Paul has just sworn that after his call he went not up to Jerusalem (v. 17). Now he concedes that he did go — eventually — and the whole verse is built to make the concession harmless. Four features do the work.

The clock. After three years puts a long interval between the revelation and any contact with Jerusalem. Whatever Paul’s gospel is, it was not acquired there.

The verb. He repeats ἀνῆλθον, the very verb he denied in v. 17, so the reader hears the correction as a correction. He went up — but not then, and not for that.

The purpose. ἱστορῆσαι is a NT hapax and the most contested word in the verse. It denotes going to see a person or place for oneself, to make acquaintance — not going to be instructed, commissioned, or examined. Paul could have written μαθεῖν or διδαχθῆναι; he had just used ἐδιδάχθην at v. 12 and refused it.

The duration. Fifteen days is short enough to be a visit and too short to be an apprenticeship. The number is specific because specificity is evidence.

And one name: Cephas, not Peter. Paul names the man by the Aramaic epithet, and the unqualified singular designation (no ‘the apostle’, no ‘the pillar’ — that comes at 2:9) keeps the encounter personal rather than institutional.

Built onbdag · bdf

Proposed — pending reviewHans Dieter Betz, Galatians: A Commentary on Paul's Letter to the Churches in Galatia, Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979)

ἱστορῆσαι is a hapax in the New Testament and absent from the LXX, which means its sense must be recovered from general Hellenistic usage — and that usage is wider than any single English verb.

The root (ἵστωρ, ‘one who knows’; cf. ἱστορία) is cognate with knowing by inquiry. Three attested lines of use are relevant:

1. Visit in order to see for oneself — of travellers going to view a city, a monument, or a notable person. This is the dominant Hellenistic sense and the one most commentators adopt.
2. Make the acquaintance of — meet a person face to face, get to know them.
3. Inquire of, question — seek information from someone.

The third is the one the argument cannot afford, and it is also the least well supported for the construction with a simple personal accusative. BDAG gives ‘visit (for the purpose of coming to know someone or something)’ and places Gal 1:18 there.

What the word is not: it is not a verb of learning (μανθάνω), of being taught (διδάσκομαι — Paul’s own denial at v. 12), of receiving tradition (παραλαμβάνω — v. 12), or of submitting a case for approval (ἀνατίθεμαι — contrast 2:2, where Paul does use that verb, and of a later visit).

Rendering: ‘get acquainted with’ in literal and modern tiers; ‘see’ retained in the liturgical register, where the older English tradition fixed it, with the note that ‘see’ is thinner than the Greek.

Built onbdag · bdf

Proposed — pending reviewF. F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Galatians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982)

ἀνῆλθον is the aorist of ἀνέρχομαι, ‘go up’ — a verb Paul uses only here, at v. 17, and at 2:1, all three times of travel to Jerusalem. The ἀνά- is partly topographical (Jerusalem sits high) and partly conventional: in Jewish usage one always goes up to Jerusalem regardless of compass direction (cf. ἀναβαίνω, Luke 2:42; Acts 11:2; 15:2).

The lexical point is the repetition. At v. 17 Paul wrote οὐδὲ ἀνῆλθον εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα; here he writes ἀνῆλθον εἰς Ἱεροσόλυμα. Same verb, same preposition, same destination — the only difference is the temporal frame and the stated purpose. English must use the identical wording at both points, or the reader cannot see that v. 18 is answering v. 17 rather than simply continuing a narrative.

Built onbdag

ἐπέμεινα carries the ἐπί- prefix marking continuation in a place already occupied, as the standing glossary entry fixes (‘stay on / remain on’, Phil 1:24-25, where Paul distinguishes it from simple μένω). The force here is that the fifteen days were not a passing-through but a lodging: Paul remained with Peter.

This slightly cuts against the thinnest reading of ἱστορῆσαι. A man who merely wanted to lay eyes on Peter does not need to stay on with him for a fortnight. But fifteen days is also too short to be a course of instruction, and that is the point Paul is making with the number.

Render ‘stayed on’; avoid ‘remained’ (which loses the prefix against μένω) and ‘lodged’ (which supplies a hospitality arrangement the verb does not name).

Built onbdag

πρός + accusative after a verb of remaining does not mark motion toward but face-to-face presence with a person — the same construction as πάρειμι πρός (Gal 4:18, 20; 2 Cor 11:9) and μένω πρός (1 Cor 16:6-7). The glossary already fixes this for πάρειμι: πρός renders ‘with’ in smooth English and ‘toward’ in the literal tier to display the accusative.

The nuance matters a little. Paul does not write ἐπέμεινα ἐν Ἱεροσολύμοις (stayed in Jerusalem) or μετʼ αὐτοῦ (with him, in company). The πρός construction puts him in Peter’s presence, as a guest in relation to a host. What he does not do is say he stayed with the church, or with the apostles.

Built onbdf · bdag

ἔπειτα is sequential-enumerative, marking the next item, as the standing glossary entry for εἶτα fixes for its near-synonym. Galatians uses it to structure the itinerary: ἔπειτα here (v. 18), ἔπειτα again at v. 21, ἔπειτα at 2:1. Three ‘thens’ pin the narrative into a verifiable chronology — which is the whole evidentiary strategy of the chapter, undergirded by the oath at v. 20.

