"Become as I am (in reference to the non-observance of the law), for I am become as you are, like you as Gentiles in the non-observance of the law, although a native Jew." Now, if his method of becoming to the Jews a Jew, by observing the ceremonies of the law when amongst them in Palestine, had been at all inconsistent with what he here said of himself, he would not have appealed with such confidence to his own example. But, according to his own principles, such a contradiction could not exist; for, if he did not constantly observe the ceremonies of the law, but only under certain relations and circumstances, this sufficiently showed that he no longer ascribed to them an objective importance, that according to his conviction they could contribute nothing to the justification and sanctification of men; and as this was his principle in reference to all outward, and in themselves indifferent things, he only submitted to them for the benefit of others, according to the dictates of wisdom and love.

Paul called upon the Galatians to stand firm in the liberty gained for them by Christ, and not to bring themselves again under the yoke of bondage. He assured them, that if they were circumcised, Christ would profit them nothing; that every man who submitted to circumcision was bound to observe the whole law; that since they sought to be justified by the law, they had renounced their connexion with Christ, they were fallen from the possession of grace. For he means not outward circumcision considered in itself, but in its connexion with the religious principle involved in it, as far as the Gentile who submitted to circumcision did so in the conviction that by it, and therefore by the law (to whose observance a man was bound by circumcision) justification was to be obtained. And this conviction stood in direct opposition to that disposition which depended on the Saviour alone for salvation.

The apostle, in contrasting his true, upright love to the Galatian Christians, with the pretended zeal of the Judaizers for their salvation, said to them, "They have a zeal on your account, but not in the right way; they wish to exclude you from the kingdom of God that you may be zealous about them, that is, they wish to persuade you, that you cannot as uncircumcised Gentiles enter the kingdom of God, in order that you may emulate them, that you may be circumcised as they are, as if thus only you can become members of the kingdom of God. Those who are disposed to boast of their outward preeminence (of outward Judaism), compel you to be circumcised only that they may not be persecuted with the cross of Christ, (that is, with the doctrine of Christ the Crucified, as the only ground of salvation), that they may not be obliged to owe their salvation to Him alone, and to renounce all their merits, all in which they think themselves distinguished above others.* They wish

to the observance of the law, still belonged to the stock of the Gentiles, and with this view, the term vuɛiç is used. In such epigrammatic expressions, single terms are not in general to be pressed too strongly.

* I here adopt an interpretation of the words in Gal. vi. 12, different from that which

you to be circumcised only that they may glory in your flesh, that is, in the change which they have outwardly effected in you, by bringing you over altogether to the Jewish Christian party." The apostle, lastly, adjured the Galatians that they would not give him any further trouble,

from ancient times has been received by most expositors, and which, without being closely examined, has been mentioned by Usteri only with unqualified disapprobation. I will, therefore, state a few things in its favor. The common explanation of the passage is, "These persons compel you to be circumcised, only because they are not willing to be persecuted for the cross of Christ; that is, in order to avoid the persecutions which the publication of the doctrine of justification through faith alone, in Jesus the Crucified, will bring upon them from the Jews." The use of the dative certainly suits this interpretation, although I believe that Paul, if he had wished to give utterance to so simple a thought, would have expressed himself more plainly. Gal. v. 11, might favor this interpretation, where Paul says of himself, that if he still preached the necessity of circumcision, then the offence which the Jews took at Christianity, on account of the doctrine that a man by faith in the Crucified might become an heir of the kingdom of heaven, without the observance of the law, would at once be taken away; and no reason would be left for persecuting him as a preacher of the gospel. But in order to avoid such persecutions on the part of the Jews, these persons had need only to observe the law strictly themselves, and to beware of publishing the doctrine, that a man could be justified without the works of the law; by no means would they have been obliged to press circumcision so urgently on the Gentiles already converted, nor does Paul ever ascribe to his Judaizing opponents the design of avoiding the persecution that threatened them by such conduct. And if, as has been indicated, the most influential opponents of Paul in the Galatian churches were of Gentile descent, this interpretation would still less hold good, for Gentiles would have brought persecutions on themselves sooner by the observance of Jewish ceremonies, than by the observance of the Christian religion, which was not conspicuous in outward rites. And how would this interpretation suit the connexion? Paul says (Gal. vi. 12), "Those who wish to have some preeminence in outward things (some outward distinction before others) oblige you to be circumcised." After this, we expect something related to it, in the clause beginning with "lest," iva un, something that may serve as an exegesis, or fix the meaning. But according to this interpretation, something quite foreign would follow -that thereby they wish to avoid persecution. If this thought followed, Paul would have said at first-" Those who long after ease for the flesh, or who are afraid to bear the cross of Christ (or something of the kind), force circumcision upon you," etc. Verse 14 also shows, that all the emphasis is laid on glorying alone in the cross of Christ, which is opposed to setting a high value on any other glorying. The thought arising from that interpretation appears quite foreign to the context, both before and after. On the other hand, the interpretation I have adopted suits it entirely. That "making a fair show in the flesh,” εὐπροσωπεῖν ἐν σαρκί, that " glorying according to the flesh,” καύχημα κατὰ σapka, is taken away, if men can glory only in the cross of Christ. Hence they consider the cross of Christ, that is, the doctrine of faith in the Crucified, the only sufficient means of salvation, as something wearing a hostile aspect towards them, by which they are persecuted, since it obliges them to renounce their fancied superiority. With the positive clause in v. 12, “those who wish to have some preëminence according to the flesh," the negative clause, therefore, agrees well, "that they may not be persecuted with or by the cross of Christ," (the cross of Christ as something subjective to them, by which they are persecuted). The mention of the cross first, according to the best accredited reading adopted by Lachmann, also suits this view of the passage. According to the other view, all the emphasis is to be placed on the not being persecuted. On the whole, the leading idea of the whole passage appears to be, glorying in the cross of Christ, in opposition to glorying in the flesh.

