second half of the essay mainly involves a presentation of the arguments for the subjective camp. Having provided this summary, with many comments of my own alongside, I conclude by emphasizing the two pieces of evidence that seem still to push in the direction of the subjective construal. When the survey comes to a close, I arrive at the conclusion that, while debate is certainly not over, those advocating a subjective reading of the expression have the momentum of the scholarly guild. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the tool of intersectionality, this article discusses gender and class issues related to salvation in early Christian discourse. The complex discourse of 1 Timothy 2:15, that women will be saved through childbirth, generates several questions: What about women who could not deliver? Could they be saved although stigmatised? If we take the Hebrew Bible case of Sarah and Hagar, also mentioned in Paul's letter to the Galatians, would a woman like Sarah be saved since she forced her slave to give birth for her? Did surrogacy count? Or was a female slave, whose reproductive capital belonged to her owner, considered saved since she gave birth? In order to answer these questions, the article looks at Old and New Testament material that connects female characters to slavery and childbirth, from the Genesis narratives about Hagar, Bilhah and Zilpah to the Gospel of Luke that relates how Mary, when offering her reproductive body in the service of the Lord, calls herself a slave of God. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul’s argument against his opponents in Galatians has frequently been used to support division amongst Christians, sometimes with catastrophic results. Can this angry polemical letter be of any use for pastoral practice today? Building on a critique of J. L. Martyn’s interpretation of Galatians and drawing on ideas from the psychology of religion, this article suggests that if Paul is seen as tackling a case of “immature religion”, we can be guided by his argument, without emulating his divisive approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paul's citation of Deut 21:23 in Gal 3:13 is often misunderstood, as Paul is frequently thought to be declaring that Jesus, by virtue of his crucifixion, fell under the curse which Deut 21:23 pronounces on victims of that form of execution. This, it is claimed, was the mechanism by which Jesus atoned for sin, as God transferred the curse resting on humans to Jesus, who bore it vicariously. There is no evidence, however, that Second Temple Jews read Deut 21 as cursing all crucifixion victims. Rather, a wealth of evidence suggests that they understood the Law to curse only those crucified victims who were truly guilty of capital offenses against God. Therefore, there is good reason to believe that Paul, himself a Second Temple Jew convinced of Jesus's innocence, did not believe that Jesus was cursed by God solely by virtue of his manner of death on a cross. Thus, Paul's language in Gal 3:13 when he speaks of Christ "becoming a curse" rather than becoming "accursed" is significant. It refers to Jesus's humiliation and execration at the hands of his fellow Jews, not his becoming vicariously cursed by God. It is thus not an explanation of the mechanism by which Christ achieved atonement. This reading receives virtually unanimous support from Patristic interpretations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

J. Louis Martyn, in his seminal commentary on Galatians, asks a question we each hear almost every day: "What time is it?" However, this seemingly simple question highlights a significant point of discussion between Pauline interpreters who stress discontinuity as the center of Paul's gospel and others who stress continuity as the heart of Paul's gospel. Time is a crucial motif in Galatians as Paul weaves "the present evil age," "new creation," and "the fullness of time" into his letter. This article investigates the question of time in Paul's autobiographical reflections in Gal 1:11-2:21. It begins by examining the basic temporal elements in Gal 1:11-17. Then, after a general discussion of the metaphorical nature of time, it examines how time is metaphorically structured in Paul's autobiographical reflections in Gal 1-2. Finally, it offers three observations about Paul's view of time within Galatians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries before and after Paul, Jewish sages taught that charitable deeds are among the supreme acts of fidelity to God. Paul himself taught what might be called a traditional Jewish theology of charitable giving. He describes generosity to humans as an act of service for God that will bring happy returns in the future. He uses the cultic and financial metaphors that are common in other Jewish discussions of charity, and he also quotes biblical texts that speak of God's protection of the generous. This article concludes by noting the implications of this largely unrecognized point of continuity between Paul, Jesus, and the prior biblical tradition for situating the collection on the larger landscape of Paul's theology and for understanding how Paul develops his understanding of charity in light of the Christ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the way Paul seeks to justify his claim in Gal 4:24 that the story of Hagar, Sarah, and the two sons whom they bore to Abraham is to be understood as an allegory of two covenants bearing children (respectively) for slavery and freedom, and explores the implications for Christian theological interpretation of Scripture. Recent interpretations of the passage range from those that represent Paul as bringing to the text of Scripture the interpretive warrants for his appropriation of the text to those that represent Paul as deriving his interpretive warrants from within Scripture itself. I propose a reading that resists polarization between these two alternatives, tracing the various interwoven threads of inner-biblical intertextuality, salvation-historical narrative, apocalyptic revelation, apostolic ethos, and Galatian experience within the argument that supports Paul's allegorical appropriation of the Genesis story, and highlighting the fusion of dramatic and persuasive functions that the allegory serves within Paul's deliberative rhetoric. Understood in this manner, Paul's interpretive practice in Gal 4:21-5:1 does not provide a global warrant for speculative allegorization. It does, however, provide an apostolic precedent for figural readings that cohere with the narrative logic of salvation history and contribute to the formative and directive functions of Christian doctrine within the life of the church. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates Pauline soteriological language, specifically the variety of metaphors used to interpret salvation, taking Galatians as a test case. The first section begins with an analysis of contemporary "metaphormania" and the lack of consensus on the definition of metaphor, leading to an outline of the development of the concepts of imagery and metaphor for Pauline studies. The second section evaluates metaphor theory together with the paradigm shift in the post-Ricoeur era. In the third part the author examines the plurality of soteriological metaphors, showing their mutual interaction and coherence in the epistle to the Galatians. In the fourth part this is documented with two metaphors, sonship and freedom. The proposed network of metaphors model, with its own inner logic, is offered as an alternative to the traditional search for a "centre" within Paul's soteriology/theology and also as an alternative to the reductionist tendency to favour one metaphor above others in an individual letter without solid textual support1,2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A letter to the editor is presented in response to a article on thinking across the narrow boundaries of specialized disciplines and victory over the Galatian tribes by Catherine Keller for the issue.

The structure, flow, and logic of Paul's argumentation in Galatians continues to be a subject of debate as scholars seek to read Paul's statements about the law, works of the law, and other aspects of Judaism within a framework that appreciates both the diverse nature of first-century Judaism and Paul's appropriation of his own Jewish heritage. Scholars have also sought to read Paul's letter to the Galatians in light of first-century Greco-Roman rhetorical strategies and conventions. This essay contributes to these discussions by looking at Galatians from an angle that has not yet been considered: the first-century A.D. progymnasmata exercise on the introduction and refutation of a law (νóμаυ εìσφаρα). This specific compositional exercise drew on the skills mastered in earlier exercises as students utilized compositional and rhetorical skills to persuade the reader (an imaginary audience) to enact or abandon a particular law based on the topics of legality, possibility, advantage, and appropriateness. By reading Galatians through the lens of this particular exercise, it is possible to appreciate the extent to which Paul utilized conventional forms of argumentation about the application of existing laws. This sort of reading contributes to a thicker description of Paul's use of elements of ancient rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]