New Perspectives on Paul & Letter to Galatians - Dr. Jeremy Wade Barrier (Part 1)

A discussion with Dr. Jeremy Wade Barrier about his twelve-year journey researching ancient manuscripts and writing his latest book “Witch Hunt in Galatia,” a book providing a new perspective on ways to understand Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

Dr. Barrier also challenges us to read the Bible with a critical eye -- and to question those passages that trouble us. He also shares reasons why some Christians are resistant to new scholarship on Scripture -- and why it’s important to consider the latest research to get a better understanding into the culture and meaning behind Biblical texts.

Dr. Jeremy Wade Barrier is the Assistant Professor of Biblical Literature at Heritage Christian University and also did postdoctoral work as a Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow under Tobias Nicklas at the Universitat Regensburg, Germany. His last book "The Acts of Paul and Thecla: A Critical Introduction and Commentary" was written in 2009. He earned his PhD in Biblical Interpretations at the Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University.

Check out his latest Book:
Witch Hunt in Galtaia: Magic, Medicine & Ritual and the Occassion of Paul's Letter to the Galatians.
https://www.amazon.com/Jeremy-Wade-Barrier/dp/1978709757

Approximately 2,000 years ago, some Jewish communities of Galatia in central Asia Minor believed they had fallen under a curse, argues Jeremy Wade Barrier. A fellow Jew named Paul wrote the letter we call Galatians to help them escape its effects. In the letter, Barrier argues, Paul called for the Jews in Galatia to stop practicing circumcision. The rite had fallen into disuse within many Jewish communities in the Roman Empire, but Barrier argues the Galatian Jews believed it was a talisman that would protect them from harm.

As a further precaution, they needed to deal with the person who had brought this evil to their community. A witch hunt was underway, and some had concluded that the witch was none other than Paul. Barrier provides a reconstruction of the original occasion of Paul’s letter to the Galatians and shows how Paul defended himself from accusations of witchcraft by countering that the ritual that would protect them from the “Evil Eye” was not circumcision, but rather baptism. Through the ritual of baptism, they could receive healing from a material, yet divine, “breath” of God. Barrier also reconstructs an earlier understanding of this pneuma that was lost to subsequent Christianity under the influence of Neoplatonism.