Steven Carr

So his opponents in Corinth were Jewish?

And where does Paul say the issue is that he was being asked to produce impressive signs himself?

Why does he not retort that he is neither Jesus nor God so those Jews asking for miraculous signs from him personally were rather missing the point of Jesus-worship?

Steven Carr

Indeed, why would Jesus have to be 'portrayed' as crucified, if that was just a basic fact of history about him, one which all Christians knew, like the knew that he came from Nazareth, was born of a virgin, and all the other things that Paul never mentions, because he knew everybody already knew all about them?

Solo

I think the phrasing "before whose eyes" refers to Paul's preaching in Galatia but also - and all-importantly - to the revelatory experience of suffering after the peaks of glory that the ecstatics in his audience had themselves. Paul makes references to shared experiences elsewhere,1 Th 5:2, and especially 2 Cor 3:18, which refers to 'open face' with which the adepts receive the glory of the Lord.

That's close to what I think (with tolerance to the identifier of 'Nazareth'). The difference is that I believe Paul obliquely refers to the rejected Nazarene leader, as a man 'fooled' by God and used by God for purposes he himself was innocent while alive. Jesus' redeeming grace was his faith in God and willingness to serve God until the bitter end.

Yes, very good. That summarizes Paul's basic idea. Paul uses 'Messiah' paradoxically, to combat the messianic expectations (of the Nazarenes) of God's kingdom coming to earth, which as you say, he considers childish.

In the expose of his revelation to his fellow ecstatics Paul points to their depressive psychoses (which always come after the peaks of glory) as the symbolic death of sinful flesh, and likens the chaos of suffering they experience to the death of Jesus on the cross, as the price of entry into eternal life in Christ. As the adepts are physically alive, so had to be Jesus for this parallel scheme to work.

The foolishness of the Galatians then relates to the 'denial' of their 'crucifying' experience that comes after beholding the glory of the Lord.

Jiri

dog-on

I can accept this is a possibility.

Thanks.

andrewcriddle

Paul appears to be facing criticism from both Jewish and Greek sources, the Greeks criticizing him for such things as weaknesses in his oratorical skills.
I think that Paul's tendency to boast of his weakness as a sign of his apostleship (see the end of 2 Corinthians) may indicate that his opponents would have preferred something more dramatic. (Paul does speak in 2 Corinthians 12:12 of performing signs and mighty works but I think he really means his succcess in preaching the gospel.)

The opponents of Paul referred to as "super apostles" or "superlative apostles" may have had more spectacular signs to their credit than Paul did.

Andrew Criddle