Abstract
Does Paul’s use of the phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου in Gal. 4 necessarily refer to the physical elements of the ancient world? Challenging the current consensus attributed to Blinzler (1963: 429-43), Schweizer (1988: 455-68) and Rusam (1992: 119-25), this study analyses not only the limited corpus of texts on which their conclusions were based, but also a new corpus comprising every occurrence of στοιχεῖον in the first centuries
Setting the Scene: stoicheia as Earth, Air, Fire and Water
The phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου has been variously interpreted through the history of exegesis as a reference to elementary instruction, to the heavenly bodies, to elemental spiritual powers, and to the physical elements, with widely divergent consequences for the interpretation of Paul’s text in each case.
In the context of Galatians, στοιχεῖον appears as part of a larger discussion about the great change that belief in Christ effects in the lives of his people. In Gal. 4.1-3 Paul writes: My point is this: heirs, as long as they are minors, are no better than slaves, though they are the owners of all the property; but they remain under guardians and trustees until the date set by the father. So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to the elemental spirits of the world (τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου).
The same word στοιχεῖον then reappears in Gal. 4.8-11, although without the genitive modifier: Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods. Now, however, that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits (τὰ ἀσθενῆ καὶ πτωχὰ στοιχεῖα)? How can you want to be enslaved to them again? You are observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years. I am afraid that my work for you may have been wasted.
In both cases the NRSV renders the word as ‘elemental spirits’.
Originally deriving from the noun στοῖχος, which was used to refer to ‘rows’ of soldiers or ‘courses’ of bricks, στοιχεῖον developed a range of meanings that are summarized in the third edition of the Bauer–Danker lexicon under two broad categories: ‘basic components of something’ and ‘elemental spirits’. Within the first category, three more nuanced options are then specified: ‘elements’, usually the four basic elements of classical cosmology: earth, air, fire and water; ‘heavenly bodies’; and lastly ‘fundamental principles’ (Arndt, Danker and Bauer 2000: 946).
Which of these options should we favour in our interpretation of Galatians, and perhaps also in Colossians where the word also appears twice?
Despite the widespread adoption of the translation ‘elemental spirits’, the case for this solution is significantly complicated by the fact that there are no comparable examples of στοιχεῖον being used with this meaning before the second century. 1 Recent scholarship has also tended to neglect the possibility that Paul may have used στοιχεῖον with the meaning ‘fundamental principles’. Despite the fact that the editors of BDAG think that this meaning is ‘probable’ for Gal. 4.3 and 9, Martinus C. de Boer claims that the lexicographical research carried out by Josef Blinzler (1963), Eduard Schweizer (1988) and Dietrich Rusam (1992) demonstrates ‘beyond any reasonable doubt’ that the reference, in both Galatians and Colossians, must be to ‘the basic elements’ (de Boer 2011: 253). J. Louis Martyn and John Barclay agree with this assessment, citing the same scholars as justification. 2 And thus we arrive at scholarly consensus: στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, ‘the elements of the world’, means earth, air, fire and water. This interpretation, however, is problematic.
Problems with the Interpretation of stoicheia as Earth, Air, Fire and Water
Martinus C. de Boer
Despite acknowledging what he views as the lexicographical necessity of interpreting στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου as a reference to the four traditional elements, de Boer argues that it must also be read as ‘in some other way, or perhaps better, in some additional way’, if we are to make sense of the technicalities of Paul’s argument. Paul’s concern is not ‘to expatiate on the natural world as such’ (de Boer 2011: 253). Thus the alternative meanings, ‘elemental spirits’ and ‘heavenly bodies’ (but interestingly not ‘fundamental principles’), are brought back into consideration, despite the lack of first-century attestation that we just observed.
De Boer argues that the Galatians really were involved in formal veneration of the physical elements prior to their encounter with Paul and that this worship was strongly characterized by calendrical observances. Citing two texts from The Wisdom of Solomon to support this hypothesis, he argues that the author equates ‘the elements’ with the ‘times’, ‘solstices’, ‘seasons’ and ‘cycles of the year’, and that these elemental forces had a personal, spiritual character. 3 These are the forces to which he thinks Paul alludes in Galatians. If the Galatians’ past lives were characterized by regular seasonal festivals as expressions of worship to the elements, their new enthusiasm for Jewish festivals may not have looked that different in practice.