Render ‘then’. Never a causal connective: ἔπειτα advances a list, it does not draw a conclusion.

Built onbdag · bdf

μετά + accusative is temporal (‘after’), to be kept distinguishable in English from μετά + genitive (‘with’, of accompaniment), which appears in the same letter.

The counting is the live question. Ancient reckoning was regularly inclusive, so ‘after three years’ can mean anything from a little over one full year to a little under three. The terminus a quo is also unstated: it may be the Damascus revelation (vv. 15-16) or the return to Damascus (v. 17).

What the phrase achieves rhetorically is independent of how it is counted: a substantial interval stands between the call and the first Jerusalem contact.

Built onbdf · bdag

Accusative of extent of time — ‘for fifteen days’. English supplies ‘for’ or leaves it bare; no preposition stands in Greek.

The number is evidence, and the specificity is rhetorical. Vague durations invite doubt; a count of days invites verification, which is exactly what the oath of v. 20 is for. Fifteen days is long enough that Paul is not denying real conversation, and short enough that no one can call it discipleship.

Retain the numeral as a numeral. ‘A fortnight’ is idiomatic British English but loses the odd, checkable precision of fifteen, and ‘about two weeks’ rounds away the very feature that makes the figure argumentative.

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Κηφᾶν is the Greek form of Aramaic כֵּיפָא (kêphāʾ), ‘rock’ — the epithet of which Πέτρος is the Greek translation (cf. John 1:42, where the Evangelist glosses it). Paul uses Κηφᾶς in Galatians (1:18; 2:9, 11, 14) and in 1 Corinthians (1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5); he uses Πέτρος only at Gal 2:7-8.

Policy: transliterate as written. Substituting ‘Peter’ in the reading text silently levels a distribution that is itself data — Paul’s preference for the Aramaic form in a letter arguing about Jerusalem and Judaizing is at least suggestive, and the alternation at Gal 2:7-8 (where Πέτρος appears twice inside a passage otherwise using Κηφᾶς) is part of the evidence for a cited source or formula there. A note may identify the man; the rendering may not rename him.

Built onbdag · metzger-tc

Paul writes the Hellenized declinable neuter plural Ἱεροσόλυμα here, as at 1:17 and 2:1, against the indeclinable Semitic Ἰερουσαλήμ which he reserves for the city under theological description (Gal 4:25, 26). The standing glossary entry requires both to be rendered ‘Jerusalem’ with the form recorded at every occurrence, since English cannot mark the difference.

The distribution in Galatians is tidy and probably deliberate: the geographical city Paul visited takes the Greek form; the city as covenant symbol takes the LXX form. Note it; do not render it.

Built onbdag

Two variants, both minor, both pulling in the same direction.

Κηφᾶν / Πέτρον. NA28 reads Κηφᾶν with 𝔓⁴⁶ (where extant), ℵ, A, B, and the great majority of early witnesses. A body of later witnesses, including the Byzantine tradition, reads Πέτρον. The direction of change is clear: scribes substituted the familiar Greek name for the Aramaic one, not the reverse. Κηφᾶν is original.

Ἱεροσόλυμα / Ἰερουσαλήμ. A few witnesses read the Semitic form, assimilating to the commoner NT spelling. The declinable form is the harder reading and is supported by Paul’s own consistent usage in the immediate context.

Neither variant affects sense. Both illustrate the same scribal habit — normalization toward the more familiar form — and both are worth recording precisely because the forms Paul chose are part of the evidence about how he wrote.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

Galatians 1:11-24 is sworn testimony (hence v. 20: before God, I am not lying). The thesis is v. 12: Paul neither received nor was taught his gospel from a human being. Verses 13-24 are the evidence, laid out as an itinerary with the Jerusalem contacts minimized at every point.

The structure of the concession in v. 18 is worth seeing plainly:

What the verse does not say is as pointed as what it does. Paul does not say he was examined, approved, commissioned, or instructed. He does not say he met the Twelve (v. 19 restricts the contact further: only James besides). He does not name any transfer of tradition.

Built onbdag · metzger-tc

Proposed — pending reviewJ. Louis Martyn, Galatians: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Bible 33A (New York: Doubleday, 1997)

Chrysostom presses the verse hard against those who made Paul Peter’s disciple: Paul went not to learn anything from Peter nor to receive correction, but simply out of regard for the man — and even so he stayed only a fortnight. Chrysostom reads the brevity as the argument.

Jerome, commenting on Galatians, is alert to the oddity of ἱστορῆσαι and to the Latin tradition’s ut viderem Petrum, which flattens the Greek into plain seeing. He takes the visit as one of honor paid to Peter rather than of instruction received.

The Vulgate’s videre and the Old Latin’s similar renderings fixed ‘to see Peter’ in the Western tradition, and the English versions inherited it. That is reception, not lexical evidence (§11): videre is materially thinner than ἱστορέω, and the uniformity of the English tradition at this point reflects Latin’s lack of a comparable verb rather than a judgment about the Greek.

Proposed — pending reviewJohn Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 13 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1889) · Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, trans. Andrew Cain, Fathers of the Church 121 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010)