on the walk

Ethan Magness to readers, greetings.

I wrote a couple of days ago about the power and usefulness of genre studies. This post will make more sense if you read that one, so you may want to check it out. You can find it here or look in the list of recent posts for “i love genre studies.”

I certainly don’t have time to talk about all the implication of genre studies. That is just as well since most of the time the real power comes out when you are ready to study a particular text. It probably wouldn’t be interesting for me to blab on and on about the nature of first century historical writing unless you were about to study Luke or Acts because without that incentive you probably would fall asleep.

Nevertheless to give a glimpse of the things we learn from genre studies, I will comment a bit about the letter form and the book of Galatians.

First century letter form began in a very typical way. In fact I used it to begin my blog. It is “Sender to Recipient, greetings.” Paul expands on this form to develop this form.

Paul to Church(or person) grace and peace to you; thanksgiving.

this opening pattern is almost universal. Sometimes he will pause and descirbe himself and sometimes he will flower up his description of his readers. Often the offer of grace peace gets rolling into a praise of Christ, but it is very rare to see him break the form. In case you are curious, you don’t need any fancy degree to figure this out. If you read the opening to all of Paul’s letters, this pattern will practically jump off the page.
If you are still wondering why you care, I would invite you to take a look at the first chapter of Galatians. I’ll wait while you read it.

I hope you noticed that up to verse 5 Paul is following his pattern perfectly. He has introduced himself, addressed his readers and wished them grace and peace (as often happens this turns into praise for Christ.) The shock comes in verse 6. He does not thank God for them. This is a major departure from he very consistent use of the letter form. Writing as he did with a very conscious form, he did not forget to offer thanks, and they would very likely notice the absence. Certainly we should notice it as we look at the collected letters of Paul. Now I will grant you that even without observation from genre studies, you could figure out that Paul is mad when he writes Galatians. But i think that genre analysis helps to make sure we don’t miss it.

You must be pretty mad if in the same place that you would usually write, “I thank God for you every day in my prayers saying …” , you instead write, “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel.”

Yep, pretty mad.

on the walk

-Ethan

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