This is the most broken sentence Paul writes in Galatians, and the breakage is the point. He begins a construction with ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν δοκούντων (“but from those reputed…”) — a source-preposition that promises a verb like “I received” — then breaks off twice before abandoning the construction entirely and restarting with a nominative subject and an entirely different verb. What was going to be a denial that he received anything from the Jerusalem leadership becomes a denial that they added anything to him.

Three things are at stake. First, δοκέω: Paul calls the Jerusalem leaders οἱ δοκοῦντες twice here (and at vv. 2, 9), and whether that is neutral (“the recognized ones”), respectful, or edged is genuinely disputed — the standard Greek idiom is honorific, but Paul has just used the cognate construction pejoratively at Gal 6:3. Second, the parenthesis ὁποῖοί ποτε ἦσαν οὐδέν μοι διαφέρει — a startlingly cool remark about men whose standing the Galatian agitators were evidently invoking. Third, πρόσωπον … οὐ λαμβάνει, a verbatim LXX impartiality formula (Deut 10:17; Lev 19:15) by which Paul grounds his own indifference in God’s.

The verse is therefore both a concession (he did go, he did lay his gospel before them) and a refusal (their standing confers nothing, and they conferred nothing). The rendering must preserve the syntactic wreckage rather than repair it, since the repair is what every smooth translation performs and what it costs is visible.

The sentence breaks twice. ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν δοκούντων εἶναί τι sets up a construction — ἀπό + genitive of persons, naming a source — which in Pauline usage normally completes with a verb of receiving (cf. ἀπʼ ἀνθρώπων, Gal 1:1; παρὰ ἀνθρώπου, Gal 1:12). Something like “I received nothing” is expected. Instead two parentheses intervene, and when Paul resumes he has changed both the case of the participle (genitive → nominative οἱ δοκοῦντες) and the shape of the claim (source → addition).

The older grammars treat this as a lapse of dictation under emotional pressure, and that may be right. But the result is rhetorically exact: the discarded ἀπό-construction would have conceded that Jerusalem was a potential source and merely denied that Paul drew on it; what he actually writes denies that they had anything to contribute to what he already had.

The double parenthesis is itself reproduced in NA28 by em dashes. Those dashes are editorial: the earliest majuscules are unpunctuated, and the boundaries of the parenthetical material rest on grammatical analysis, not on manuscript evidence.

Built onbdf · na28

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

The articular participle οἱ δοκοῦντες occurs three times in this chapter in variant forms: τοῖς δοκοῦσιν (v. 2), τῶν δοκούντων εἶναί τι and οἱ δοκοῦντες (v. 6), οἱ δοκοῦντες στῦλοι εἶναι (v. 9). In ordinary Hellenistic Greek the absolute οἱ δοκοῦντες is an honorific — “the men of standing, those held in regard” — and is attested as such in Euripides and the orators. Taken straight, Paul is naming the Jerusalem leadership by the designation others used of them.

The complication is that the corpus has already fixed δοκέω with an infinitive in the formula εἴ τις δοκεῖ (Phil 3:4; Gal 6:3; 1 Cor 3:18; 8:2) as reflexive-intransitive — “thinks of himself that he is” — and consistently introducing a self-assessment about to be qualified. Gal 6:3 (εἰ γὰρ δοκεῖ τις εἶναί τι μηδὲν ὤν) is verbally almost identical to τῶν δοκούντων εἶναί τι here, and there the verdict is flatly negative.

Policy: render with repute-vocabulary (“those reputed to be something,” “those of repute”) which in English carries the same latitude — it can be straight or dry depending on what surrounds it. Excluded from the reading text: “those who seemed to be important” (adopts the deflationary reading and adds an evaluative adjective), “the acknowledged leaders” (adopts the honorific reading and supplies a noun the Greek withholds), “the so-called pillars” (imports v. 9’s noun and adds a sneer).

Built onbdag · bdf

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

εἶναί τι is the fixed Pauline status-idiom already settled in the glossary at Gal 6:3 and 6:15: “be something, count for something” in a reckoning, not simple existence. Compare Gal 2:6 with 1 Cor 3:7 (οὔτε ὁ φυτεύων ἐστίν τι) and Acts 5:36.

The neuter indefinite τι is deliberately contentless. Paul does not say what the Jerusalem leaders were reputed to be; the blank is left for the hearer, who already knows what the agitators were claiming. Supplying content in the reading text — “to be leaders,” “to be important,” “to be the real authorities” — closes a gap Paul left open.

Note the accentuation: the enclitic τι throws its accent back onto εἶναι (εἶναί τι). This is orthography, not a variant, and carries no weight; but it should be recorded in the parsing table so that the indefinite is not mistaken for the interrogative τί, a distinction that is editorial in the unaccented majuscules.

