Galatians 1:1-5

[Jonathan Robie]

Looking at a bunch of Pauline epistles, I think his email program used the following headings:

• From: the author and any co-authors
• To: the recipients
• Blessing: a blessing

Some examples:

• Galatians: Παῦλος ἀπόστολος, οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν, 2 καὶ οἱ σὺν ἐμοὶ πάντες ἀδελφοί, ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Γαλατίας·3 χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ
• Ephesians: Παῦλος ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ τοῖς ἁγίοις τοῖς οὖσιν [ἐν Ἐφέσῳ] καὶ πιστοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ· 2 χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
• Colossians: Παῦλος ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ καὶ Τιμόθεος ὁ ἀδελφὸς 2 τοῖς ἐν Κολοσσαῖς ἁγίοις καὶ πιστοῖς ἀδελφοῖς ἐν Χριστῷ· χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν.
• Romans: Παῦλος δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, κλητὸς ἀπόστολος, ἀφωρισμένος εἰς εὐαγγέλιον θεοῦ 2 ὃ προεπηγγείλατο διὰ τῶν προφητῶν αὐτοῦ ἐν γραφαῖς ἁγίαις 3 περὶ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, τοῦ γενομένου ἐκ σπέρματος Δαυὶδ κατὰ σάρκα, 4 τοῦ ὁρισθέντος υἱοῦ θεοῦ ἐν δυνάμει κατὰ πνεῦμα ἁγιωσύνης ἐξ ἀναστάσεως νεκρῶν, Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν, 5 δι’ οὗ ἐλάβομεν χάριν καὶ ἀποστολὴν εἰς ὑπακοὴν πίστεως ἐν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν ὑπὲρ τοῦ ὀνόματος αὐτοῦ, 6 ἐν οἷς ἐστε καὶ ὑμεῖς κλητοὶ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ, 7 πᾶσιν τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν Ῥώμῃ ἀγαπητοῖς θεοῦ, κλητοῖς ἁγίοις· χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
• 1 Corinthians: Παῦλος κλητὸς ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ καὶ Σωσθένης ὁ ἀδελφὸς 2 τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ, ἡγιασμένοις ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ, τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Κορίνθῳ, κλητοῖς ἁγίοις, σὺν πᾶσιν τοῖς ἐπικαλουμένοις τὸ ὄνομα τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἐν παντὶ τόπῳ αὐτῶν καὶ ἡμῶν· 3 χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
• 2 Corinthians: Παῦλος ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ καὶ Τιμόθεος ὁ ἀδελφὸς τῇ ἐκκλησίᾳ τοῦ θεοῦ τῇ οὔσῃ ἐν Κορίνθῳ, σὺν τοῖς ἁγίοις πᾶσιν τοῖς οὖσιν ἐν ὅλῃ τῇ Ἀχαΐᾳ· 2 χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς ἡμῶν καὶ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ.
  
• 1 Timothy: Παῦλος ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ κατ’ ἐπιταγὴν θεοῦ σωτῆρος ἡμῶν καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τῆς ἐλπίδος ἡμῶν 2 Τιμοθέῳ γνησίῳ τέκνῳ ἐν πίστει· χάρις, ἔλεος, εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ [c]πατρὸς καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν.
• 2 Timothy: Παῦλος ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ διὰ θελήματος θεοῦ κατ’ ἐπαγγελίαν ζωῆς τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ 2 Τιμοθέῳ ἀγαπητῷ τέκνῳ· χάρις, ἔλεος, εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν.

When Paul describes himself, he describes himself in terms of who he is in Jesus Christ, his relationship to God the Father and to Jesus, and he can get excited about that part, and sometimes reminds the recipients who they are in Jesus Christ along the way. Our identity in Jesus Christ is central to so many of Paul's letters, and we start to see this even in the way he addresses the envelope.

Following this formula Paul is most likely to identify himself either as δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ or ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. In this case, he's writing an authoritative letter, and he goes with ἀπόστολος. But he goes beyond that, he's not only ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, he wants to emphasize that he is ἀπόστολος διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ - and to emphasize that this is οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν.

