February 28, 2009

Paul's Big Visit to Jerusalem - 2

In my last post, I showed why chronology and logistics make it impossible to equate Galatians 2 with Acts 11. That means Galatians 2 must refer to Acts 15 (the Big Visit of the title). Therefore, Paul’s first Epistle was written shortly after the Council of Jerusalem - probably right after Paul's break up with Barnabas. That's where this gets really interesting...

The challenging part, imho, is to realize how much conflict James & Paul continued to have with each other for years after the council. Reading all of Galatians in that context can be very eyebrow raising indeed! So, in my next two posts, I'm going to look at the vocabulary of Galatians.

Yes, I'm shifting from chronology and logistics into linguistics - please bear with me... and forgive me for doing it in English - someone else can redo it someday in Greek. Redo what, you ask? I'm applying an old trick from junior high reading strategies. Instead of "Wordle", I've made an "Idea-dle". The categorized, itemized (imperfect) list will be followed by a summary piece.

Stay tuned...

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