Book: J. Louis Martyn, Galatians

If you read this blog at all regularly you will have seen a number of posts that reference J. Louis Martyn’s commentary on Galatians in the Anchor Bible Series. I have just completed a study through Galatians, using the Greek text and Martyn’s commentary. It’s very hard to rate commentaries, because there are so many possibilities for use, and if you describe a commentary as “good” you have to specify “good for what?”

In this case I’m going to put this in my top five. Those are: Leviticus (3 vols, Anchor Bible) by Jacob Milgrom, 1 Corinthians (NICNT) by Gordon Fee, Isaiah (OTL) by Brevard Childs, Exodus (OTL) by Brevard Childs, and now Galatians by J. Louis Martyn. Fee’s 1 Corinthians I regard as the best commentary I’ve found that is usable for a teacher/preacher who teaches non-scholars. Milgrom’s remains far and away the best scholar’s commentary that I’ve read. To place Martyn’s commentary in this group I would say that it is not as overwhelmingly thorough as Milgrom’s. To manage that it would have to carefully cite the history of interpretation starting with the church fathers and moving to the present. Martyn takes the history into account, but doesn’t
give you everything. To match Fee’s commentary, there would have to be more direct application. Martyn provides plenty of fodder for devotional use, but I found that when I tried to find a quote, I either couldn’t find any at all, or what I found had to be translated for a lay audience. That will make this commentary less useful for a working pastor or Sunday School teacher.

Having said all of that, the key benefit of Martyn’s work is simply that he provides a good cross section of his excellent insights on Pauline theology throughout, fitting Galatians into a pattern of Pauline thought, and suggesting avenues of interpretation that are creative, and very often quite convincing. If you can translate some of his thinking into comprehensible terms that can be used in a sermon, you’ll find them quite useful and profound.

Some of the key themes include:

• The Jerusalem of today (Gal. 4:25) is the Jerusalem church in that it either supports or does not suppress the circumcision mission to the gentiles
• Closely connected to that, Martyn refers to the teachers not as Judaizers, but as a circumcision based gentile mission
• Paul sees the death and resurrection of Jesus in apocalyptic terms, an invasion of this world that invalidates old categories and creates new ones
• Galatians is earlier in the sequence of Paul’s letters than often thought

With 577 pages of solid commentary, a study of Galatians with this book is not for the faint of heart, but it is worth the effort. If you then write sermons or lessons from it, you will get valuable training in explaining profound but difficult theological concepts to lay audiences. You may regard that as a penalty, but perhaps it is a benefit, a good spiritual discipline.

Those who accept inerrancy, and even those like me who don’t, may find the historical approach a little difficult to manage. Martyn espouses the idea that Paul’s letters are better sources for Paul’s life than Acts, relegating Acts to a supporting role (I discuss that here). My impression is that with a little bit more attention much of the Acts material can be reconciled plausibly and should be. I would accept that the Jerusalem conference as reported in Acts and as understood by Paul may be somewhat different. Paul’s discussion of the topic of food offered to idols in 1 Corinthians certainly makes it appear so, but I think that a good historical outline can be taken both from Paul’s letters and from Acts, and that those outlines are not too far apart. The “spin” is a bit different, but the bones match.

Obviously, I enjoyed my study of Galatians, and I wrote a number of notes, both here and on my wife’s devotional list, for which I’ve been writing quite a lot lately. Just to provide the flavor, here are links to the posts over the last few weeks that were inspired by Martyn’s commentary:

• Martyn on Historical Methods
• Galatians and Penal Substitutionary Atonement
• Galatians 3:2: AKOE PISTEOS
• Galatians 3:15-18 – Preliminary Thoughts on Seed and Seeds
• Putting Trust in Jesus (Devotional)
• In What World do you Live? (Devotional)
• Turning Away (Devotional)
• Giving Up on Desperation (Devotional)
• Paul and Using Your Testimony (Devotional)
• Compromise and Compromise (Devotional)
• The Cure for Foolishness (Devotional)
• Promise Detours (Devotional)
• Knowing (Devotional)