Dearest Jacob,
Thank you for sending your notes on Galatians. I am excited to explore these epistles with you.
Now, there have been millennia of debates about Paul’s authorship, influence of mystery schools on early Christianity, and the historical validity of the scriptures. I am interested in what can be historically proven and especially interested in what cannot be proven. I came across a James Hillman quote on memory recently and am experimenting with applying it to history— “Memory is a form imagination can borrow in order to make its personified images feel utterly real.” This is the spirit with which I am reading these epistles.
I remember it blew my mind to learn that Paul’s letters are older than the gospels. We’re starting with the epistle to the Galatians, generally agreed to be the oldest text in the New Testament, written between the late 40s and mid 50s CE, according to the New Oxford Annotated Bible.
These letters come from a time before the “gospel of Jesus Christ” was not associated with the “gospels”. In my upbringing, the gospel—or “good news” (or euangelion, Greek for “good messenger (angel)”)—is the story/biography of this Jesus guy, but this doesn’t seem to be the gospel Paul is interested.
According to Millar Burrows, the singular form of euangelion referred to the “messenger’s reward” for having delivered a message. But in the plural form, it referred to “a sacrifice [to the god] for good tidings”. There is also a documented use of the plural form to announce the birth of Emperor Augustus as “beginning of good tidings” for the world.
When Paul writes “the gospel of Christ” is he referring to 1) the good angel (euangelion) of Christ 2) Paul’s reward for delivering the message 3) the sacrifice of a man to the God in order for a people to be delivered (1:4) or 4) the beginning of better times? And yet, Paul is not claiming to writing “the gospel” but pointing his readers to the gospel. There is a polysemous quality to this concept that is already tripping me up…
1:8— But even if we or an angel from heaven should proclaim (euangelizētai) to you a gospel contrary to what we proclaimed (euēngelisametha) to you, let that one be accursed!
Are angels untrustworthy? Or incapable of trusting trustworthy recipients? Or are the messages of heaven not in alignment with the message of Christ? Like you mentioned in your initial reflections, this feels reminiscent of the paranoia of conspiracies.
1:15-16— But when God, who had set me apart before I was born and called me through his grace, was pleased to reveal his Son in me, so that I might proclaim him among the Gentiles, I did not confer with any human being.
I don’t understand why this isn’t highlighted more. This is usually translated as God “revealing His Son to” Paul, but it literally reads “revealing His Son in me”!
Paul seems to be advocating for a direct experience, unmediated by angels or religious institutions. Yet something that could be verified with others’ experiences, as he meets with Peter and James (1:18-19).
What is Paul, what is Jesus, and what is the gospel all seem to be overlapping and indiscrete. Is the messenger the message? On one level it seems that Paul was visited by the after-life consciousness of a holy man. On another level, Paul had a felt sense of utterly renewal that took the image of a dead holy man. This was an internal experience. Dare I say, “a form imagination can borrow in order to make its personified images feel utterly real”. This transpersonal experience—of resurrection, of a time outside of and beyond the “present evil age”—seems, in my reading, to be the gospel, the collapse of boundaries between messenger, message, and recipient. Perhaps like that phrase Paul uses, “the fullness of time.”
This is how I digested chapter one… hopefully I can learn to embrace brevity. What was your take on Galatians? I’ve only scanned over your notes and am excited to experience you as a were-Paul, apostle, evangelist, whathaveyou!
thanks for reading,
Daniel