Larry Stally is the latest of a line of interpreters to discuss a supposed reference to the Shroud in St Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In The Crucified Christ Seen by the Galatians: A Literal Context for ΠΡΟΕΓΡΑΦΗ (Galatians 3.1), he discusses the first verse of chapter three, which runs:
“You foolish Galatians! Who has bewitched you? It was before your eyes that Jesus Christ was publicly exhibited/portrayed as crucified!”
Stalley, and the earlier observers, claim that the word here translated as ‘publicly exhibited’ or ‘publicly portrayed’ refers to an image, and, by extension, to the Shroud. In spite of their attempts, there is really no justification for this idea.
In his letter, written in about 50 AD, St Paul rebukes the Galatians for turning away from his particular version of the Gospel, which was independent of conventional Judaic law, towards a more Judaic version, as expressed by several of the apostles but centred on St Peter, specifically signified by circumcision. Whether he felt that such a reversion would eventually lead to a repudiation of Christ and the collapse of Christianity altogether, or that ‘Jewish Christianity’ would inevitably be so circumscribed that it could never expand very far, and spread the message of Christ “to all men”, or that by clinging too strictly to ‘the old law’ nobody could properly embrace the new one, the fact is that he was so insensed by the threat that he could write: “if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you.” (Gal 5:2).
It seems that he had visited these people, in what is now western Turkey, quite successfully during his first mission, but had since learned, to his astonishment (Gal 1:6), that the ‘Jewish Christian’ view was becoming dominant, and wrote to denounce it in no uncertain terms. He declares the alternative gospel to be no gospel at all, and denounces St Peter as a hypocrite, or worse, as he claims the Galatians have been “bewitched”, rather a strong word, in spite of having had the crucified Christ “exhibited” before them. (Gal 3:1). In fact, of course, even the Jewish Christians acknowledged the crucified (and resurrected) Christ, so this is a bit of a red herring, but I think Paul is gathering as much of Christianity to himself as he can in his philosophical battle.
The word “bewitched” is “ἐβάσκανεν” in the original Greek, and although it is not etymologically connected to eyes or vision, it is often associated with ‘the evil eye’. By using the word, Paul was not only implying Satanic influence on the Jewish Christians, but contrasting the evil the Jewish Christians had placed before the eyes of the Galatians with the ‘crucified Christ’ which he had previously ‘exhibited’ before them himself.
Stalley interprets the passage completely differently. He thinks that Paul is accusing the Galatians of thinking he has bewitched them, with his unclean funeral cloth, and is writing to try to show them that he is not evil and that his gospel is the only true one.
“Reading between the lines, the following scenario seems plausible. Paul’s opponents have accused him of being afflicted by the curse of the evil eye. In turn, with his heretical preaching, Paul has passed that curse onto his converts. He is under the influence of a demonic spirit. Furthermore, since the Shroud is a funeral cloth that once was in contact with a corpse and still has blood on it, these Judaizers likely are looking upon the Shroud as an unclean tool used by Satan to deceive the naive, rather than being “a sign from heaven.”
I’m afraid I think this far-fetched. The implication that “Who has bewitched you?” can be paraphrased as “Do you think I have bewitched you?” is not wholly incredible, but the continuation “by showing you an unclean shroud to justify my claim” is not implied or supported by the rest of the epistle. There is no suggestion that the public ‘exhibition’ of the crucified Christ is anything other, or was received as anything other, than what it appeared to be. Besides which, this interpretation implies a kind of double bewitchment – in that the Galatians must have been bewitched by someone else into thinking Paul had bewitched them – which is also not implied elsewhere.
The crux of the discussion as it refers to the Shroud, however, is in the word “exhibited”, or “portrayed”, or “set forth”, or “put on display”, depending on translation, although the sentence is also paraphrased as “I told you”, “I showed you”, and “a clear description”, which is much less visual. Clearly, there is a certain ambivalence to the original word, which is “προεγράφη” (proegraphe). Does it necessarily imply that something was actually seen, and if so, does it suggest an image? The answer, of course, is no.