The strength of these conclusions, and their applicability to first-century Asia Minor, however, is questionable. In fact, Wis. 7.17-19 equates the ‘times’, ‘solstices’, ‘seasons’ and ‘cycles of the year’ with ‘the activity of the elements’ ([τήν] ἐνέργειαν στοιχείων), not with the elements themselves (emphasis mine). And while this association of στοιχεῖον with calendrical matters is intriguing, and Paul may well have been familiar with it, 4 it is overbold to assert the existence of the same association in Galatians without evidence that the two things are similarly associated in either other Jewish or other Gentile sources of the period.
J. Louis Martyn
Like de Boer, J. Louis Martyn acknowledges the difficulties with the ‘physical elements’ reading of στοιχεῖον, 5 but he finds a different interpretative escape route. Combining de Boer’s citations from The Wisdom of Solomon with Apuleius’s reference to the temple of Cybele in Pessinus where the goddess was worshipped as the ‘mistress of the elements’ (Met. 11.5), Martyn endorses the view that Paul’s Galatian readers were element-worshippers before he met them (Martyn 1997: 396). In addition, he argues that the central dualities of pagan cosmology – earth and air, fire and water – were mirrored in the Jewish worldview by similar dualities between Jew and Gentile, sacred and profane, law and not-law. And this becomes the basis for Paul’s accusation that, by embracing Judaism, they were returning to the same kind of system that had dominated their lives in the past.
Once again, however, there are significant problems with this interpretation of Paul’s logic. It is by no means clear that Paul’s own gospel is free from underlying dualities: Even within the text of Galatians we find that a healthy mind-set is regulated by the contrast between grace and works, freedom and slavery, flesh and Spirit and so on. Moreover, Martyn’s reconstruction of the situation is dependent on a series of tight interpretative calls and bold speculative leaps. Like de Boer, he assumes that the association of στοιχεῖον vocabulary and calendrical matters found in The Wisdom of Solomon is directly relevant to Paul’s text. He assumes that Apuleius’s comments about religious life in Northern Galatia in the second century can be applied to Paul’s readers in the first century who lived much more probably in Southern Galatia. He assumes that the ‘Agitators’ who were at work in the Galatian churches made use of traditions about Abraham that presented him journeying towards the knowledge of God ‘by an astrological contemplation of the elements’. 6 The reality, however, is that we know very little even about the identity of the agitators, let alone about the details of their opinions.
John Barclay
Perhaps in response to the practical difficulties of applying the work of Blinzler, Schweizer and Rusam to the text of Galatians, John Barclay acknowledges their conclusions but immediately sidesteps their consequences. ‘Recent research has confirmed’, he writes, ‘that στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου most likely refers to the physical elements of the world’ (Barclay 2015: 409). Rather than seeking to legitimize slavery to earth, air, fire and water as an apt description of Paul’s, or the Galatians’, religious life prior to their acceptance of Christ, he talks instead about slavery to ‘the natural order of the cosmos through alignment to its elemental, physical components’ (Barclay 2015: 409, emphasis mine). Barclay’s interpretation of στοιχεῖον, thus revised, floats upward from BDAG’s tightly circumscribed definition ‘physical elements’ to the broader category ‘basic components of something’. For Barclay, στοιχεῖον refers to the basic components of the old age – an age which he characterizes, following Martyn, in terms of the human attempt to move toward God in contrast to the apocalyptic movement of God toward humanity that characterizes the new age (Barclay 2015: 345). From there the term is rapidly transposed to mean basic components of ‘worth’ as it was assessed according to these old age priorities in pagan and Jewish religious culture at the time (Barclay 2015: 391).
Returning to the stoicheia tou kosmou
So much then for the status quæstionis and for attempts to apply it in practical exegesis. Our concern now is to ask whether all this is heading on the right track. As in any field of study, if we sense that the scholarly consensus is leading us into the long grass, it is always worth pausing to reconsider the assumptions that support it. The difficulties that students of Galatians encounter in implementing the ‘physical elements’ reading encourage us to return to the phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου and think again.
Each of the commentators we have consulted thus far – de Boer, Martyn and Barclay – derives the conclusion that στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου can only mean ‘physical elements’ from the lexicographical work of Josef Blinzler, Eduard Schweizer and Dietrich Rusam. Of these three contributions to the debate, Blinzler’s 1963 article ‘Lexikalisches zu dem Terminus τὰ στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου bei Paulus’ is the earliest and the most extensive.
