Galatians Studies

Book of Galatians    Misunderstanding the law in Galatians II

Koot van Wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Visiting Professor

Kyungpook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint Lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

5 November 2011

           What we discovered in the first section on this topic, is that the church fathers and refomers came to the book of Galatians carrying with them the concepts of the book of Romans and by "inreading" fused the content and meaning of Romans into Galatians.

           The scholars and church fathers came to Galatians 3:10 and made the same errors. They used the concept of Paul in Romans to paraphrase in Galatians 3:10 concepts about the law and curse. The way they did it was to say that the law causes all of us to be sinners and therefore we are under the curse of the law. They looked at Galatians 3:10 and wished to uphold the faith that is a better option than to be under the curse of the law. Therefore, they translated Galatians 3:10 by saying: "The argument is, that all who are of the works of the law (i.e. who depend on them for justification) must necessarily fail, and hence are under a curse" (James Boise, Notes on the Greek Text of Paul's Epistles [New York: Silver, Burdett and Company, 1896], 326).

           What is this saying? That all who is trying to do the works of the law is under a curse. Many Reformers and Church Fathers understood it this way and many modern theologians and preachers as well. However, it is important to ask Paul in Galatians what he is saying not Paul in Romans for the book of Galatians.

           The background for the statements of Paul's position here is Deuteronomy 27. There are 12 curses listed in this chapter but the central point is, that if the law, commandments, precepts, ordinances, are not kept, the people are under a curse. Did we miss something? No. Does it read the same as the church fathers had it? No. They said that if you are keeping it or trying to keep it, you are under a curse.   That is not what Paul is saying here.

Galatians 3:10

"For all who are out of the works of the law is under a curse".

           What did the scholars do with the verse? What did the church fathers and reformers do with the verse? They overlooked the preposition ex "out of" and substitute it with "by" and paraphrastic thinking like, "all who live by the works of the law is under a curse".      What they were doing is to make it say that if you do the works of the law you are under a curse. But is that what Paul is saying?

           Paul is using the preposition ex or "out of" with this strong argument, if you are out of the works of the law, if you are outside the doing of the works of the law, you are under a curse. That is what Moses said and that is what Paul said. No difference. Paul does not have a different gospel than Moses.

           Thus, to be "out of the works of the law" is not to be "in the works of the law" because Paul says, if you are in the works of the law, or remaining in them, you shall live, and he is citing Moses in Deuteronomy 27:26. He does not want to contradict Moses. He is not saying, Moses said that but I have a different or second gospel that out-rules Moses, throw him out, only follow me. That is not Paul and never was.

           Paul cites that all who does not remain in what is written in the books of the law is cursed. That means, all who remain in what is written in the books of the law is not cursed. The church fathers and Boise is saying that if you try to remain in all that is written in the books of the law you are cursed.

           If the issue for Paul is not whether there is remaining or not remaining in the law, what is it then? It is the issue to remain in all of what is written in the law. Sinful man cannot do all that the law requires. He always falls short of it. Therefore he is in dire need of a savior or rescuer.

           The same with the phrase in Galatians 3:12 "But the law is not out of faith but he who does it shall live in them".

           For the law is not outside (ex) the domain of faith. It is inside the domain of faith. It needs faith for a proper function. If you live by faith according to the precepts of God you shall live by them.

           Paul is not contrasting faith and law but fuse them. The just shall live by remaining in the written law and the just shall live by faith. Are the two contrasting ideas? Is Paul trying to counter Moses? No. Faith was needed in the sacrificial system and legal systems of ancient Israel as given to Moses for salvation and the same is needed in the system after the cross as Paul is explaining. Remaining in the law is just a relevant after salvation and since there is not such thing as a lawless faith.

