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Gal_1:17. Neither went I away (from Damascus) to Jerusalem, unto those who were apostles before me; but I went away into Arabia. So according to Lachmann’s reading; see the critical notes. Τοὺς πρὸ ἐμοῦ ἀποστ . is written by Paul in the consciousness of his full equality of apostolic rank (beginning from Damascus), in which nothing but greater seniority pertained to the older apostles. On the twice-employed emphatic ἀπῆλθον , comp. Rom_8:15; Heb_12:18 ff.; Fritzsche, ad Rom. II. p. 137.
εἰς Ἀραβίαν ] It is possible that some special personal reason, unknown to us, induced him to choose this particular country. The region was heathen, containing, however, many Jews of the Diaspora (Act_2:11). This journey, which is to be looked upon not as having for its object a quiet preparation (Schrader, Köhler, Rückert, Schott), but (comp. Rom. Introd. § 1) as a first, certainly fervent experiment of extraneous ministry,[34] and which was of short duration,[35] is not mentioned in Acts. Perhaps not known to Luke at all, it is most probably to be placed in the period of the ἱκαναὶ ἡμέραι , Act_9:23,—an inexact statement of the interval between the conversion and the journey to Jerusalem, which betrays, on the part of Luke, only a vague and inadequate knowledge of the chronology of this period. See on Act_9:19 ff. Paul mentions the journey here, because he had to show—following the continuous thread of the history—that, in the first period after his conversion, he had not been anywhere where he could have received instruction from the apostles.
ΠΆΛΙΝ ὙΠΈΣΤΡΕΨΑ ] ΠΆΛΙΝ , used on the hypothesis that the locality of the calling and revelation mentioned was well known to his readers, refers to the notion of coming conveyed in ὑπέστρ . Comp. Act_18:21; Hom. Od. viii. 301, αὖτις ὑποστρέψας , et al.; Eur. Alc. 1022; Bornemann, ad Cyrop. iii. 3. 60; Kühner, ad Xen. Mem. ii. 2. 4.
[34] Our passage bears testimony in favour of this view by εὐθέως … ἀπῆλθον following immediately on ἵνα εὐαγγ . αὐτὸν ἐν τοῖς ἔθνεσιν . Hence Holsten’s view (die Bedeutung des Wortes σάρξ im N.T. p. 25; ueber Inh. u. Gedankeng. d. Gal. Br. p. 17 f.; also zum Evang. d. Paul. u. Petr. p. 269 f.), that Paul, “purposely tearing himself away for three years from the atmosphere of the national spirit at Jerusalem,” had gone to Arabia, “in order to reconcile the new revelation with the old by meditating on the religious records of his people,” is quite opposed to the context. Certainly the system of the apostle’s gospel, as it is exhibited in the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans, must have taken its shape gradually, and by means of a long process of thought amidst the widening of experience; but even in the absence of such a developed system he might make a commencement of his ministry, and might preach the Son of God as the latter had been directly revealed in him by divine agency. Thiersch arbitrarily considers (Kirche in apostol. Zeitalt. p. 116) that he desired to find protection with Aretas. It is the view also of Acts, that Paul immediately after his conversion followed the divine guidance, and did not postpone his beginning to preach till the expiration of three years. According to Acts, he preached immediately, even in Damascus, Act_9:20; comp. Act_26:19 f. See, besides, on Rom. Introd. § 1.
[35] L. Cappellus, Benson, Witsius, Eichhorn, Hemsen, and others, also Anger, Rat. temp. p. 122, and Laurent, hold the opinion that Paul spent almost the whole three years (ver. 18) in Arabia, because the Jews at Damascus would not have tolerated his remaining there so long. But in our ignorance of the precise state of things in Damascus, this argument is of too uncertain a character, especially as Act_9:22, comp. with ver. 23, ὡς δὲ ἐπληρ . ἡμέραι ἱκαναί , points to a relatively longer working in Damascus. And if Paul had laboured almost three years, or, according to Ewald, about two years, in Arabia, and that at the very beginning of his apostleship, we could hardly imagine that Luke should not have known of this ministry in Arabia, or, if he knew of it, that he should not have mentioned it, for Paul never stayed so long anywhere else, except perhaps at Ephesus. It may indeed be alleged that Luke purposely kept silence as to the journey to Arabia, because it would have proved the independent action of the apostle to the Gentiles (Hilgenfeld, Zeller); but this view sets out from the premiss that the book of Acts is a partisan treatise, wanting in historical honesty; and it moreover assumes—what without that premiss is not to be assumed—that the author was acquainted with our epistle. If he was acquainted with it, the intentional distortion of portions of his history, which it is alleged he allowed himself to make, would be the more shameless, and indeed foolish.