This section continues the point of the previous one. Paul was not dependent on the other apostles for his ministry any more than he was for the message he proclaimed. This explanation would have further convinced his readers of the divine source and authority of his message.
1:18-19 "Then"(Gr. Epeita, "Next") introduces the next event in Paul's experience chronologically (cf. v. 21; 2:1). He gave a consecutive account of his movements omitting no essential steps. He did so to show that he had functioned as an apostle before contacting other apostles. His critics seem to have been saying that the other apostles had really sent Paul.
It was three years after his conversion, not after his return to Damascus, that Paul finally revisited Jerusalem and met Peter, for the first time, and James.38He went there "to get personally acquainted with"them, not to get information from them or to make inquiry of them.39These were hardly indications that he had to check his message with them. Furthermore he only stayed 15 days and did not see any of the other apostles. If he had needed to work out a theology consistent with the teaching of the other apostles, extended meetings with all of them would have been necessary.
"These brothers [of the Lord] have been regarded (a) by the Orthodox churches as sons of Joseph by a previous marriage (the Epiphanian' view), (b) in Roman Catholic interpretation as Jesus' first cousins, the sons of Mary wife of Clopas,' who was the Virgin's sister (Jn. 19:25; the Hieronymian' view), and (c) by Protestant exegetes as Jesus' uterine brothers, sons of Joseph and Mary (the Helvidian' view). This last view accords best with the natural implications of Mk. 6:3, where the context suggests that the brothers, together with the sisters unspecified by name, were, like Jesus himself, children of Mary."40
1:20 Paul may have added this verse to help the Galatians realize not only that he was telling the truth but that he really had received his gospel by divine revelation. The truth of the gospel as he preached it was at stake in the truthfulness of what he said, as was the error of what the false teachers were proclaiming.41
1:21-24 Paul did not even spend time in Judea where he might have heard the gospel he preached from other apostles or Christians. Instead he went north into Syria (above Judea, by way of Caesarea [Acts 9:30]) and Cilicia, the province in which his home town of Tarsus stood. He was there when Barnabas found him later (Acts 11:25).
"From c. 25 BC Eastern Cilicia (including Tarsus) was united administratively with Syria to form one imperial province (Syria-Cilicia), governed by a legatus pro praetorewith his headquarters in Syrian Antioch. This arrangement lasted until AD 72, when Eastern Cilicia was detached from Syria and united with Western Cilicia (Cilicia Tracheia) to form the province of Cilicia.
"At the time when both epistles were written [i.e., Galatians and 1 Thessalonians], the Roman province of Judaea included Galilee as well as Judaea (in the narrower sense) and Samaria (as it had done since the death of Herod Agrippa I in AD 44); Judaea' may then denote here the whole of Palestine [cf. 1 Thess. 2:14]."42
Paul had so little contact with the churches in Judea that even after several years of ministry they could not recognize him by sight. They only knew him by reputation and thanked God for what He was doing through Paul, the opposite reaction of Paul's Judaizing critics. Certainly the Judean Christians would not have been so happy if Paul had preached a gospel different from the one the other apostles had been preaching and they had believed.
"It is striking proof of the large space occupied by faith' in the mind of the infant Church, that it should so soon have passed into a synonym for the Gospel. . . . Here its meaning seems to hover between the Gospel and the Church [v. 23]."43
This section (1:11-24) helps us appreciate how convincing God's revelation on the Damascus Road was to Paul. He not only repented concerning the person of Christ, but he also received an absolutely clear revelation both of his calling in life from then on and his message. He began to preach the gospel immediately without any authorization to do so from any other leaders of the church. We too have an equally clear revelation of our calling (Matt. 28:19-20) and our message (2 Cor. 5:20).
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