Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: said, el It. e. exi'ipva-ffov, T. e. eStcaKoftTjv av, for he means what objectively is not a real matter of fact. But he transfers himself directly into the thought of his opponents, aud just as directly shows its absurdity; he assumes the reality of what his opponents asserted, and then by the apodosis annuls it as preposterous: hence the sense cannot be, as it is denned by Holsten, that his persecution on account of no longer preaching circumcision had not, possibly, the alleged pretext of making the Gentiles complete members of the theocracy, but only the one motive of national vanity and selfishness, to annul the offence of the cross.1 ? The emphasis is laid on irepirop; but eri, still (see Schneider, ad Plat. Ecp. p. 449 e, does not convey the idea that Paul, as apostle, had formerly preached circumcision. For although the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit produced in none of the apostles at once and absolutely the laying aside of all religious error previously cherished, but led them forward by gradual and individual development into the whole truth (see Liicke's apt remarks on John ii. 10, p. 501); yet in the case of Paul especially, just because he was converted in the midst of his zealotry for the law, the assumption that he had still preached the necessity of circumcision for salvation, and had thus done direct homage to the fundamental error opposed to the revelation of God in him (i. 15); and to His gospel which had been revealed to him (i. 11 f), I would be quite unpsychological. And in a historical point of view it would be at variance with the decidedly antinomistic 1 Holsten has, in a special excursus (z. Evang. d. Paul. u. Petr. p. 337 ff.), acutely explained his interpretation, and endeavoured to vindicate it. At the close he puts it in this shape: Paul ...