Noting the sheer volume of the research already available in his time and the prevalence of opinions driven by the desire to accommodate preconceived conclusions, Blinzler sought new objectivity by attempting a quantitative survey of the definitional options for στοιχεῖον. He concluded that the only meanings of the word that could be proven in the time of Paul were ‘letters of the alphabet’, ‘foundations or principles (of a science, of an art, of an institution etc.)’ and ‘basic materials’. He then argued that only ‘basic materials’ should be considered a serious option in the Pauline context first, because it was by far the most common reading in Paul’s time and second, because the addition of the genitive modifier τοῦ κόσμου ‘excludes every other meaning’ (Blinzler 1963: 439).
To support the first of these assertions, Blinzler amassed a collection of 175 citations drawn from ‘the more well-known Jewish and Christian sources before and after Paul’ (Blinzler 1963: 439). 7 Classifying instances of στοιχεῖον as either references to basic materials, the stars, letters of the alphabet or fundamental principles, he determined that 78 per cent of them referred to basic materials. To support his second assertion, he listed 11 citations where the precise formula στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου was used, and he found that they referred to ‘basic materials’ in every case. 8 How accurate or complete was this assessment?
The Preponderance of Extra-biblical Citations Meaning ‘Basic Materials’
With the help of Thesaurus Linguae Graecae (TLG), it is possible to map out the overall footprint of the word στοιχεῖον in the Greek language up to and including the time of Paul. It occurs roughly 2,200 times in literature dating from before the second century, highlighting the comparative poverty of Blinzler’s survey and inviting us to ask some important questions about his choice of sources. The critical question is that of genre. After Plato, στοιχεῖον became the in-house term of choice among philosophical and natural-scientific writers for referring to the elements of the physical world, 9 but that does not mean it necessarily ceased to have alternative functions in other types of literature.
Based on his extensive review of classical sources, Andrew Bandstra has concluded that στοιχεῖον denotes a basic, irreducible component of any whole an author chooses to describe: ‘στοιχεῖον is essentially a “formal” word, using “formal” in the sense that in and by itself no specific content is designated. It receives its “specific content” from the context in which it is used’ (Bandstra 1964: 39-46). 10 The English language is awash with similarly ‘formal’ words that take up their meaning from their surrounding context. As Bandstra notes, the word ‘element’ itself is a prime example. It has a fixed, technical meaning in the context of chemistry, but it can refer equally well to ‘elements’ of mathematical proof, ‘elements’ of good character or even the ‘elements’ of the communion meal in other contexts. ‘Pieces’, ‘particles’, ‘facets’, ‘constituents’ – all have this same inherent flexibility.
On the basis of his sample of texts, Blinzler found that ‘basic materials’ was by far the most common reading of στοιχεῖον in the time of Paul. Given that his sources were predominantly philosophical and apologetic texts, where we would expect στοιχεῖον to mean ‘basic materials’, this hardly seems surprising. If the meaning of the word is contextually dependent, as Bandstra argues, we should think carefully before forcing this interpretation on Paul’s text.
For the purpose of this article, I have returned to Blinzler’s original selection of authors and assembled an exhaustive list of στοιχεῖον citations from them using TLG, expanding his collection from 175 to 203 instances, including several fragmentary texts. I have also assembled a parallel corpus of texts comprising every instance of the word in the first centuries
Looking first at the corpus of texts used by Blinzler, his original conclusion – that the reading ‘physical components’ is the most common – is broadly confirmed; στοιχεῖον means ‘physical components’ in 67 per cent of the citations. 12 Bandstra’s insight, that the meaning of the word is dependent on the context, is also clearly validated: 78 per cent of the citations drawn from natural-historical, exegetical and apologetic contexts mean ‘physical components’, but in citations drawn from outside these categories, the figure drops to just 26 per cent.
Turning to the first century
Even in contexts where the subject matter is scientific or philosophical, it is still clearly possible for authors to use στοιχεῖον with other meanings without confusing their readers. In his treatise On Plants, as part of a discussion of the role that God’s word plays as a boundary between the physical elements, Philo exploits the flexibility of στοιχεῖον by comparing the role that vowels play as boundaries between the στοιχείων ἀϕώνων (the ‘voiceless letters’) of the alphabet (Plant. 10.5). Similar illustrative uses of στοιχεῖον are common in both corpora.
στοιχεῖον Citations – Blinzler Corpus.
