Community-- identity construction in Galatians

the long version

This book considers issues of community-identity construction, with particular focus on the context and patterns thereof, as put forth in Paul's letter to the Galatians. Both the study of Galatians in particular and Pauline studies in general have been dominated since the Enlightenment by what is essentially a history of ideas; even the so-called "New Perspective" on Paul's relation to the Torah may be thought of as essentially a reformulation of this discussion of ideas. By focusing particularly on the issue of identity, the author offers to the "sculpture" of the earliest Church shaped by many forerunners in the field of New Testament studies, a new contour, i.e. a contour of the reality of religious experience. The author offers two approaches--one is the application of social-anthropological theories on identity, which provide insights not only on the "mechanism" of how community-identity is constructed but also on the nature of community-identity that gives insights to the relationship between communities involved in this study -- INTRODUCTION.