[Stephen Carlson]

Following this formula Paul is most likely to identify himself either as δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ or ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ. In this case, he's writing an authoritative letter, and he goes with ἀπόστολος. But he goes beyond that, he's not only ἀπόστολος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ, he wants to emphasize that he is ἀπόστολος διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ - and to emphasize that this is οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν.

Yeah, Paul likes anticipating the important themes of the epistle in the opening. Usually, we see it in the thanksgiving, but Galatians does not have one, so the opening is more overloaded than usual. The point-counterpoint of Paul's apostleship cited here will be developed in greater detail later in 1:10-2:14.

[Stirling Bartholomew]

οὐκ ἔστιν τοῦ γραμματικοῦ τὰς περιόδους διαιρεῖν, μᾶλλον δὲ τοὺς (τῆς περιόδου) λόγους συντάσσειν.

To me, at any rate, it seems obvious that Paul is here setting himself up aggressively as one who holds full and independent authority over others who might challenge his authority. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but I don't think that any grammatical or linguistic analysis was called upon to reach that understanding of this text. How one may segment or sub-segment this passage does not, so far as I can see, significantly assist the understanding of the text. Moreover, it seems to me that it's the logic of the sentence structure that distinguishes the "intonation units" rather than vice versa -- unless the open mouth gets too far ahead of the mind that forms expressions. I think we should be thinking in terms of syntactic groups that constitute the whole rather than of how far we can carry the analysis of subordinate and sub-subordinate units of discourse.

Sounds like Paul is embroiled in a power struggle. I just finished reading Josep Rius-Camps & Jenny Read-Heimerdinger, The Message of Acts v1 treatment of Acts 1:15 where they claim that the introduction of the brothers of Jesus in at the end v14 and introduction to Peter's speech with inserted comment between εἶπεν· and Peters speech are indications that Peter is seeing the brothers of Jesus as a threat to authority of the Apostolic leadership of the Twelve and the Bezae reading of γὰρ : ἦν γὰρ ὄχλος ὀνομάτων ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ὡσεὶ ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι· marks the 120 (a symbolic # for Israel) as the reason for Peter's following speech. Thus there is a discourse level distinction between Bezae and the Alexandrian text. All of this is discourse analysis according to the Levinsohn & Read-Heimerdinger approach to that discipline. Read-Heimerdinger claims that Bezae tells a different story than the Alexandrian text and she uses text linguistics as her primary tool in developing that proposal.

So in response to Carl's remark, what you see in Galatians is determined on what you have been trained to look for.

Acts 1:14 οὗτοι πάντες ἦσαν προσκαρτεροῦντες ὁμοθυμαδὸν τῇ προσευχῇ σὺν γυναιξὶν καὶ Μαριὰμ τῇ μητρὶ τοῦ Ἰησοῦ καὶ τοῖς ἀδελφοῖς αὐτοῦ. 15 Καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις ταύταις ἀναστὰς Πέτρος ἐν μέσῳ τῶν ἀδελφῶν εἶπεν· ἦν τε ὄχλος ὀνομάτων ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ ὡσεὶ ἑκατὸν εἴκοσι· 16 ἄνδρες ἀδελφοί, ἔδει πληρωθῆναι τὴν γραφὴν ἣν προεῖπεν τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον διὰ στόματος Δαυὶδ περὶ Ἰούδα τοῦ γενομένου ὁδηγοῦ τοῖς συλλαβοῦσιν Ἰησοῦν,

postscript: I suspect that the relevance of the Act 1:15 textual variant to the discussion at hand will not be immediately apparent. It has to do with textlinguistics and discovering power struggles among the early church leaders.

[Stephen Hughes]

I think you are saying this because your theory tells you that Παῦλος is topicalized, so each of these becomes an assertion about Παῦλος. I have been reading 1c, 1d, and 1e as assertions about his role as an apostle:

ἀπόστολος,
-- οὐκ ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων
-- οὐδὲ δι’ ἀνθρώπου
ἀλλὰ διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς

That is:

οὐκ ἀπόστολος ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων
οὐδὲ ἀπόστολος δι’ ἀνθρώπου
ἀλλὰ ἀπόστολος διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς

Am I missing something here, or misunderstanding you?

These prepositional phrases of source and means seem to make better sense in connection with some kind of verbal notion. While I think it's necessary to supply something to complete the sense, I have preferred to read in a cognate participle like ἀπεσταλμένος, much like what the NRSV, NIV, and NASB did by explicitly adding "sent."

