I remember a few years back I started to notice that air quotes were getting misused all the time. You know what air quotes are, right? I think the sometimes they get called scare quotes or airsatz quotes. And this hasn't been a thing in writing or communication, as I understand it, for much longer than a century. I I've read before that this concept, this commonly used mode of communication came about in like the 1920s or something like that. Could be true, could not have invented that. I don't know. It feels like it's a rather recent innovation. But air quotes, you know, there's a gesture to go with. That's why they're called air quotes, right? When you're communicating along, you're saying something to somebody else, but you want to sort of acknowledge ironically that part of what you're saying is something somebody else says, but you don't agree with that, you might throw up the air quotes. It's like the little bunny gesture. You got your pointer finger and your middle finger with both hands, and you raise them up and you kind of curl them like a velociraptor claw and you put them by about eye height, they're about shoulder width, and you go, he says he's gonna be here on time. The says, that's where I did the air quotes. You make the little hook gesture, says. And of course, if somebody communicates that to you, you know what they mean. They're like, oh, well, that person says a lot of things, but doesn't necessarily follow through on those things all the time. Or maybe you're going on a rant about uh interpersonal dispute, and you're just being like, well, I would plan to get that right, but maybe I'm just not capable because apparently I'm an unreliable clump of turd. In that scenario, the unreliable clump of turd is what I was doing the air quotes for. And even if you didn't know anything about the conversation and somebody said that and did that gesture, you would be like, oh, somebody called them an unreliable clump of turd. I think I get what all of this is doing. But look, even though air quotes have only been a thing for maybe a hundred years, if that is indeed true, the concept goes back way further because there's always been a need, as long as communication has existed, to quickly relay that this part of what I'm saying isn't me talking. This is a quote or an excerpt from somebody else, and I disagree with them, I find it to be dubious. Well, if you go and grab a modern translation of the New Testament, even though air quotes grammatically did not exist, I mean there's no punctuation for that in Koine Greek, the language that most of the New Testament was written in. Still, if you go and grab a modern English translation of the New Testament, you're usually going to find air quotes all over the New Testament as a way to relay to modern audiences the points where the author or the speaker in the text is saying, Hey, other people say this about this, and for the sake of the discussion, we'll just use their term. Man, I'm making a lot of air quotes physically as we talk here. You would be laughing if you could see me. And in the New Testament, one of the places where we most see the use of air quotes is with the term sinners. And if it comes up here in Galatians chapter two, and I think understanding air quotes and how they work is really important to wrapping our brains around what Paul is saying in these last five or six verses of Galatians chapter two, because I mean this is really important material. It's very nuanced, it has huge theological implications, and the way Galatians is laid out, you get the impression that we as the reader are supposed to understand what Paul is talking about here. We want to get this, but the opening phrase has air quotes in it, meaning that maybe we're doing a little bit of sarcasm here at the beginning. And so we got to think about what this means. Here's what I'm talking about Galatians 2, verse 15. This is Paul talking. Maybe he's quoting something he said directly to Peter in front of everybody. Maybe he's quoting something that he pulled Peter aside and said directly to him. Maybe this is his theological summary of the gist of the conversation he had with Peter about stuff that Peter was getting wrong and that Paul needed to correct him on regarding Peter acting like he was under the old school Jewish law when, in truth, he's a follower of Christ. So this is what Paul says, Galatians 2.15. We who are Jews by birth and not, here they come, Gentile sinners, know that a man is not justified by observing the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. Okay, in my translation, we got great big air quotes, scare quotes, airsatz quotes around Gentile sinners right there. And even though the punctuation didn't exist in the original language, I'm inclined to think that the translators here have made a good decision in relaying the concept to me, a modern audience member, because I don't think Paul has this quote Gentile sinner's low view of all Gentiles. I think he's quoting somebody else's derogatory attitude toward anybody who isn't born Jewish and toward anybody who isn't under the Jewish law. In fact, I think what Paul is doing here is he's probably scarequoting the language that the Judaizers, the bad guys in the book of Galatians, the agitators who came and threw the whole church in Galatia into confusion, trying to inflict old school Jewish law customs and expectations on these Gentile Christians. I think he's probably using their terminology here a little bit sarcastically with Peter to be like, dude, you're not a Judaizer. You don't think they're Gentile sinners. But hey, at this point in the conversation, I understand you could be looking at this and be like, dude, that's a pretty big leap. This seems really important to interpreting the next five verses. And you're saying these verses are really important, like to me, and understanding the book of Galatians and the whole gospel and the whole New Testament. And you're just saying, like, you feel like it's quotes. Hey, that's a valid pushback on your part if you're feeling that. So let's just take a minute to go and look at some other places that I have thought about, and let's just chase this down together. This use of air quotes on the