Korsfäst med Kristus och utfryst i Galatien

Abstract

This rhetorical critical reading of Paul’s letter to the Galatians has shown that the issue at stake in Galatia was not so much that Gentile Christ-believers had converted or were about to convert to Judaism through circumcision. It was the attempt to avoid suffering by way of joining the Jewish community that caused Paul’s rage and reproachful argumentation. For Paul the Christian life was to be an imitatio Christi crucifixi. He conceived of it as a race in which no one should aim at less than winning the price. While the Gentile Christ-believers in Galatia shared the basic conviction of self-stigmatisation (Theissen) they did not share Paul’s ambitious and uncompromising implementation of that conviction. In a time of social despair they chose to seek relieve and become what others had become before them: Christ-believing proselytes that partook of Judaism’s social and political privileges.