God in Galatians – Tendencies in the study of an important theme

Abstract

Since Nils Dahl’s famous article on God as the most neglected factor in the study of the New Testament, many studies on God in the various corpi of the New Testament have been and are still being published. In this regard, the Pauline Letters have received a fair amount of attention. In this study an overview of studies on God in the Letter to the Galatians is provided. Four such studies are discussed: N.T. Wright’s study, “The Letter to Galatians: Exegesis and theology” (published in 2000), Richard Hays’s “The God of mercy who rescues us from the present evil age” (published in 2002), Jerome Neyrey’s chapter on God in Galatians (in his book, Rendering to God. New Testament understandings of the divine, published in 2004) and Christiane Zimmerman’s book Gott und seine Söhne. Das Gottesbild des Galaterbriefs (published in 2013). Each of these contributions is discussed in detail, after which the contributions of the four studies are compared, and some suggestions are made as to aspects that still need attention.