Sources: Aristides, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, the Epistle to Diognetus, the Shepherd of Hermas, Irenaeus, Josephus, Justin Martyr, LXX, New Testament, Philo, Tatian, Theophilus.
στοιχεῖον Citations – First Century
Sources: Antiochus of Athens, Anonymus Londinensis, Apion, Apocalypsis Adam, Apollonius of Tyana, Aristonicus of Alexandria, Arius Didymus, Boethus, Clement of Rome, Comarius, Demetrius, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dioscorides Pedanius, Erotianus, Flavius Josephus, Gaius Musonius Rufus, Heraclitus, Hero of Alexandria, Longinus, Lucius Annaeus Cornutus, Moderatus, New Testament, Philo, Philodemus, Philoxenus, Plutarch, Pseudo-Archytas, Severus, Strabo, Teucer, Theon, Tryphon, Tyrannion, Vitae Aesopi.
In the Blinzler corpus, it is perhaps surprising to find that the reading ‘basic components’ also predominates in historical narrative, accounting for 63 per cent of the citations. In these cases, however, the authors are always either disclosing their own acceptance of the traditional elemental scheme or that of a character in their narrative, or they are using it as an illustration for some other reality. In the first century
In the Blinzler corpus, therefore, and even more clearly in the first century
The Addition of the Genitive Modifier tou kosmou
What of Blinzler’s second claim, that the addition of the genitive modifier τοῦ κόσμου obliges us to conclude that a reference to basic materials is intended? Blinzler states that every one of the 11 examples he presents carries this meaning. Even if this claim is incontestable, the strong connection we have established between the meaning of στοιχεῖον and its context casts serious doubt on the strength of the conclusion.
If the citations are drawn from scientific, philosophical or apologetic contexts – and 10 of them are – why would we expect any meaning other than ‘basic materials’? The uniformity of meaning that Blinzler observes here says next-to-nothing about the meaning of στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου in other contexts – like Galatians. Just because the word ‘elements’, plus the genitive modifier ‘of the table’ refers to chemical elements in 100 per cent of citations drawn from science text books, it does not follow that it refers to chemical elements when it appears, say, in a book about making furniture, or in a book offering guidance on dinnertime etiquette.
Even without this crucial observation, the assertion that Blinzler’s data necessitate the reading ‘earth, air, fire and water’ is overdrawn. Blinzler presents three examples of the phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου from the Sibylline Oracles, each of which occurs in the context of apocalyptic discourse. In each case the elements involved are enumerated – air, land, sea, light, the vault of heaven, days and nights – but without any clear correlation to the traditional four (Sib. Or. 2.207; 3.80; 8.337). 16 Blinzler’s citation from the Orphic Hymn to Fire is similarly ambiguous. 17 Fire is extolled as κόσμου στοιχεῖον ἄριστον (the world’s best element) and yet it is unclear whether the implied comparison is with the other three traditional elements or with the entities singled out for praise in the adjacent hymns, which include night, heaven, the sun, the moon and various primeval deities.
In Dietrich Rusam’s 1992 article, Blinzler’s original list of eleven citations of στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου was extended with the help of the still-embryonic TLG to include a further nine examples. 18 In cases where the context of the citations indicates scientific or philosophical discussion – which account for eight of the nine – the phrase clearly signifies physical elements as one might expect. In the one example where the context differs, however, Rusam himself notes the exception. The citation, from the late second/early third-century text of Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Pyrrhonism, summarizes the convictions of the Pythagoreans, who believed that the basic components of reality (στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου) were in fact numbers. 19
Returning to TLG in 2017 and performing the same search that Rusam carried out 25 years previously draws our attention to several additional texts. In a commentary on Hesiod’s Theogonia, the third-century
An ambiguous text from the astrologer Antiochus of Athens, dating from sometime between the first century
In the works of the late second/early third-century church father Clement of Alexandria, the phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου occurs seven times in the form of direct quotations from either Gal. 4 or Col. 2. Whatever these citations tell us about Paul’s intentions as an author, they certainly testify to the flexibility of the term στοιχεῖον, even with the addition of its genitive modifier.