since he bore in his body the mark of the sufferings he had endured for the cause of Christ.*

During his residence at Ephesus, the affairs of the Corinthian church demanded his special attention. The history of this community furnishes us an example of developments and agitations such as have been often repeated in later periods of the church on a larger scale. A variety of influences operated on this church, and it is impossible to refer everything to one common ground of explanation, such as the relation between the different parties; although one common cause, which will explain many of these influences, may be found in the particular situation of the Christian church, which the new Christian spirit, opposed as it was by former habits of life, and the general state of society, had but partially penetrated. Many of the easily excited and mobile Greeks had been carried away by the powerful impression of Paul's ministry made at Corinth, and at first showed great zeal for Christianity; but the principles of Christianity had taken no deep root in their unsettled dispositions. In a city like Corinth, where so great a corruption of morals prevailed, and so many incentives to the indulgence of the passions were presented on every side, such a superficial conversion was exposed to the greatest danger. In addition to this, after Paul had laid the foundation of the church, other preachers followed him, who published the gospel partly in another form, and partly on other principles, and who, since their various natural peculiarities were not properly subordinated to the essential principles of the gospel, gave occasion to many divisions among the Greeks, a people ‡ naturally inclined to parties and party disputes. There were at first persons of the same spirit as those false

*If we only consider what is narrated in the Acts of his sufferings hitherto, though it is evident from a comparison with 2 Cor. xi. that all is not mentioned, we shall be as little disposed as by what the apostle says of the persecutions of the Jews, to apply these words (with Schrader) to his imprisonment at Rome. What Paul says in chap. ii. 10, respecting the fulfilment of obligations to the poor at Jerusalem, might favor the later composition of this epistle, but proves nothing; for the words by no means lead us to think of that last large collection, of which he undertook to be the bearer to Jerusalem. He might very often have sent separate contributions from the churches of Gentile Christians to Jerusalem, although, owing to the imperfections of church history, we have no certain information respecting them. On his last journey preceding his last visit to the Galatians, he might have brought with him one of these smaller collections.

By attempting to deduce too much from this single cause, Storr has indulged in many forced interpretations and assumptions.

Owing to this national characteristic, the efficiency of the gospel among them was much disturbed and weakened in after ages.

§ Rückert thinks that the order in which the parties are mentioned in 1 Cor. i. 12, corresponds to the period of their formation; that first the preaching of Apollos occasioned a portion of the church to attach themselves rather to Apollos than to Paul, with whom they no longer felt fully satisfied, though they had not yet formed themselves into a particular party; then the Judaizers, taking advantage of such a state of feeling, joined the partisans of Apollos in opposition to Paul; thus two parties were formed. But in course of time the original partisans of Apollos discovered that they could

teachers of the Galatian churches, who wished to introduce a Christianity more mingled with Judaism-who could not endure the independence and freedom with which the gospel published by Paul was developed among the Gentiles, although they were not so violent as the Galatian false teachers, and accordingly named themselves, not after James, whom the most decided Judaizers made their chief authority, but after Peter. Moreover, we must carefully notice the difference of circumstances. The Galatian churches were more easily operated upon by organs of the Judaizing party, who came forward from among themselves. It was altogether different at Corinth, where the Judaizers had to operate upon men of a decidedly Grecian character, who were not so susceptible of the influence of Judaism. Hence they did not venture to come forward at once, and disclose their intentions: it was necessary first to prepare the soil before they scattered the seed; to act warily and gently; to accomplish their work gradually; to employ a variety of artifices, in order to undermine the principles on which Paul preached the gospel; to infuse a mistrust of his apostolic character, and thus to alienate the affections of his converts from him.* They began with casting doubts on Paul's apostolic dignity, for the reasons which have been before mentioned; they set in opposition to him, as the only genuine apostles, those who were instructed and ordained by Christ himself. They understood besides how to instil into anxious minds a number of scruples, to which a life spent in intercourse with heathens would easily give rise, and which persons who had been previously proselytes to Judaism must have been predisposed to entertain.