That is only half the answer.

There are two prepositions each implying different verbs. ἀπό implying ἀπεσταλμένος, and διά implying commanded (ie. commanded to carry out the ἀποστολήν / ἀποστολικὴν διακονίαν cf Acts 6:3 or 7:27) or appointed (as an apostle) OR both senses.

To expand that out would be something like ἀπόστολος, οὐκ ἀπεσταλμένος ἀπ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδὲ καθεσταμένος δι’ ἀνθρώπου ἀλλὰ μᾶλλον ἀπεσταλμένος ἀπ’ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ καθεσταμένος διὰ Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ καθεσταμένος διὰ θεοῦ πατρὸς, but of course - unlike what I have written - Paul has writen succinctly. My main point is that there is no reason to assume that there is need for only one preposition with these 2 prepositions. διά doesn't really seem to go with ἀπεσταλμένος anyway.

(καθεσταμένος may perhaps also be λαβὼν ἀποστολικὴν διακονίαν or διακονῶν or ἐργάζεσθαι ἀποστολικὴν διακονίαν or possibly ἐφεσταμένος)
(I have removed the καὶ θεοῦ πατρὸς from the second sent phrase for reasons of trinitarian doctrine).

[Stephen Carlson]

One of the payoffs to the segmentation approach is that the order of constituents within the segments can be analyzed separately from the ordering among the segments. Research into the phonology of Ancient Greek (Devine and Stephens)--as well as analogies to living languages with a similar discourse configurationality--indicates that the most prominent place in a Greek intonation unit is its left edge. The first phonological word (or clitic group) thus tends to receive the most prominence. Following in its wake is Wackernagel's "second position," which tends to collect clausal clitics and other de-emphasized constituents.

What this means is that, if there is a narrow focus (i.e., on one constituent), we should expect to see it at the beginning of an intonation unit. Of course, other focus structures are possible. A "broad focus" includes the verb in addition to other constituents and this is generally executed by putting the verb first; the order of the remaining elements tends to follow the principle of natural information flow. There is also a contrastive topic / contrastive focus construction, where the first element is a contrastive topic (and thus to some extent focus-like) followed by a focus element.

In Gal 1:1-5, the shortness of the initial Kurzkola (cf. Fränkel) means their constituent is prominent. For the longer segments, their word order is pretty much as expected, with only a couple points of interest:

καὶ οἱ σὺν ἐμοὶ πάντες ἀδελφοί,

This is just a noun phrase, but the expression σὺν ἐμοί is part of the first phonological word / clitic group (καί and οἰ are proclitic). According to Stéphanie Bakker's view of the noun phrase, this modifier should be prominent. The fact that also lines up to first in the colon reinforces this.

χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς καὶ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ,

Here, ὐμῖν falls in second position. For the longest time, I thought Paul's greeting was 'Grace to you ... and peace from God etc." Now I realize that ὐμῖν is merely in second position, so the NET's translation of "Grace and peace to you" is more appropriate.

[Jonathan Robie]

χάρις ὑμῖν καὶ εἰρήνη

This seems to be a fixed expression in the letters of Paul, and you also find it in 1 Peter and 2 Peter. This seems to be a standard greeting in Christian letters.

I wonder if Christians would greet each other with χάρις ὑμῖν / χάρις σοι rather than χαῖρε / χαῖρετε? I think I will use that when the Living Languages people greet me ...

[RandallButh]

I wonder if Christians would greet each other with χάρις ὑμῖν / χάρις σοι rather than χαῖρε / χαῖρετε? I think I will use that when the Living Languages people greet me ...

εὐλογήσαι σε ὁ Κύριος

[Stephen Carlson]

Continuing the top-down approach, after segmenting the text, looking at how the segments function in terms of discourse, and looking at the focus structure within each segment, it is now good to look in more detail at the verbs.
Jonathan has done the parsings:

• ἐγειρ-αντος (ἐγείρω, raise) - Participle, Singular aorist active: genitive (m)
• δ-όντος (δίδωμι, give) - Participle, Singular aorist active: genitive (m)
• ἐξέληται = ἐκ:ἑλ-ηται (ἐξαιρέω, take away from) - 3rd person singular; aorist subjunctive; mediopassive
• ἐν:ἑστ-ῶτος (ἐνίστημι, here: be present in) - Participle, Singular perfect active: genitive (m)

Unfortunately, there is no indicative in sight in Gal 1:1-5, so tense is out, but we can still look at aspect and mood.