In Book 1 of his Miscellanies, Clement cites Colossians twice and Galatians once as part of an attack on philosophers who abolish the concept of providence and honour ‘the elements of the world’. 22 Here, as so often elsewhere in our data set, when the surrounding context is scientific or philosophical in nature, στοιχεῖον is used as a reference to the physical elements. In Book 6 of the Miscellanies, however, στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου is handled in a different way. Arguing that, in Paul’s mind, the secular philosophies of his time were ‘preparatory training’ for the truth of the gospel, Clement interprets στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου in Gal. 4 and Col. 2 – in unison with the less controversial occurrence of στοιχεῖα in Heb. 5 – as a reference to the basic components of philosophical or religious education (Strom. 6.8.62). 23 Two chapters later, he draws the same conclusion from Colossians, which, in his view, informs us that Hellenic philosophy is ‘elementary’, in contrast to the philosophy of Christ, which is ‘perfect’ (6.15.117).
In Book 1 of his treatise The Teacher, Clement declines to tell us what enslavement to the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου actually means in Gal. 4, but he does make it clear that it is Paul’s way of referring to a specifically Jewish experience (Paed. 1.6.33). If it is a Jewish experience, how can it possibly mean enslavement to the physical elements? This is the dilemma that drives the extraordinary exegetical creativity of de Boer and Martyn. Enslavement to the physical elements does not seem to be a natural description of Judaism at all.
Book 5 of the Miscellanies offers an additional insight into the meaning of στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου in a passage that has no connection to its usage in Paul. Arguing that symbolic speech, and the explanation of what it symbolises, are ‘characteristic of the wise man’ (Strom. 5.8.46), Clement discusses three Greek ‘copy-heads’ – phrases that use each letter of the alphabet once and only once – to demonstrate his point. The first is interpreted as a reference to the four traditional elements of earth, air, fire and water; the second, to linguistic elements, beginning with the 24 letters of the Greek alphabet; and the third to ‘the administration of the elements also of the cosmos’ (Strom. 5.8.49). 24 The contents of this final category are not entirely clear in Clement’s text, but if the several parallel examples of symbolic interpretation listed in the paragraph immediately following belong in the same register, ‘elements of the cosmos’ is a broad enough expression to encompass ploughs, furrows, seed, rain, phases of the moon, seasons, night, planets and the sea.
Tertullian offers an interesting final reference point for our examination of the phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου. In Against Marcion he contends vigorously for a literal interpretation of bondage to the elements of the world in Galatians, arguing that while Paul may be describing the Gentiles’ enslavement to elements conceived as gods in Gal 4.8, in 4.9 he is critiquing the distinctively Roman dependence on the basic elements of learning (Adv. Mar. 5.4).
These citations offer an eye-opening, and very early, perspective on the current scholarly consensus that ‘physical elements’ is the ‘only meaning’ that can be credibly attached to Paul’s use of στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου in Galatians (Martyn 1997: 394-95). Of the 32 examples of the phrase considered in this study, only 23 unequivocally denote physical components, 5 refer to basic components of learning and 4 signify basic components considered more broadly – including Sextus Empiricus’s reference to the Pythagorean conviction that numbers are the basic components of reality and the ambiguous reference in Antiochus of Athens to ‘the spiritual element of the world’, which may refer to light. 25
Conclusions and Application
How then should these findings affect our understanding of Paul? Returning to Blinzler’s original assessment of the lexicographical data, we found that the mere preponderance of references to physical elements in his sample of texts was not a good reason to adopt this reading in the Pauline context. As de Boer notes, Paul is not seeking to ‘expatiate on the natural world as such’ in Gal. 4 (de Boer 2011: 253). When expatiation on the natural world is not the agenda, only 26 per cent of the citations in Blinzler’s corpus, and just 15 per cent of the citations in our wider first-century
As to the claim that the addition of τοῦ κόσμου obliges us to read the phrase as a reference to the physical elements, the logic is similarly unconvincing. Where στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου appears in scientific, philosophical or apologetic contexts, it should hardly surprise us that physical elements is the meaning in question. It says less about the addition of τοῦ κόσμου than it says about the function of στοιχεῖα in these settings. In several cases στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου is used to denote physical components other than the traditional four. In Sextus Empiricus’s summary of Pythagorean beliefs, the basic elements under discussion are numbers. For Clement of Alexandria στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου can refer to the elements of religious education.
Given these data, we may return to Paul and ask how he might have used a word with this inherent flexibility in the context of his letters.