Built onbdag · bdf

ὁποῖος is the qualitative correlative, already fixed in the glossary as “of what sort / of what kind” and kept distinct from ὅς (identity) and τίς (interrogative identity). All five NT occurrences concern character or kind (Acts 26:29; 1 Cor 3:13; Gal 2:6; 1 Thess 1:9; Jas 1:24). Rendering “who they were” converts a question about quality into one about identity.

ποτε is the enclitic temporal adverb, “once, formerly.” Its referent is the live question.

The imperfect ἦσαν is durative and unambiguously past-referring, which rules out any attempt to make the clause concern their present standing. It is a remark about what they had been, left unspecified.

Render “of what sort they once were,” which is as open as the Greek. Excluded: “what they were like then” (colloquial), “whatever their former position” (supplies a noun), “what they once were makes no difference — those men added nothing” (collapses the parenthesis into the main clause).

Built onbdag · bdf

The glossary already distinguishes two constructions of this verb: intransitive with a genitive of comparison, “differ from” (Gal 4:1; 1 Cor 15:41), and the substantival τὰ διαφέροντα, “the things that matter / surpass” (Phil 1:10; Rom 2:18). Here a third: the impersonal οὐδέν μοι διαφέρει, with dative of the person and accusative of respect, “it makes no difference to me.” The idiom is ordinary Koine and is well attested outside the NT.

Two points of precision. οὐδέν is respectival, not a direct object — the verb is intransitive — so the literal tier should show “in no respect does it differ to me,” not “it differs nothing.” And the dative μοι restricts the claim: Paul says it makes no difference to him, which is a statement about his own evaluation, not a universal verdict on the men’s standing. That restriction is exactly what the following parenthesis then grounds in God’s own practice.

Avoid “it means nothing to me” (modern idiom suggesting contempt, which the Greek does not state) and “I do not care” (register drop, and it moralizes an evaluative claim into an attitude).

πρόσωπον θεὸς ἀνθρώπου οὐ λαμβάνει is the LXX impartiality formula, a calque of Hebrew נָשָׂא פָנִים — literally “lift the face,” the judge’s gesture of raising a suppliant’s face in favor. The corpus has already fixed the derived noun and verb (προσωπολημψία “acts of favoritism,” προσωπολημπτέω “show favoritism,” Jas 2:1, 9) as a Jewish-Christian coinage built from exactly this idiom.

The formula’s home is Deut 10:17 (ὁ θεὸς … ὅστις οὐ θαυμάζει πρόσωπον οὐδὲ μὴ λάβῃ δῶρον) and Lev 19:15 (οὐ λήμψῃ πρόσωπον πτωχοῦ), with 2 Chr 19:7, Job 34:19, and Sir 35:12-13 in the same field. Paul reproduces the LXX noun-plus-verb construction rather than the compound coinage, which puts him closer to the source text than Jas 2:1 or Acts 10:34 (προσωπολήμπτης).

The word order is striking: πρόσωπον is fronted before the subject, and ἀνθρώπου — its dependent genitive — is separated from it by θεός. The interposition of God between “face” and “of a man” is almost certainly deliberate hyperbaton, throwing weight onto the contrast of the two nouns.

Per §8 the live metaphor is retained: render “God does not receive a man’s face.” Excluded from the reading text: “God shows no partiality” (correct as to sense but deletes the idiom, and in English reads as an abstract principle rather than a courtroom gesture), “God does not judge by appearances” (imports a different claim about surfaces), “God is no respecter of persons” (declared liturgical register only — intelligible in older English, now opaque). Per §3 the masculine ἀνθρώπου is generic and the inclusive referent belongs in a note, not in the rendering.

Built onmuraoka-lxx · bdag

The verb occurs in the NT only at Gal 1:16 and here, and the two senses are materially different. At 1:16 the middle is consultative — to lay a matter before someone whose verdict carries weight. Here the force is additive: οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο, “they added nothing,” the πρός- prefix marking something laid on top of what the recipient already had.

The glossary already fixes this split and requires that the two be rendered distinctly, with the shared lemma recorded in the parsing table rather than manufactured in English.

The additive sense governs here for two reasons. First, the construction takes a direct object (οὐδέν) and a dative of the person (ἐμοί), which suits “added nothing to me” rather than “consulted nothing with me.” Second, the following verses (vv. 7-9) describe not a transfer of content but a recognition of what Paul already had — they saw, they knew, they gave right hands.

What is excluded in every tier is any rendering that converts the clause into a statement about approval: “they had nothing to add” is tolerable, but “they found nothing to correct” and “they approved my gospel” both supply a verdict Paul does not state here and defers to v. 9.

