Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadHeinrich Meyer Commentary - Galatians 1:2 - 1:2
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Gal_1:2. Καὶ οἱ σὺν ἐμοὶ πάντες ἀδελφοί ] ἀδελφοί denotes nothing more than fellow-Christians; but the words σὺν ἐμοί place the persons here intended in special connection with the person of the apostle (comp. Gal_2:3; Php_4:21): the fellow-Christians who are in my company. This is rightly understood as referring to his travelling companions, who were respectively his official assistants, at the time (comp. Pareus, Hammond, Semler, Michaelis, Morus, Koppe, Rosenmüller, Winer, Paulus, Rückert, Usteri, Wieseler, Reithmayr), just as Paul, in many other epistles, has conjoined the name of official associates with his own (1Co_1:1; 2Co_1:1; Php_1:1; Col_1:1; 1Th_1:1; 2Th_1:1). Instead of mentioning their names,[15] which were perhaps known to the Galatians at least in part—possibly from his last visit to them (Act_18:23) or in some other way—he uses the emphatic πάντες (which, however, by no means implies any very large number, as Erasmus and others, including Olshausen, have supposed), indicating that these brethren collectively desired to address the very same instructions, warnings, exhortations, etc., to the Galatians, whereby the impressive effect of the epistle, especially as regards the apostle’s opponents, could not but be strengthened, and therefore was certainly intended to be so strengthened (comp. Chrysostom, Theodoret, Jerome, Erasmus, Calvin, and others). At the same time, there is no need to assume that his opponents had spread abroad the suggestion that some one in the personal circle of the apostle did not agree with him in his teaching (Wieseler); actual indications of this must have been found in the epistle. Others have thought of all the Christians in the place where he was then sojourning (Erasmus, Estius, Grotius, Calovius, and others; also Schott). This is quite opposed to the analogy of all the other epistles of the N.T., not one of which is composed in the name of a church along with that of the writer. It would, in that case, have been more suitable that Paul should have either omitted σὺν ἐμοί (comp. 1Co_16:20), or expressed himself in such a way as to intimate, not that the church was σὺν αὐτῷ , but that he was σὺν αὐτοῖς . To refer it (with Beza) to the office-bearers of the church, is quite arbitrary; for the readers could not recognise this in σὺν ἐμοί without further explanation.
ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Γαλατ .] consequently a circular epistle to the several independent churches. The relations of the churches were different in Achaia: see on 1Co_1:2; 2Co_1:1. The fact that Paul adds no epithet of honour (as κλητοῖς ἁγίοις , or the like) is considered by Chrysostom, Theophylact, Oecumenius, and by Winer, Credner, Olshausen (comp. Rückert), Hilgenfeld, Wieseler, a sign of indignation. Comp. Grotius, “quia coeperant ab evangelio declinare.” And justly so; because it is in keeping with the displeasure and chagrin which induce him afterwards to refrain from all such favourable testimony as he elsewhere usually bears to the Christian behaviour of his readers, and, on the contrary, to begin at once with blame (Gal_1:6). In no other epistle, not even in the two earliest, 1 and 2 Thess., has he put the address so barely, and so unaccompanied by any complimentary recognition, as in this; it is not sufficient, therefore, to appeal to the earlier and later “usage of the apostle” (Hofmann).
[15] Which indeed he might have done, even if the epistle had been, as an exception, written by his own hand (but see on Gal_6:11); so that Hofmann’s view is erroneous.