We have already noted that the citations in Gal. 4 form part of a larger discussion of the great change that belief in Christ effects in the lives of his people. Paul’s text moves in two repetitive cycles from 3.23-29 and from 4.1-8, navigating a trajectory – broadly speaking – from Jewish to Gentile experience in each case. 26 In the first cycle, Paul tells us that, apart from faith in Christ, Jews are ‘imprisoned and guarded under the law’. After faith comes they are liberated from this guardian, and Gentiles have the opportunity to join them. In the second cycle, Paul tells us that, apart from faith in Christ, Jews are minors, enslaved under ‘the elements of the world’. After faith comes they attain their majority, and Gentiles, once again, have the opportunity to join them.
The context in which στοιχεῖα appears has nothing to do with science, philosophy or apologetics. The context is a discussion about maturation from the pre-Christian state to the Christian state. And so it seems highly probable that Paul chooses the term στοιχεῖα here to refer to the fundamental components of pre-Christian living as it contrasts to fullness of life in Christ. He is not necessarily claiming that these components are rudimentary, only that they are fundamental and irreducible.
Why does Paul add the genitive modifier τοῦ κόσμου? The answer, I think, lies in Gal. 4.9, where he uses στοιχεῖα terminology once again to tie Jewish and Gentile pre-Christian experience together.
In 4.3 Paul seems to have Jews primarily in mind when he says, ‘we were enslaved to the στοιχεῖα του κόσμου’. In 4.9, however, his attention is focused on his Galatian readers who are returning again to the patterns of their past – patterns that he classifies almost identically as enslavement to ‘the weak and poor στοιχεῖα’. 27 The reason for the addition of του κόσμου in 4.3, then, is simply to spread the net wide enough to include these distinctively Gentile experiences when he reaches that part of his argument.
Caution is certainly required as we seek to draw conclusions. Paul does not spell out his intentions in the use of these flexible terms, and the data from which inferences can be drawn is thin. Assembling the clues as best we can, στοιχεῖα του κόσμου in Galatians is most probably a reference to the ‘nuts and bolts’ of religious belief and practice outside Christ for both Jews and pagans. There is no reason to assume that these ‘nuts and bolts’ could not have included calendrical observances (so de Boer) or absorption with cosmic polarities (so Martyn), and yet neither is there any reason to insist that the pagan background of the Galatians should be equated to Judaism at these points. To the extent that calendrical observances and cosmic polarities were real ingredients in the Galatian situation, they were expressions of the more fundamental problem that lies at the heart of Paul’s critique, viz. his readers’ continued commitment to the underlying spiritual grammar of the world. Paul’s στοιχεῖα vocabulary accommodates the gulf he perceives to exist between all forms of religious commitment and experience outside Christ, and religious commitment and experience in Christ. Thus we arrive at a very similar conclusion to John Barclay, whose flexible response to the current lexicographical consensus was noted above. According to Barclay, Paul’s primary purpose here is to highlight the radical contrast between the old, pre-Christian age and the new. Yet there is no obligation for us to follow Barclay in assuming that the primary axis of difference between these two ages has to do with measures of worth. On the contrary, we are free to conceive multiple axes of difference, just as Paul himself conceives the multiple new dualities that characterize the Christian life.
Whatever Paul’s readers thought they were adding to their faith by accepting the Agitators’ message, and whatever the Agitators hoped to achieve by preaching it, in practice the distinctively Galatian reception of their programme involved turning back the salvation-historical clock and re-embracing the very things from which the coming of Christ had delivered them.
How, then, should the phrase στοιχεῖα του κόσμου be translated in Gal 4.3? The question clearly depends on the translation philosophy that is applied to the text as a whole, but as an initial suggestion, the thrust of Paul’s logic might perhaps be accurately captured with the words: ‘So with us; while we were minors, we were enslaved to worldly religious principles.’
Despite the more strident conclusions of Schweizer and Rusam that are based on his work, it is surprising to find that Blinzler’s reading of Galatians ultimately proceeds along the lines outlined above. Asking himself what Paul might have understood by στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου, Blinzler argues that Paul cannot, in fact, have meant basic materials in a physical sense. In Paul, ‘the notion of cosmos is transposed out of the category of physical objectivity into the category of ethical accountability’ (Blinzler 1963: 442). ‘The world’ in Gal. 4 needs to be understood in the same register that we encounter it in Gal. 6.14: ‘May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.’
