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Gal_2:12 ff. Paul now relates the particulars of the occurrence.
ἀπὸ Ἰακώβου ] sent by James. It belongs to ἐλθεῖν . Comp. Plat. Prot. p. 309 B, ἀπʼ ἐκείνου ἔρχομαι : Mat_26:47; Mar_5:35; 1Th_3:6. Why they—and, to judge from the impression made upon Peter, they were certainly men of importance, strict in their Jewish-Christian observances—were sent to Antioch by James, we know not, any more than why Peter journeyed thither.[85] But the conjecture that they belonged to the ψευδάδελφοι of Gal_2:4 (Winer, Schott), conflicts directly with the fact, that they were sent by James: for at the apostolic conference the latter had nowise made common cause with the ψευδάδελφοι ; and therefore in sending any of them to Antioch he would have acted very unwisely, or would, with reactionary intent (so de Wette, whereby, however, the character of James is placed in a very awkward position, which is not to be supported by Act_21:18), have simply supplied new fuel to the scarcely settled controversy. Others (as Studer, Usteri, Zeller[86]), connecting the words with τινάς , understand adherents of James (comp. οἱ ἀπὸ Πλάτωνος and the like; Schaefer, Melet. p. 26 ff.; Bernhardy, p. 222), or, as Winer (comp. Wolf) says, “qui Jacobi auctoritate sive jure seu secus utebantur;” but this brings upon James the designation of a party-chief (some Jacobites!), which would be neither necessarily nor wisely introduced here, even supposing Winer’s modification to be mentally supplied. Lastly, the explanation of Beza, Grotius, Olshausen, Baumgarten-Crusius (following Chrysostom), that ἀπὸ Ἰακώβου means nothing more than from Jerusalem, because James was the president of the church there (comp. Koppe), is an unauthorized setting aside of the person, who is named expressly and not without due reason.
μετὰ τῶν ἐθνῶν συνήσθιεν ] he joined in meals with the Gentile Christians. Comp. on συνεσθίειν in this sense, Plat. Legg. ix. p. 881 D; Luk_15:2; 1Co_5:11. Notice the imperfect. The Jew might not eat with Gentiles without incurring Levitical defilement (Act_11:3); but Peter, who previously by special revelation (Acts 10 f.), had been instructed as to the invalidity of this separation in Christianity, had in the apostolic conference defended Christian freedom (Act_15:7 ff.), and taken part in passing the decree that, as regards food, the Gentile brethren should only have to abstain from meat offered to idols, things strangled, and blood (Act_15:29). This decree was received and accepted with joy by the church at Antioch (Act_15:30 f.). It would therefore have been all the easier for Peter in Antioch to follow his divinely attained conviction,[87] and to take part without hesitation in the more familiar intercourse of meals with the Gentile Christians there—free from any scruple that he should defile himself by Gentile food, which no legal enactments restricted except as to those three points. But to this free and correct standpoint the stricter Jewish Christians, who were still entangled in the observances of the Levitical precepts as to purity (comp. Act_21:20), had not been able to rise; and to this class belonged the ΤΙΝΈς (Gal_2:12). When, therefore, these peopled arrived from Jerusalem and from James, Peter unhappily no longer continued his previous liberal-minded conduct in Antioch, but drew back and separated himself from intercourse at meals with the Gentile Christians, whereby he gave a practical denial to his better conviction. How similar to his conduct in his former denial of the Lord! Calovius, however, justly, in conformity with the temperament of Peter, remarks, “una haec fuit Petri actio, non habitus.”
φοβούμενος τοὺς ἐκ περιτ .] By this are meant the Jewish Christians generally, as a class, so far as they were represented by those τινές , who belonged to the stricter school. Peter feared the Jewish-Christian strictness, displeasure, disapprobation, etc. The explanatory gloss of Chrysostom ( Οὐ ΤΟῦΤΟ ΦΟΒΟΎΜΕΝΟς ΜῊ ΚΙΝΔΥΝΕΎΣῌ , ἈΛΛʼ ἽΝΑ ΜῊ ἈΠΟΣΤῶΣΙΝ ; comp. Theophylact, ΜῊ ΣΚΑΝΔΑΛΙΣΘΈΝΤΕς ἈΠΟΣΚΙΡΤΉΣΩΣΙ Τῆς ΠΊΣΤΕΩς ), which is followed by Piscator, Grotius, Estius, and others, favours Peter quite against the literal sense of the words (Mat_10:26; Mat_14:5; Mar_9:18; Luk_12:5; Act_5:26; Rom_13:3).
Observe also, on the one hand, the graphic force of the imperfects ὑπέστ . and ἈΦΏΡ ., and, on the other hand, the expression of his own bad precedent, ἙΑΥΤΌΝ , which belongs not merely to ἈΦΏΡ ., but also to ὙΠΈΣΤ . (Polyb. vii. 17. 1, xi. 15. 2, i. 16. 10); he withdrew himself, etc., and thereby induced his Jewish-Christian associates also to enter on a like course (Gal_2:13). It is not, according to the context, correct that these imperfects express an enduring separation (Wieseler); the behaviour begins when the τινὲς ἀπὸ Ἰακώβ . have come; it excites the unfavourable judgment of the church, and Paul immediately places himself in decided opposition to Peter. The imperfects are therefore the usual adumbrativa; they place the withdrawal and separation of Peter, as it were, before the eyes of the readers. On the other hand, the συνυπεκρίθ . which follows is the wider action which took place and served further to challenge Paul; hence the aorist.
[85] The book of Acts is silent both on this point and also as to the whole scene between Peter and Paul,—a silence indeed, which, according to Baur and Zeller, is supposed to be maintained intentionally, and in consistency with the false representation of the transactions in Jerusalem. According to Ritschl (altkath. Kirche, p. 145), they were deputed by James to bring the relation between the Jewish and Gentile Christians back to the rule of the apostolic decree, as James understood it, that is, according to Ritschl, in the sense of a retractation of the Jewish-Christian defection from the law, and on behalf of restoring the separation between the two parties as respected their customs of eating. This assumed task of the τινές is neither in any way intimated in the text, nor is there a trace of it in Acts (comp., on the contrary, Act_15:30 ff.). Just as little can it be proved that, as Ewald thinks, a decree had been passed in the church at Jerusalem that the Jewish Christian should refrain from eating in company with Gentile Christians (because he did not know whether blood or something strangled might be among their food), and that those τινές had come to Antioch to make known this new decree. Hilgenfeld also assumes that those sent by James had some charge relating to withdrawal from the Gentile Christians. Comp. Holsten, z. Evang. d. Paul. u. Petr. p. 357, in whose opinion they were sent after Peter, because his intercourse with the Gentiles had been notified at Jerusalem.
[86] So also Vömel, Br. a. d. Gal. mit deutsch. Uebers. u. krit. Anm., Frankf. 1865, p. 29.
[87] That the Christian fellowship in meals included also the joint observance of the agapae (which Thiersch, Hilgenfeld, and others take to be meant), is obvious. It is not, however, expressly denoted by συνήσθιεν .