Although a literal meaning of a word can often be derived from its component parts, (pro = before and graph = write or draw), the only way of knowing what it meant in use is to find it in numerous contexts, and try to derive a common definition from them. St Paul, for instance, uses the word twice more in his epistles, a derivative occurs once more in the bible in the epistle of St Jude, and it appears elsewhere quite frequently in non-biblical contexts.
One of the Pauline instances is from Romans 15:3-4; where he refers to the scriptures as instructions for future behaviour, and the other from Ephesians 3:1-4, mentioning something he had written himself. He says:
“For Christ did not please himself; but, as it is written, ‘The insults of those who insult you have fallen on me.’ For whatever was [προεγράφη] was written for our instruction, so that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope.”
and
“For this reason, I, Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus on behalf of you Gentiles – assuming that you have heard of the stewardship of God’s grace that was given to me for you, how the mystery was made known to me by revelation, as I have [προέγραψα] briefly.”
St Jude (Jude 1:4) was objecting to people who were attempting to join the community although they were proscribed:
“For admission has been secretly gained by some who long ago were [προγεγραμμένοι] for this condemnation, ungodly persons who pervert the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ.”
The definitive Greek lexicon, by Liddell and Scott, gives numerous non-biblical instances, and derives several nuances of meaning from them. These include a simple, literal ‘previously recorded’ definition, and also some kind of public pronouncement, such as these, from Aristophanes’ ‘The Birds’ and Plutarch’s ‘Camillus’:
“Hearken, ye people! Hoplites, pick up your weapons and return to your firesides; do not fail to read the decrees of dismissal we have [προγράφωμεν].” (The Birds, 450)
and
“even after the indictment against him had been [προγεγραμμένης]…” (Camillus, 11, Part 2).
From all of these, and its context in Galatians, translators have tried to find the proper meaning of the word here. Clearly the prefix ‘προ’, like the English ‘before’, has shades of meaning between ‘previously’ (before in time), and ‘in front of’ (before in place), of which the latter has seemed more relevant here, although Paul seems also to be talking about his previous visit. The idea that he might have been talking about a previous letter has generally been rejected.
The ‘-γράφη’ part has caused more difficulty (although there is absolutely no suggestion in any other instances that it might refer to an image). It means ‘writing’, but it is not clear whether what was written had actually be pasted to a noticeboard of some kind or simply made known to the public, in order to be described as προεγράφη. The two non-biblical examples above suggest a physical exhibition, which passers-by could read, but other examples (such as the summoning of assemblies in Aeschines’ ‘On the Embassy’, or a military commission in Demosthenes’ ‘Against Conon’) suggest more of a proclamation or verbal announcement (albeit of an originally written instruction).
“…the Prytanes shall [προγράψαι] two meetings of the assembly of the people according to law…” (On the Embassy, 2, 60)
and
“Two years ago I went out to Panactum, where we had been [προγραφείσης] to do garrison duty.” (Orations, 54, 3)
It seems that a reasonable translation of προεγράφη as it appears in Galatians should at least incorporate a sense of public proclamation, with the possibility of a physical notice, without excluding a more metaphorical interpretation. To my mind both ‘portray’ and ‘exhibit’ seem a bit too literal: my own suggestion would be ‘present,’ which could include both.
What it cannot possibly imply is that St Paul supported his preaching by trekking around western Turkey showing the Shroud to the people he was talking to. Given his hostility to the Jewish Christians it is impossible that he could have had possession of Christ’s shroud, even if it had been preserved, and the word ‘προεγράφη’, as we have seen, carries no pictorial, nor even a metaphorically illustrative, implication.
=================================
ADDENDUM.