How these insights apply to Colossians is a subject for another study, although Schweizer perhaps indicates the way forward when he argues that there is no obvious reason to equate the στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου with the angelic intermediaries that appear to have been the focus of worship in the Colossian church. 28
For Galatians, however, Blinzler – liberated from his later interpreters – can perhaps be allowed the final word. ‘στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου’, he writes, should not be read as a reference to elemental spirits or to ‘the constitutive components of the physical world’ but to ‘the constitutive components of the “world” conceived as the epitome of pre-Christian and extra-Christian ways of being’. 29
Footnotes
1.
For a comprehensive review of the relevant texts, see Blinzler 1963: 432-34. Arnold mounts an extended case for the reading ‘elemental spirits’, despite the lack of early citations, arguing that the magical tradition on which the extant citations are based is early, even if the citations themselves are late (see Arnold 1995: 172; see also 
: 204-205). As part of his broader allegorizing agenda, Philo, along with other writers, occasionally asserts that worship of the pagan gods amounts to worship of the elements – when the gods are properly interpreted, each with their own equivalent in the physical world (e.g., Philo, Contempl. 3.2–4.1). Only in one instance does he appear to describe direct worship of the elements as such (Spec. 2.255).
2.
Martyn 1997: 394-95: ‘The lexicographical labors of Blinzler and Rusam have shown this [the physical elements] to be the most common meaning of the term stoicheia, and the only meaning attested for the expression stoicheia tou kosmou’. So also : 409.
3.
Wis. 7.17-19: ‘For it is he who gave me unerring knowledge of what exists, to know the structure of the world and the activity of the elements (τῶν στοιχείων); the beginning and end and middle of times, the alternations of the solstices and the changes of the seasons, the cycles of the year and the constellations of the stars …’ See also Wis. 13.1-2: ‘For all people who were ignorant of God … supposed that either fire or wind or swift air, or the circle of the stars, or turbulent water, or the luminaries of heaven were the gods that rule the world’ (see : 254).
4.
5.
6.
Martyn asserts that, ‘The Teachers are almost certain to have shared the Jewish view of Gentiles as people who ignorantly worship the visible parts of creation, and they may have spoken in this connection of the Gentile tendency to confuse the elements with God’ (Martyn 1997: 399). He notes ‘grounds for thinking that the Teachers made extensive use of traditions that present Abraham as the first Gentile to come to the true knowledge of God’, and that, ‘they will not have overlooked the traditions in which the patriarch is said to have made the journey to the knowledge of God by an astrological contemplation of the elements’ (Martyn 1997: 400). Contrast Barclay’s guidance for practitioners of mirror-reading, which advocates ‘a carefully controlled method of working which uses logical criteria and proceeds with suitable caution’ (: 84.)
7.
The sources in question are Philo, Flavius Josephus, the Septuagint, non-Pauline New Testament texts, the Shepherd of Hermas, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, The Epistle to Diognetus and Clement of Alexandria.
8.
Blinzler presents three citations from Philo (Aet.109.4; Quis Rer. Div. heres. 134.5 and 140.3), the first of which discusses the constant transmutation of the elements, and the other two discuss the origin of the physical universe; three from the Sibylline Oracles (Sib. Or. 2.207; 3.80; 8.337), which describe the final destruction of the physical world; one from Galen (Nat. Hom. 15.95.5), which focuses explicitly on the four traditional elements; one from Pseudo Lucian (Amor. 19.2), which discusses the origin of the physical universe; one from the Orphic Hymns (Orph. 5.4) extolling the virtues of fire; one from Irenaeus (Adv. Her. 1.5.4) discussing the opinions of the Valentinians as to the origin of the four material elements; and one from Clement of Alexandria (Ex. Theo. 3.48.4.1) representing Valentinian cosmology.
9.
See Vallance 2012: 499. Note, however, that Plato, like Aristotle, preferred to use the word στοιχεῖον for properly indivisible constituents of things like letters and syllables, and was consequently tentative in his application of it to the physical elements (see, e.g., Tim. 48b). ‘For Plato it was the elementary geometrical figures that lay behind the physical elements that were the real στοιχεῖα’ (: 37).
10.
In addition to noting the ‘formal’ function of στοιχεῖον and its applicability only to entities that are properly irreducible and fundamental, Bandstra also claims that it is ‘always associated with a certain quality or power’, viz. it is used to describe entities with the ability to affect the things which depend on them, and follow from them (: 39-46).
11.
