Galatians 1:2 - Exposition

and all the brethren which are with me ( καὶ οἱ αὺν ἐμοὶ πάντες ἀδελφοί ); and the brethren which are with me , one and all. The ordinary unaccentuated collocation of πάντες would be, πάντες οἱ σὺν ἐμοὶ ἀδελφοί . Its position here, where, perhaps, it was thrust in by a kind of after-thought, marks it as emphatic; there is not one of those about him who does not feel the like grief and indignation as himself in reference to the news just now received. We have a similar collocation in Romans 16:15 . πάντες would be marked as emphatic also if placed last, as in 1 Corinthians 7:17 ; 1 Corinthians 13:2 ; 1 Corinthians 15:7 ; Titus 3:15 . Our attention is arrested by the absence of any name. A number of persons are named by St. Luke in the Acts (Ac 18:18-20:5), and by the apostle himself in his Epistles to the Corinthians and to the Romans, as about his person at different times during the latter part of his third journey; and it does not seem very likely that not one was now with him of those who had accompanied him, either in the first or in the second of his two visits in Galatia. The most probable way of explaining the entire suppression of names is by reference to the present mood of the writer; he is too indignant at the behaviour of the Galatian Churchmen to weave into his greeting any such thread of mutual personal interest. It is enough to intimate that all about him felt as he did. Unto the Churches of Galatia ( ταῖς ἐκκλησίας τῆς γαλατίας ). The dry coldness of tone with which this is written will be best understood by the reader upon his comparing the apostle's manner in his other letters, in all of which he is found adding some words marking the high dignity which attached to the communities he is addressing. He is too much displeased to do this now. The plurality of the Galatian Churches, each of them apparently forming a distinct organization, is expressed again in 1 Corinthians 16:1 , "As I gave order to the Churches of Galatia;" and agrees very well with what we read in Acts 18:23 , "Went through tile region of Galatia and Phrygia in order ( καθεξῆς ), stablishing all the disciples." The leaven of Judaizing, whether imported by visitants from other regions or originating within these Churches themselves, appears to have been working very extensively among these communities, and not in one or two of them only. If the latter had been the case, the apostle would not have involved the collective Churches in the like censure, but, as in the case of Colossae, compared with the " Ephesians ," have singled out for warning those actually peccant. This fact, of the general diffusion among them of one particular taint, warrants the belief that certain persons had been at the pains of going about among these Churches to propagate it. Who these persons were, or where they came from, there is nothing to show. It has, indeed, been assumed by many that, like those disturbers of the Antiochian Church mentioned in Acts 15:1 and Galatians 2:12 , they had come from Judaea, or rather Jerusalem. But the Epistle gives no hint of this in respect to the Galatian Churches. What the apostle writes in Galatians 6:12 , Galatians 6:13 points rather to the surmise that this particular distraction was caused by some Churchmen of their own, who had given themselves to this heretical proselytizing in order to truckle to non-Christian Jews living in their neighbourhood. Compare tile apostle's foreboding respecting the future of the Ephesian Church, in Acts 20:30 . (See note on Galatians 6:12 , Galatians 6:13 .)