Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote: ↑Mon Jan 25, 2021 12:50 pm
Bernard Muller wrote: ↑Mon Jan 25, 2021 11:50 am
- In your thesis, you work with "my" and not "your".
The minor reading concerns the temptation (πειρασμόν) not the flesh. It's "your" or "my" temptation, but always "my" flesh.
Yes, this can be confusing.
Gal 4:14
καὶ τὸν πειρασμὸν ὑμῶν ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου
"and
your temptation in
my flesh" is difficult to understand! So according to the logic of textual criticism, the more sensible sounding textual variant, "and
my temptation in
my flesh" (KJV) is more likely to be a result of a scribal activity.
Modern translations cover up the awkwardness of "
your temptation in
my flesh" by turning it into something like "though
my condition was a trial to
you".
In my journey with this text, I memorized the phrase τὸν πειρασμὸν ὑμῶν ἐν τῇ σαρκί μου (Lit. "your temptation in my flesh"), and it really grabbed me. Literally for more than a year, I would wake up nearly every morning at around 3am with this text on my mind. I remember the first time I saw the text of manuscript P46, and there it was--the variant: τὸν πειρασμόν μου, ("my temptation in my flesh"). Since P46 is our oldest manuscript of Galatians, dated around the year 200, I felt compelled to really seriously consider whether it might be original. For one thing, it makes more sense in relation to 1 Cor 12:7, "a thorn was given to me in my flesh." The "thorn" was presumably his problem, not his audiences! Right? (I question presumption now, but that's another topic.) The "temptation" could have been his "fleshly weakness." It makes so much sense on the face of it.
But the whole sentence changed when I seriously got into the logic of Paul preaching to the Galatians because of their "fleshly weakness--not is own!
Then at some point it dawned on me that since 1) "weakness" and "temptation" are both accusative nouns connected by "and", and 2) since the meanings of the two words which can be combined into one unified idea of "weakness and temptation", then 3) it is possible that the one preposition "because of" governs two objects: "because of your fleshly weakness... and [because of] your temptation..."
The problem of reading "your temptation in my flesh" took on a new shape: What was
their temptation doing in the
apostle's flesh? Eventually I realized that the problem could be resolved in connection with Paul's earlier claim: literally, "I also as you" i.e. "I also [have become] as you"..."your temptation in my flesh."
That scenario presumes two kinds of flesh "your flesh" ie Gentile fleshly weakness vs. 13 and "my flesh" ie presumably morally stronger Jewish flesh. These ideas are mirrored in Ephesians where there are three kinds of flesh--Gentile, Jewish and the "flesh" that breaks down the barriers of hostility, that of Jesus.
Eph 2:11-16
"Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles
in the flesh, called “the uncircumcision” by what is called the circumcision, which is made
in the flesh by hands—remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down
in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility."
I think the author of Hebrews was reading Galatians together with other Pauline texts including Ephesians (A clue: note the odd change of word order from "flesh and blood" in Galatians to "blood and flesh" in both Ephesians and Hebrews). I also think the author of Hebrews took Paul seriously when he wrote that in Christ, "there is not Jew or Greek" and all are Abraham's seed. When the author of Hebrews talks about "Abraham's seed" as connected by "blood and flesh" bonds, I think he is talking about this in the sense of Galatians where everyone in Christ Abraham seed. I think the author of Hebrews expects his readers to know Galatians, and in the spirit of Galatians, the division between Jew and Gentile, circumcised and uncircumcised is entirely erased. Jesus tasted death for all flesh ("lets not even mention un/circumcision any more" says Hebrews, by erasure).
Your comments?