τοῦ ἐγείραντος αὐτὸν ἐκ νεκρῶν who raised him from the dead

Aorist active participle of ἐγείρω (ἐγείρειν, ἐγεῖραι. The Aktionsart (lexical aspect, actionality, situation type, what have you) of the predication is an achievement (a change of state) and the aorist stem indicates that the aspect is perfective, meaning that it is viewed as complete.

Though the participle does not indicate time per se, a complete action is generally in the past, as is the case here.

The voice is "active" and the diathesis is transitive. One participant (God the Father) caused a change of state (becoming raised) in another participant (Jesus Christ). Like most transitives, there is a strong distinction between subject and object, as agent and patient respectively.

τοῦ δόντος ἑαυτὸν ὑπὲρ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν ἡμῶν who gave himself for our sins

Aorist participle of δίδωμι (δίδοναι, δοῦναι). As before, we have an achievement, and the perfective aspect of the aorist stem indicates that it is viewed as complete.

Though the voice is "active", the reflexive pronoun ἑαυτόν means that the diathesis is a direct reflexive: one participant is both the agent and the patient. Although the middle is often viewed as a reflexive voice, it is important to keep in mind that the prototypical sense of the reflexive is not really handled by the middle but by the reflexive pronoun used with an active verb. The middle is used with indirect reflexives (e.g., autobenefactives, where the subject is conceived to benefit from the action) or weak reflexives (e.g., submissives, where the subject is viewed as letting, rather than causing, the action to happen to itself).

ὅπως ἐξέληται ἡμᾶς ἐκ τοῦ αἰῶνος τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος πονηροῦ in order that he rescue us from the present evil age

Aorist subjunctive of *ἐξαίρέω (ἐξαιρεῖσθαι, ἐξελέσθαι). Another achievement viewed as complete, but the subjunctive with ὅπως indicates that the action is viewed as complete in a kind of future, posterior to Jesus Christ's giving himself in the preview clause.

Here, the voice is middle, and the aorist middle naturally fits an autobenefactive sense (take away for oneself), but often these undergo a lexical specialization, so always necessary to keep looking up these middles in the lexicon until one becomes accustomed to its sense. Here, it means rescue. (This is why I buck the tide and prefer to lemmatize the active and middle separately in such cases.)

We also have ἐνεστῶτος as a perfect participle of ἐνίστημι. This old perfect has a stative sense, present. In fact, ἐνεστῶτος is the Greek grammatical term for the present.

[cwconrad]

One question: The term "diathesis" here seems to be used not for "voice" but for transitivity/intransitivity. I haven't seen the term used that way, but then, I don't know the literature; has this usage of the term become standard, and if so, where?

As is typical, some researchers make it synonymous with voice; others make it more conceptual than the morphological category, in that voice grammaticalizes various kinds of diathesis, just as aspect grammaticalizes various kinds of action (Aktionsart).

So it becomes another kind of segmentation, this time of the analysis and the terminology, to allow for more grammaticalization. It figures.

[Stephen Carlson]

4b ὅπως ἐξέληται ἡμᾶς ἐκ τοῦ αἰῶνος τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος πονηροῦ

One last matter, looking at the noun phrases, is the construal of τοῦ αἰῶνος τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος πονηροῦ.

There are number of options, the main choice depends on whether one takes τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος with the preceding τοῦ αἰῶνος (as the present age of evil or the present evil age) or with the following πονηροῦ (as the age of the present evil one). The former is more consonant with Paul's thought, while the latter was interpreted by Marcionites and other dualists (according to Jerome). The variant reading among Western and Byzantine witnesses, τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος αἰῶνος πονηροῦ, does not feature this ambiguity.

Burton, Galatians (ICC) 13, claims that the position of πονηροῦ in the noun phrase τοῦ αἰῶνος τοῦ ἐνεστῶτος πονηροῦ “gives it special emphasis,” but, aside from the traditional imprecision of the term emphasis, it seems more of an afterthought to me.