More recently, in a discussion with Dale Glover on the Real Seekers site (youtube.com/watch?v=KFC7Hc42FXc&t=6560s), Jack Markwardt posed a different historical scenario, namely that St Peter had first preached to the Galatians, ‘exhibiting’ the Shroud, in a way that St Paul approved of, and that it was a different set of Jewish Christians who had subsequently betwitched them. In a detailed comment, Jack explains:
“In Galatians 2:11-14, Paul claims that, at some unspecified time, certain Judaizers were sent by James to Antioch, and, while they were there, Peter and other Jews, including Barnabas, stopped eating with Gentiles. Paul also claims that Peter was afraid of these men, and he accuses Peter of hypocrisy, saying “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?” From this, it would appear that Peter may not have been adhering to Jewish dietary laws, but it is not clear how he may have been forcing Gentiles to follow Jewish custom. As Peter was circumcised, he could not have been a hypocrite on that issue and, indeed, he had previously baptised the Roman centurion Cornelius without requiring his circumcision (Acts 10:27-28), an action later approved by the brethren in Jerusalem (Acts 11:18) .Barnabas had always opposed the required circumcision of Gentiles and, given that he sided with Peter, on this occasion, it is clear that Peter was not trying to force the Gentiles to be circumcised.
“It is most important to note that, just before relating this incident, in Galatians 2:1-10, Paul tells of a private meeting which he, Barnabas and Titus had in Jerusalem with certain church leaders to discuss the fact that “some false believers had infiltrated our ranks to spy on the freedom we have in Christ Jesus and to make us slaves.” These leaders, including the “esteemed pillars” of James, Peter, and John, thereupon acknowledged that Paul had been entrusted with the task of preaching the gospel to the uncircumcised Gentiles, just as Peter has been intrusted to do so among the circumcised Jews. It is certainly possible that, even after this private meeting in Jerusalem, Peter, under pressure from James’ representatives, did something to induce Gentile converts to observe Jewish dietary laws, as such issue was not raised by Paul at this meeting.
“Clearly, however, this meeting was not the Council of Jerusalem, which came about only after certain Judaizers had come to Antioch and began teaching Gentile converts that they could not be saved without circumcision. (Acts 15:1). This intrusion caused Paul and Barnabas to travel to Jerusalem and, while they were publicly meeting with church leaders and other congregants, certain Pharisaic Christians demanded Gentile circumcision; however, both Peter and James took the side of Paul on this issue and, after the “whole assembly” had listened to the speeches of Paul and Barnabas, James pronounced that the Gentiles would not be required to comply with Jewish law, but only “to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals, and from blood,” and then “the apostles and elders, with the whole church, decided to choose some of their own men, and send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas to confirm this decision of the whole Church (Acts 15:6-35).”
I’m not sure that I follow this. The idea seems to be that St Peter was the first Christian to reach the Galatians, persuading them of the truth of the Resurrection by ‘displaying’ the shroud, and then they were ‘bewitched’ by another Jewish party (“certain Judaizers”), who led them away from “faith” as the means of salvation (and no circumcision), and towards “keeping the law” (and circumcision), and then Paul, hearing of this, calls them foolish and tries to bring them back to Peter’s (and his) way of thinking. In this scenario it is not clear when, if at all, Paul went to Galatia. himself, although he says that he did. Did he and Peter both go there, before the “Judaizers?” If that were the case, I do not think that Paul would have mentioned Peter’s visit (displaying the shroud), but not his own. For this reason I do not think it was Peter who ‘portrayed’ the crucified Christ, I think it was Paul, who, in my opinion, most certainly did not have the shroud himself, and so the word ‘portrayed’ could not refer to it.
In his letter, Paul recalls meeting Peter three times, at Jerusalem, three years after he began preaching (36AD?), at Jerusalem again, fourteen years later (50AD?), and finally at Antioch. At the second meeting they seem to have agreed that Gentile converts would enjoy slightly different conditions from Jewish converts, but by the time the two men met again at Antioch, Peter had been persuaded back into the “Judaizer” fold, which enraged Paul. I can’t agree with Jack Markwardt, who says that Peter “could not have been a hypocrite on that issue.” Paul accuses him of exactly that, only a few sentences before asking the Galatians “who has bewitched you?”
Paul quite savagely repudiates the Judaizers, cursing their preaching and wishing they would castrate themselves. And Peter, he says, has rejoined them. The likelihood of his referring to St Peter as the person to whose teaching the Galatians should return seems to me, on these grounds, extremely remote.