INTRODUCTION I. TEXT ALTHOUGH from the very outset the Epistle to the Galatians was adapted for circulation among a number of churches" (1:2), we have no traces of it in separate form, and can merely infer from the better acquaintance of the very earliest writers such as Luke1 and Clement of Rome (ca. 95 A.D.) with Romans, First Corinthians, and Ephesians, that there was a period extending approximately to 110 A.D. during which the letters of Paul circulated as individual writings. Those addressed to the remoter churches would thus be less widely known. Books had at this time the form of volumina, or scrolls of papyrus, and could not well be made to include so extensive a work as the whole series of Pauline Epistles. Still, so early as the time of Ignatius and Polycarp (110-117 A.D.) these are referred to as "the letters of Paul," and assumed to be current as a body of writings by study of which the churches may be "built up." In fact the first canon of Christian writings of which we have definite information, set up about 145 A.D. by Marcion, the great leader of the anti-Jewish Gnostic heresy, consisted of two parts, a "Gospel" adapted from our Luke, and an 'Apostle" which began with Galatians and included all the other letters of Paul save the Pastoral Epistles. By the end of the second century it was considered quite axiomatic that "the Apostle Paul himself following the example of his predecessor John" should have "written by name to seven churches only, in this order: First to the Corinthians, second 66 In giving this traditional name to the author of the third Gospel and book of Acts the present writer does not wish to be understood as admitting the full validity of the tradition. to the Ephesians, third to the Philippians, fourth to the Colossians, fifth to the Galatians, sixth to the Thessalonians, seventh to the Romans." 1 The earliest extant texts of Galatians belong to a period two centuries later still, and happen to be included in copies of the entire Greek Bible of Old and New Testaments. For by 400 A.D. these writings were easily comprised between the covers of a single codex, or "book" of the modern form. However, we also have codices of later date which comprise the Pauline Epistles only, showing that these still also circulated as a separate literary unit. The great codices of about 400 A.D., designated Aleph and B, or the Sinaitic and Vatican Bibles, present somewhat divergent forms of the type of text current in Alexandria about 200-400 A.D., and this type is also represented, though in a form showing systematic emendation, by the fragmentary rewritten Codex C, or Ephraem Syrus, of about 500 A.D., which fortunately contains all but the first nineteen verses of Galatians. Of similar type are the fragments of the so-called Cod. Coislinianus (H) at Petersburg and Mt. Athos, containing respectively Gal. 1 : 4-10; 2: 9-14, and 1:1-4; 2: 14-17; 4: 30-5: 5. With these may be grouped as partially "Alexandrian" the ninth century codices of Acts, Catholic Epistles and Pauline Epistles, designated respectively Cod. Angelicus (L) and Cod. Porphyrianus (P), the latter including also Revelation. A different, less carefully revised, type of text, very improperly designated "Western," is represented, for the Pauline Epistles only, by the sixth century, bilingual (Greek and Latin in parallel columns), Codex Claromontanus (D), and by a group of three similar bilinguals of the ninth century, Petropolitanus or Sangermanensis (E), Augiensis (F), and Boernerianus (G); but of these E is only an unintelligent transcript of D, and has no independent value. Codex Alexandrinus (A), in the British Museum, an entire • Muratorian Fragment, 200-210 A.D. The author conceives of the seven letters of Rev. 1-3 as written before the Pauline Epistles. |