The natural-historical category includes scientific and/or philosophical treatments of natural phenomena; the exegetical category includes naturalistic or allegorical exegesis of, or commentary on, biblical or classical texts; the exhortative category includes moral exhortation and apologetic dialogue; the philological category includes etymological and grammatical material; the mathematical category includes mathematical, geometrical and numerological material; the historical category includes historical, historiographical and biographical material; the devotional category includes references to conventional/reciprocal and apotropaic interactions with the divine realm.
12.
This is a high figure, but lower than Blinzler’s figure of 78 per cent which was artificially inflated on account of his failure to account for examples where στοιχεῖον is used in a general sense, meaning ‘basic components’ without any necessary indication that they are physical.
13.
Plutarch, Vit. Demetr. 5.1.1.
14.
Strabo, Geogr. 2.5.16.18; 2.5.34.3.
15.
Apion, Frag. Hom. 109.2.
16.
18.
Rusam presents four citations from Galen (El. Hip. 1.455; 1.456; 1.472; Nat. Hom. 15.58.8) which discuss the physical origin of trees and animals, the role of pure physical elements in human life, and the composition of beings from the physical elements; one citation from Marcus Aurelius (Sol. 1.18.1), which discusses the dissolution of the body into its constituent elements at death; one from Sextus Empiricus (Pyrr. Hyp. 3.152), which describes the cosmological convictions of Pythagoreans; two from Alexander of Aphrodisias (Met. 2.1, Fat. 203.22), the first of which deals with the physical elements in commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology and the second of which discusses the role of fate in preserving the basic order of the world including its physical elements; and one from the Chaldean Oracles (Chal. Or. 39) dealing with the physical elements as part of a broader discussion of the stability of the universe.
19.
22.
Air in the case of Diogenes, water in the case of Thales, and fire in the case of Hippasus. See Clement, Strom. 1.11.50-53.
23.
In Heb. 5.12, where στοιχεῖα appears with the modifier τῆς ἀρχῆς, it is interesting to note that στοιχεῖα is used, as it is in Gal. 4.9, in close association with the Greek word πάλιν (‘you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God’) and that it forms part of a discussion about maturity (the readers lack the maturity required to digest the ‘solid food’ that the author wishes to provide.) The claim is not that they are returning to basic things, but that they have never advanced beyond them. In my doctoral thesis, I argue that this passage in Hebrews interacts with a broader Pauline pattern of argument, present not only in Gal. 4 and Col. 2 but also in 1 Cor. 3.1-4. In our quest to understand Paul’s τοῦ κόσμου vocabulary, the repeated alignment of immaturity with ‘fleshly’ (σάρκινος) priorities in Corinth is especially intriguing.
24.
‘But a third copyhead was produced for children – μάρπτε, σϕίγξ, κλώψ, ζβυχθηδόν – that signifies, I think, that by the administration of the elements also of the cosmos (διὰ τῆς τῶν στοιχείων καὶ τοῦ κόσμου διοικήσεως) there is a path towards the knowledge of more complete things that is necessary for us, while eternal salvation is prevailed over by violent effort.’
25.
While it is impossible to date, or geographically locate, the origin of the Greek Magical Papyri with precision, it is striking that the only instance of the phrase στοιχεῖα τοῦ κόσμου in this voluminous resource (Ἐξορκίζω ϲε τῶ<ν> δῶδεκα ϲτοιχείων | τοῦ οὐρανοῦ καὶ ἰκοϲιτέϲϲερα ϲτοιχεί|ων τοῦ κόϲμου, ἵνα ἄγῃϲ μοι Ἡρακλῆν, ὅν ἔτεκεν Τα|αῖπιϲ, πρὸϲ Ἀλλοῦν, ἧϲ ἔτεκεν Ἀλεξανδρία, ἤδη ἤδη, ταχὺ ταχὺ) refers almost certainly to the twenty-four letters of the Greek alphabet (PGM XXXIX – see : 279).
26.
The importance of Paul’s choice of pronouns in Galatians is signalled, initially, by the striking contrast between Jewish and Gentile experience introduced at 2.15. In my doctoral thesis, I argue that his pronominal selections, complete with matching verb forms, are similarly important in 3.23–4.8.
27.
In my doctoral thesis I argue that the connotation of power present in ancient usage of στοιχεῖον noted by : 39-46) is also an important factor in Paul’s choice of words here. Paul is seeking to describe patterns of past behaviour/mental schemata that are not simply being ‘chosen’ by the Galatians in place of ‘the gospel that was proclaimed to [them]’ – they have an inherent magnetism that is drawing Paul’s readers back into their grip.