Another Look at the Antioch Incident (Gal 2:11-14)

This paper will address the incident in Antioch (Gal. 2:11-14) in the context of the challenges from Jews outside the Christian church in Jerusalem. Peter was afraid, not of the men James sent to Antioch, but of the message they brought him about threats from fanatically minded non-Christian Jews in Jerusalem. It has already been established (Burton) that the phrase phoboumenos tous ek peritomēs simply means “fearing the circumcised” – “the Jews” – rather than “converts from Judaism.” Longenecker argues that the preposition ek denotes character, as in hoi ek pisteōs (Gal 3:7,9; Rom 3:26; 4:16). Thus, the “circumcision party” would not be Jewish Christians at all, but simply “the Jews” or “the circumcised” who are described earlier in Galatians 2:7-9. Thus, Peter did not fear the brothers, but the Jewish leaders from Jerusalem. The following considerations are the main point of this paper and support the distinction between “men from James” and “the circumcision party”, and thus create quite a different scenario: (1) It is unlikely that James would send anyone to “audit” Peter’s work in Antioch since Peter was probably the most prominent church leader in Jerusalem. Rather, James informed Peter of the Jewish pressure. (2) The ill advice the apostles gave Paul (Acts 21:20-24) shows how the Christian leaders in Jerusalem did not realize that they could never meet the expectations of the Jewish leaders. (3) The persecution in Jerusalem was very real to Barnabas and the Jewish believers in Antioch (Acts 11:19) which explains why they joined Peter. Thus, it seems Peter was shaken by the external threats which were political rather than theological. Paul reacted in his way because the Christian spiritual identity was at stake.