Chili

And yes there was because of the different Gospel that Paul preached already then and that Gospel is again not understood today.

gstafleu

Yo! Chili!
Hm, I wonder. Doesn't Paul refer to himself as such? However, I'm not sure he meant it that way, he probably just meant he (Paul) was a wretch in need of some amazing grace.
Except that Paul doesn't seem to refer to such a birth. We only seem to get the rebirths in the various Christogeneses in the gospels. Mark has the Holy Spirit com flapping down, Matthew and Luke take the easy way out and just throw in a virgin birth, and John has his Christogenesis as either the genesis of the logos (in the beginning) or as the time when the logos was turned into flesh (perhaps in a Mark-like flapping fashion). But Paul? Just "born from a woman," and not just that, but apparently the cops were keeping an eye on the proceedings. Not very inspirational.
Sounds cosy, but I'm afreud I'd sometimes rather have her as my lover, that should keep me forever jung.

Gerard Stafleu

Solo

Good question, Gerard. I myself think it's just rhetorical turn of phrase intensifying the "born under the law", which I consider the meat of the verse, given what Gal 4 says after. To Paul, Jesus had to be himself born under the law for the redemption of those born "under the law" to work. Jesus' humanity was a sine qua non of Paul's theology. Everything in Paul hangs off the notion that no-one "in flesh" (or convincing simulation thereof) can escape humiliation and death, not even God who condescends to take on human fate.

Jiri

John Kesler

Here is the verse in question, Galatians 4:4.

The phrase "born of a woman" is simply another way of saying that Jesus was a human being, a requirement for Jesus to fulfill the next part of the verse--servitude to law. Compare other uses of the phrase in question:

RareBird

No. He just like Mary's jugs.

Notsri

It is more than that, though.

In semitic usage the phrase born of a woman not only indicates the referent's humanity but usually also alludes to the great ontological divide between humanity, on the one hand, and divinity, on the other. One finds this spelled out rather clearly in, e.g., a passage in the Babylonian Talmud (Shabb. 88b):

R. Yehoshua b. Levi also said: When Moses ascended on high, the ministering angels spoke before the Holy One, blessed is He, "Sovereign of the Universe! What business has one born of a woman among us?" "He has come to receive the Torah," He answered to them. They said to Him, "That secret treasure, which has been hidden by You for nine hundred and seventy-four generations before the world was created, You desire to give to flesh and blood!? 'What is man, that thou art mindful of him, And the son of man, that thou visitest him?'"

In this connection, in any case, Paul in Galatians 4:4 puts briefly and in semitic idiom -- "God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law" -- that doctrine which is fleshed out by him just a bit more fully and explicitly in Philippians 2:5-8:

5 …Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. [Cf. "God sent forth his son, born of a woman..."]

8 And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross. [Cf. "...born under the law."]

(Both passages of course mean to highlight, albeit in a much more muted tone in Galatians, the magnitude of Christ's condescension.)

Chili

First you get the mother and then you get the daughter because it is much too difficult to fully accept her beauty on first sight. She is the primary cause of 'wad-blowing', I think they call it, which follows if she is the perfect image of mortal beauty (Joyce said so). She is also the beauty of truth and the essence of life everlasting.

Chili

Has nothing to do with Jesus being human because Jesus was not human. Jesus never sinned but was "born under the law" to say that Joseph was the sinner and his sinfullness (sic) caused him to return to Bethlehem and there give an account of himself as sinner. They are playing with the word "woman" and "a woman" wherein "a woman" is female and "woman" is not.

dog-on

A Later interpolation into Marcion's Galatians...imo...

gstafleu

Yes, I've been wondering something like that. But that does open the door to the idea that for Paul Jesus' humanity was a derived idea ("He must have been human, otherwise this savior bit wouldn't work") rather than a primary observation ("Here we have this human, hey, wait, that means he could be a savior"). If Paul derived Jesus' humanity as a necessity for his role, that would offer another explanation for his famous "silences": there just wasn't anything to talk about.

Gerard Stafleu