N.T. Wright’s Galatians– Part Thirty Four

Last updated on: August 9, 2021 at 1:53 am by Ben Witherington

N.T. Wright’s Galatians– Part Thirty Four 2021-06-23T09:54:28-04:00 Ben Witherington

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Q. I agree with you that the Sarah and Hagar tour de force in Gal. 4 is not like one of Philo’s allegories, or for that matter like Spencer’s Fairie Queene or Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. But it is an allegorizing of an historical narrative and the trick is to figure out why certain things are lined up by Paul in the way he does it. What does he mean, for example by the notion of the present Jerusalem being enslaved? Does this have to do with Roman rule? And why would Paul associate Hagar with the location of the giving of the Mosaic Law? I think you did a good job laying out the text critical problems with the text. On any showing, the meaning of this complex passage is debatable.

But let’s talk for a minute about the term Arabia. It seems very clear to me that the Galatians would have understood the term Arabia as a reference to the Nabatean kingdom, which included Mt. Sinai at the time. This is how others in that era understood the term Arabia as referring to Petran Arabia (see Josephus). King Aretas IV was quite the conqueror and he even whipped Herod Antipas and took some of his territory after Herod had dumped Aretas’ daughter in order to marry Herodias. The evidence also suggests that Aretas has taken control as far north as Damascus. I bring all this up because early in Galatians Paul says he left Damascus and went to Arabia. While Mt. Sinai is a place in Arabia, it is far from the capital of Arabia, and I doubt Paul could get into trouble with Aretas by climbing that mountain. But clearly the ethnarch of Aretas was after Paul in Damascus when Paul returned there as 2 Cor. makes clear. Why? The road out of Damascus was part of the spice road that went straight through Petra. I suspect Paul got in hot water with Aretas for attempting to sharing the Gospel with non-Jews there for some period of time. Whether he went on to Mt. Sinai we don’t know. Why is this important? Because Paul quite naturally would associate time in Arabia with negative things including slavery (there was a major slave market in Petra) and with Hagar and her descendants (some claimed she was the ancestor of those who lived in what was later the Nabatean kingdom) and I could go on. The association of Hagar with Mt. Sinai and with slavery makes sense if Paul is talking about the Nabatean kingdom where he got into hot water,and escaped from the ethnarch via basket down a wall in Damascus. Taking all this into account, I think we get a clearer picture that Paul’s allegorizing is not coming out of the blue, but is based in his own previous associations with Arabia perhaps. Does this make sense?

A. Well it might have made sense (though Paul doesn’t mention any of it) were it not for the fact – and it is a fact – that Paul is deliberately echoing the Elijah story at that point (‘extremely zealous’ etc). That colours the whole thing and strongly suggests that Paul went off to Mount Sinai as Elijah had done, then being told ‘return again to Damascus’

like Elijah was. There might be many reasons why Aretas would be cross with Paul – he couldn’t help himself talking about Jesus and it’s highly likely that this got him into trouble simply in Damascus. As with so much in ancient history there are huge gaps; we can speculate but can’t prove things definitely. I prefer to go with what we do know – that Paul was telling his story in such a way as to echo, deliberately, the story of Elijah going to Horeb/Sinai (which as he says in ch 4 is in Arabia). I might ask, why do exegetes (yourself included?) not want to know about Paul role-modelling Elijah?

On the ‘present Jerusalem’ being ‘enslaved’ – well, Ezra and Nehemiah saw it that way, with Jerusalem still under foreign rule; and though the Maccabees had achieved a century of ‘freedom’, that had reverted to type under Rome (and their puppet rulers, the Herods).

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