Built onbdag

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)

The emphatic dative ἐμοί stands at the head of the resumed clause, before postpositive γάρ can reach second position. Per the standing policy on emphatic datives (Phil 1:21 ἐμοὶ γὰρ τὸ ζῆν Χριστός; Phil 3:1), the fronting is topicalizing and the English must keep the pronoun early in the clause rather than relocating it mid-sentence for smoothness.

γάρ is doing real work and must be rendered (§10). It marks the resumed clause as the ground of the indifference just asserted: Paul’s reason for saying that their former standing makes no difference to him is that in the event they contributed nothing to him. The causal relation is slightly loose — as often with γάρ after a parenthesis, it resumes rather than strictly explains — but dropping it, as many English versions do, removes the only indication that vv. 6a and 6c belong to one argument.

The classification of this γάρ (resumptive versus strictly causal) is recorded rather than resolved; nothing in the rendering turns on it, since English “for” carries the same latitude.

Built onbdf

The verse is textually stable in its substance; the variation is almost entirely a matter of scribes easing a notoriously rough sentence.

οὐδέν μοι διαφέρει. A few witnesses read οὐδὲν διαφέρει without the dative, which removes the restriction of the claim to Paul’s own evaluation and makes it a general verdict. The dative is strongly attested and is the harder reading; the omission is an obvious simplification and must not be followed.

πρόσωπον … οὐ λαμβάνει. Some witnesses adjust the word order to bring ἀνθρώπου next to πρόσωπον, relieving the hyperbaton. The scattered order is the harder reading and the direction of change is clear.

προσανέθεντο. A variant προσανέθεντό μοι (adding or relocating the pronoun) appears in parts of the tradition, as do minor adjustments to the aspect. None affects the sense; all reflect the pull toward tidying a clause whose subject has shifted case mid-sentence.

Built onna28 · metzger-tc

The Vulgate reads: ab his autem qui videbantur esse aliquid (quales aliquando fuerint nihil mea interest; Deus personam hominis non accipit) mihi enim qui videbantur nihil contulerunt. Three features are worth noting. Jerome’s videbantur esse aliquid takes δοκούντων as “seemed” rather than “were reputed,” tipping toward the deflationary reading; personam hominis non accipit preserves the idiom and is the direct ancestor of the English “respecter of persons”; and contulerunt renders προσανέθεντο additively, which supports the sense adopted here.

The Peshitta likewise keeps the impartiality formula in its Semitic shape, which is unsurprising given that the Greek is already a calque of the Hebrew. Its rendering of the hanging ἀπό tends toward regularization, as Syriac syntax would require.

Neither version can reproduce the anacoluthon, and both close the construction one way or another. This is a limitation of the target languages rather than evidence about the Greek, and it should not be read as support for any English smoothing (§11).

Proposed — pending reviewBiblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, ed. R. Weber and R. Gryson, 5th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2007)

Chrysostom devotes considerable effort to defending Paul against the charge of arrogance here, arguing that οἱ δοκοῦντες reproduces the opponents’ estimation rather than Paul’s own, and that ὁποῖοί ποτε ἦσαν does not disparage the apostles but denies that past standing settles a present question of gospel content. His anxiety is itself evidence that the verse reads sharply in Greek.

Jerome, commenting on Galatians, takes the parenthesis as a statement about divine impartiality that levels all human claims to precedence, and reads it alongside Rom 2:11.

In the Reformation period the verse became a standard text for the subordination of ecclesiastical authority to the gospel, and in the nineteenth century a central text in the Tübingen reconstruction of a Paul-versus-Jerusalem conflict. Both uses press a verse that is, in its own setting, carefully balanced: Paul does go up, does lay his gospel before them, and does receive their right hands in v. 9. The verse denies that their standing adds anything; it does not deny the standing.

Proposed — pending reviewJohn Chrysostom, Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 13 (repr. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994) · Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, trans. Andrew Cain, Fathers of the Church 121 (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2010)

The argumentative structure is worth stating plainly. Paul grounds his refusal to treat Jerusalem’s reputation as decisive not in independence of temperament but in the character of God: πρόσωπον θεὸς ἀνθρώπου οὐ λαμβάνει. The same formula that Deuteronomy uses to forbid judicial favoritism, and that James applies to seating arrangements in an assembly (Jas 2:1-9), Paul here applies to apostolic precedence. If God does not weigh faces, then neither can the gospel’s truth be settled by weighing them.

This is the same move the letter makes throughout: the gospel is not validated by the chain of its transmission (1:1, 11-12) nor by the standing of those who hold it. What vv. 7-9 then describe is recognition, not authorization — the Jerusalem leaders saw and knew what God had already done, and acknowledged it.

The verse therefore cuts in two directions at once, and a translation that makes it merely polemical has lost half of it.