Persons whose minds took this direction, placed Peter, as an apostle chosen by the Lord himself, and especially distinguished by him, in opposition to Paul, who had assumed the office at a later period. When the strongly marked individuality of any of the apostles appropriated and impressed itself upon Christianity, the varied form thus given to it was fitted to the different spheres of activity assigned the apostles by God, and served not to injure the unity of the Christian spirit, but rather in this very manifoldness to illustrate its excellence; but now among those who attached themselves to this or the other apostles, onesided tendencies became prominent, and that variety which could and

not agree with the Judaizers, who had at first, in order to find an entrance, concealed their peculiarities, and thus at last there arose a third distinct party. But this passage (i. 12) cannot avail for determining the chronological relation of these parties to one another. Paul here follows the logical relation, without adverting to the chronological order. He places the partisans of Apollos next to those of Paul, because they only formed a particular section of the Pauline party; he then mentions those who were their most strenuous opponents; and lastly, those through whose existence the other parties would be presupposed. We have throughout no data by which to determine the chronological connexion of the first three parties.

* See the remarks of Baur, in his essay on the Christ-party in the Corinthian church (in the Tubinger Zeitschrift für Theologie, 1831, part iv., p. 83.)

should have consisted with unity, was converted by them into an exclusive contrariety. As a one-sided Petrine party was formed in the Corinthian church, so a one-sided Pauline party sprang up in opposition to it, which recognised the Pauline as the only genuine form of Christianity, ridiculed the nice distinctions of scrupulous consciences, and set themselves in stern opposition to everything Jewish. In one of their tendencies we find the germ of the later Judaizing sects, and in the other, that of the later Marcionite error.

But in the Pauline party itself a two-fold direction was manifested on the following grounds. Among the disciples of John who came to Ephesus, and considered themselves as Christians, though their knowledge was very defective, was Apollos, a Jew of Alexandria, who had received the Jewish-Grecian education, peculiar to the learned among the Alexandrian Jews, and had great facility in the use of the Greek language.* Aquila and his wife instructed him more accurately in Christianity, and when he was about to sail to Achaia, commended him to the Corinthian church as a man who, by his zeal and peculiar gifts, would be able to do much for the furtherance of the divine cause, especially at Corinth, where his Alexandrian education would procure him a more ready access to a part of the Jews and Gentiles. His Alexandrian mode of developing and representing Christian truths, approaching nearer to the Grecian taste, was peculiarly adapted to the educated classes at Corinth; but fascinated by it, they attached too great importance to this peculiar form, and despised, in contrast with it, the simple preaching of Paul, who, when he taught among them, determined to know nothing save Jesus the crucified. We here see the germ of that Gnosis which sprung up in the soil of Alexandria, and aimed at exalting itself above the simple faith (Pistis) of the gospel.

But it has been lately maintained that the difference between the Pauline party and that of Apollos, related not to any difference in the

* The epithet, dvǹp λóyios, “eloquent man," given to him in Acts xviii. 24, probably denotes, not an eloquent, but a learned man, which would best suit an Alexandrian, since a learned literary education, and not eloquence, was the precise distinction of the Alexandrians; and his disputation with the Jews at Corinth suits this meaning of 2óylos, taken from the Jewish point of view. In this sense the word is found both in Josephus and Philo; in the first, λóyou is opposed to "unlearned," idiurais, De Bell Jud. vi. 5, § 3; and by Philo, De Vita Mosis, i. § 5, Alyvntíwv ol Kóyiot, (the learned of the Egyptians.) But since another meaning of the word, as it was at that time, is also possible, and since it appears, from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, that Apollos was also a man eloquent in the Greek language, we are left in some uncertainty how to understand the epithet. According to the first interpretation, "mighty in the Scriptures," dvvaròç ŵv kv тais ypaḍaiç, would only more precisely express what is contained in λóytos; according to the second, it would be a perfectly new and distinct characteristic. This exegetical question is of no importance historically, for certainly both epithets are applicable to Apollos.

By a distinguished young theologian, the licentiate Daniel Schenkel, in his Inquisitio Critico-historica de Ecclesia Corinthiaca, primera, Basilea, 1838, with which De Wette, in his late Commentary on the Epistles to the Corinthians, has expressed his concurrence.