Doug Shaver

Why try to reconcile them? You're acting like an inerrantist who is trying to prove that there are no contradictions in the Bible. I don't assume that there was any connection between Paul's thinking and the thinking of the gospel authors. I think Paul's Christ was a different entity from the Christ of the canonical gospels. I expect inconsistencies between what he says and what the gospels authors say.

Toto

Paul says that Jesus was born "under the law" - meaning, I think, that Jesus was born into a world governed by Jewish law. This was not a comment on his legitimacy or his natural birth. It might not have meant that he was actually born in the normal way - Earl Doherty has some comments on this.

The alternative is Paul's statement that his followers are "not under law but under grace" (Romans 6:14), presumably because of Jesus' death.

Steve Weiss

So, god must be a human being because only the same species can successfully breed. I wonder what Mrs. God had to say about god fooling around?

avi

Thanks for this input. I believe, contrarily, that if Paul intended readers to simply respect the fact that JC was born into a community governed by Jewish law, then, Paul had no need to write "born of a woman."

In my opinion, this verse is intended to convey to the readers of this letter to Galatians, the "fact", that JC was conceived, born, and reared in strict accordance with the customs, traditions, principles, regulations, and laws of the Jewish kingdom--albeit merely a servile province under Roman military occupation at the time of JC's birth.

The rationale for Paul's writing in this fashion, to my 19th century way of thinking (I am a little slow), would have been to reassure those following the epistle, that JC was not a heathen, and not a pagan, despite his having violated several of the most sacred Jewish laws--including cannibalism, dualism, physical abuse of money changers, and breaking bread with gentiles and heathen, in Tyre and Sidon, if nowhere else....

avi

Iskander

Paul wanted people to know that Jesus was not the son of Asherah.

avi

It is my understanding, perhaps inaccurate, that "Galatians" were a group of folks living in what we call today, Turkey, roughly in the center of that remote state at the distant edge of the Roman Empire, i.e. FAR away from the Mediterranean Sea, though, conceivably lying on the route from Baghdad, or the silk route.

That locale does not correspond to my notion (perhaps incorrectly so) of where one would travel, in that era, to find Jews, living and practicing their religion, in quantity sufficient to populate Paul's nascent Christian church. In other words, I doubt that the Galatians themselves, would have been able to comprehend Iskander's logic that Paul had been actually attempting in this verse, Gal 4:4, contrary to the literal text, to explain that JC, although the son of God, was not the offspring of yahweh's wife. Were the farmers of central Turkey, 2000 years ago, sufficiently well educated about Jewish mythology, to make such a deduction from the text of the verse?

(p.s.....not too surprising, but, I, myself, failed to achieve that deduction, though, it must be noted, for the record, that, I am not a Turkish farmer....)

avi