Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 65:2 (NA 2014)
Article: Galatians 1-2 Without A Mirror Reflections On Paul’s Conflict With The Agitators
Author: Justin K. Hardin

TynBull 65:2 (2014) p. 275

Galatians 1-2 Without A Mirror
Reflections On Paul’s Conflict With The Agitators1

Justin K. Hardin

([email protected])

Summary

Despite its dangers and pitfalls as an interpretive technique, mirror reading continues to enjoy pride of place as the preferred method for reconstructing the situation in Galatians. But does reflecting back the opposite of the text aid our understanding of Paul’s letter, or does it merely distort the picture? In this essay, we will discuss Paul’s conflict with the agitators in Galatians to reveal the inherent methodological problems of mirror reading this letter. Specifically, we will address the question whether the agitators in Galatia were questioning Paul’s credentials, prompting Paul to write his lengthy narrative in Galatians 1-2. We will then evaluate recent scholars who have sought to retire the mirror in their interpretation of Paul’s narrative, before ourselves providing a fresh reading of Paul’s aims in Galatians 1-2. We will suggest that Paul was not defending himself (or his gospel or anything else) in Galatians. Rather, Paul was constructing a self-contrast with the agitators in an effort to persuade the Galatians to turn back to the one true gospel and to reject the judaising tactics of the agitators.

1. Introduction

Nearly three decades ago in his landmark ‘Mirror-reading a Polemical Letter: Galatians as a Test Case’, John Barclay famously argued that the reconstructive exercise of ‘mirror reading’ is fraught with pitfalls

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and perils.2 Mirror reading, of course, is the very specific exercise whereby an interpreter reflects back the opposite of a biblical text to discern the situation presupposed in the text (and thus should not be confused with other tasks in the reconstructive process).3 In his essay, Barclay outlines several hazards when attempting to mirror read Galatians,4 before proposing a method in which reflections in the text should be placed on a sliding scale of probability, from reconstructions that are virtually certain to those that are incredible.5 Although Barclay’s clarion call has not entirely eradicated the production of ingenious hypotheses, his study has become the definitive methodological classic on the interpretation of Galatians.