Language:
German
Year of publication:
2021
Titel der Quelle:
Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft
Angaben zur Quelle:
113,1 (2022) 69-98
Keywords:
New Testament. Criticism, interpretation, etc.
;
Jews in the New Testament
;
Enemies Religious aspects
;
Christianity
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism Early church, ca. 30-600
;
History
Abstract:
The question of the identification of Paul’s opponents in Galatians plays an important role in New Testament research, especially since both the assessment of the general message and the concrete argumentation of this Pauline letter are significantly shaped by the answer to the question of the opponents. In spite of all the difficulties connected with this question, the majority view is that the opponents in Galatia are Jewish or Jewish-Christian missionaries who wanted to persuade the Gentile Galatians to orient themselves towards Jewish law and to adopt Torah regulations. Based on text-critical observations, this article argues against this prevailing opinion and proposes an identification of the opponents as “Judaising Gentile Christians”. This attribution leads to a re-evaluation of the argumentation of Galatians because, against the background of such an identification of the opponents, there are good reasons to think that Paul had to deal with an erroneous perspective of Gentile Christians on Judaism as well as a related misunderstanding about the soteriological function of the Torah. The article also suggests that at the time of writing, a clear differentiation between Christians with a Jewish identity and those with a pagan background can still be discerned, a differentiation that became more and more blurred in the course of the New Testament textual tradition.
DOI:
10.1515/znw-2022-0004
URL:
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