Galatians: Worship for Life by Faith in the Crucified and Risen Lord

This book presents two new proposals regarding Pauls letter to the Galatians. First it demonstrates an entirely new chiastic structure embracing the entire letter based on strict linguistic and textual criteria rather than on conceptual or theological themes. This chiastic structure accords with the view that Galatians was originally performed orally in a setting of communal worship. Secondly it offers a new proposal for a key theme that runs throughout Galatians as expressed by the subtitle of this book--”Worship for Life by Faith in the Crucified and Risen Lord.” It considers “worship” to be a comprehensive concept that includes liturgical cultic or ritual worship as well as the moral behavior that is to complement it as ethical worship in accord with the biblical tradition. “Life” refers both to the present way of living as well as to future eternal life. “Faith” refers to the acceptance of divine grace available to the believer because of the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.