           The Hebrew of Habakkuk reads: the just shall live in his steadfastness. This is what Paul had in mind and in the original setting he may have used the Hebrew and not the corrupt translation of the Greek which is using ex here. The Hebrew is using in or en in Greek. It is thus an errorful translation that Paul is citing here and obviously he had no intention to create an imbalance. The imbalance came with the tampering with the original good translation of the Greek LXX during and after the days of Antiochus Epiphanes in the library of Alexandria, in the same manner as they have tampered in those days with the text of Homer (P. M. Fraser Ptolemaic Alexandria Vol. 1 and Vol. II: Notes [Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1972], 464-465) for thoughts on how Homer was corrupted in those days). All the editorial reworkings, recastings or textual transformations of Homer's works at Alexandria took place concurrent with the origin of copies at Qumran and probably explain why the current LXX is somewhat different from the literal translation of the Hebrew of the Masoretic Text.

           It is probably a study that needs to be done, namely the theory of the later "upgrading" or "rephrasing" of the Old Testament citations to more represent the reworked corrupt form of the LXX [dating from the time of Antiochus Ephiphanes]. P. Katz, D. Barthelemy, D. Gooding and V. Nikiprowetzsky studied the biblical citation in the manuscripts of Philo and found that some manuscripts follow a non-LXX reading and others a LXX reading. This is very important. For the book of De Gigantibus of Philo (D. Gooding and V. Nikiprowetzky, "Philo's Bible in the De Gigantibus and Quod Deus" in D. Winston and J. Dillon, Two Treatises of Philo of Alexandria: A commentary on De Gigantibus and Quod Deus Sit Immortabilis [California: Scholars Press, Chico, 1983], 89-125). Another scholar, P. Katz found that the manuscripts M, A, P, H. and G read like the LXX but U and F read different (P. Katz and D. Barthelemy, Philo's Bible: The Aberrant Text of Bible Quotations in some Philonic Writings and its Place in the Textual History of the Greek Bible (Cambridge: University Press, 1980] and on page 90 they suggested that a Jew who lived in the time of Origen substituted it). This was in the first half of the third century CE. He found that sometimes the lemma are non-LXX and more like Aquila's Greek form but the form in the exposition is like that of the LXX. The process was not very clear since at times there is a conflict. In Quod Deus 70 there is a citation of Genesis 6:8 which corresponds exactly like the LXX but in Quod Deus 104 Genesis 6:8 is quoted in a different form and the disjunctive particle is dropped and the change is from the Genitive in the LXX to the dative in the text of Philo. The preposition "before" is also different. What is suggested here, is that one of our doctoral students in New Testament needs to pay attention to this topic and theory in future. There is already evidence that when Paul is using the Old Testament that he does not cite the LXX even exactly, if the LXX was the only text at his disposal. As a Jew, one would expect him to have access to better Hebrew copies. However, with imperial library building projects, persecution, bookburning practices, banning of certain genres of books, one can expect that hiding good copies was popular in the first century CE.

           A long list of church fathers and reformers and theologians followed the errorful translation:

"the just shall live by faith": Ellicott, Ewald, Hofmann, De Wette, Wieseler and others. Others translated it as "he, who is righteous by faith shall live": Chrysostom, Bengel, Baumgartner, Griesbach, Winer, Alford, Meyer and others.

           Despite the wrong preposition in the citation by the LXX, namely ex = out of for en = in that is in the original Hebrew, one can still say that faith is subjectively inside a person whereas law is objectively outside. Thus, it is only out of the person in whom faith is, that the just shall live. That is why "by" can be here suitable. But literally so, definitely not. For the law it cannot be used since it is objectively outside the person. Out of the law is lawless and not lawkeeping.

           What we are doing here, is to consider on the basis of exegesis of the Greek text of Galatians, what law means and misconceptions that originated with the church fathers and reformers regarding this aspect. In future, we will look at Adventist History to see what pioneers and Ellen White said about this book and law. Other aspects still need attention. The ceremonial law and the ten commandments were intertwined in the salvation economy of the Old Testament. We need to investigate this aspect to properly understand Ellen White statements regarding the law in Galatians.

The law in Galatians are both the ten commandments and the ceremonial law