word sinners. So the first one that came to mind for me was Matthew chapter 9. And I'm cheating, I might not remember exactly what chapter it was in if we were talking about another book of the Bible, but we spent 800 episodes together in Matthew. So I'm a little fresh on this. I kind of know my way around it. So, yep, sure enough, there it was, right where I thought I left it. Matthew chapter nine. This is after you know Jesus is called Matthew to himself, and Matthew's like, great, okay, I'm gonna go and follow you. And he leaves his tax collector booth, and Matthew has Jesus over to his house, and then it says in Matthew 9, verse 10, while Jesus was having dinner at Matthew's house, many tax collectors and quote sinners, unquote, came and ate with him and his disciples. When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and scare quotes sinners? Now, this is really interesting to me, because this is Matthew writing this. This is autobiographical. He's writing a story about his own conversion and what it was like in the moments after he flipped sides from being opposed to the things of Christ or indifferent to it, to becoming a principled man and a follower of Christ. And immediately he is getting energetic pushback from the religious leaders of his tradition who are using this derogatory terminology to say that anybody who doesn't follow all of their bonus rules and ways of life and all of the things that they've cooked up, some of which was from the Bible, a lot of which was not, is just automatically a quote sinner. And so, you know, again, Matthew didn't have access to this particular uh punctuation or style technique, but still I I think the translators are right here to throw the air quotes around it because would Matthew be conceding that anybody who doesn't do what the Pharisees think and doesn't follow all of their ways and their sort of culty bonus laws that are extra biblical, would he be, would Matthew be like, yeah, all those people are sinners and use the term unironically? No, I think he throws it in quotes twice here to attribute that pejorative, that insult to the Pharisees. I think Matthew's distancing himself from that and just trying to communicate this was the attitude of the religious leadership toward people who weren't a part of their narrow little way that they taught and lived out. And they look terrible in this passage because this amazing thing just happened. A guy went from being an enemy of the Pharisees, an enemy of his own people, a stooge. He was a tax collector for the Romans. I mean, Matthew was reviled. This should be a huge win where Matthew goes from being team bad guy, team occupier, team outsider, to suddenly being team God. But instead the Pharisees are fussy and grouchy because Matthew's friends aren't good enough and they haven't made the leap in the right way just yet, and they think there's guilt by association that makes Jesus look bad that he's hanging out with these people who don't follow the ways of the Pharisees, which again comes back to the same controversy we're dealing with in a way in Galatians chapter two. I mean, this is a table controversy. This is a who do you eat with? Are they clean? Are they ritually pure enough to share a table with? Or by even being at the same dinner table with them, are you dirtying yourselves? So I think it's pretty crazy, just connectively here, that we get an air quotes sinners twice in this scenario in Matthew 9 that involves the Jerusalem crowd of hyper legalistic religious types not wanting to sit at a table with Gentiles or in this case, you know, just outsiders who didn't follow their ways precisely, who weren't clean enough or pure enough. And that's what we're getting in Matthew 9. And then Peter is kind of taking on the same attitude as the Pharisees. He's kind of behaving like the Pharisees. He's going team Pharisee in Galatians chapter 2. So even if we just go, hey, well, where's the first thing that comes to mind when you remember the air quotes around the word sinners and you go back to Matthew 9, dang, it's uh pretty reminiscent of this story here, and it makes Peter, if anything, look a little worse in Galatians 2. I don't want to leave out Jesus' response because it's just rad, and so this is what he said. On hearing this, Jesus said, quote, it's not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, for I haven't come to call the righteous, but sinners. And sinners there is not in scare quotes. The implication is yeah, okay, whatever. Whoever you view as sinners, I'm calling them. Or maybe even further, the implication is everybody's a sinner, and I came to call all of them. And he's making uh two nods here to Hosea chapter six and Micah chapter six, you know, the language about desiring mercy and not sacrifice, and what does the Lord require of you to love justice and do mercy and walk humbly with your God? I mean, really powerful, profound stuff from the minor prophets in the Old Testament that Jesus taps in here to be like, Hey Pharisees, how can you not understand the heart of God and the character of God? It has always been toward mercy, and here you are creating these delineations of who's pure and clean and abides by your standards and social preferences enough to be the kind of person you could eat with, and everybody else is, quote, sinners. So I think the translators have done a great job in Matthew of capturing the spirit of what Matthew is saying, the spirit of what is happening in this table scene in Matthew 9. I think you can just sort of take Jesus' response and apply it directly to the scene in Galatians 2 as well, which I mean how embarrassing for Peter. Like you were there when the bad guys made this mistake, and you were there when Jesus corrected it, and now you're making the same mistake. Peter really clearly did need to be corrected, and Paul was willing to do it, and he was in the right to do it. I've said it before, I'm gonna say it again. I think the end of Galatians 2 here is very important, and there's no rush for us to blitz through all of this just to say, hey, we got done with Galatians 2. We're gonna try to treat it right. And I really think tracking down this air quote concept of sinners is super important to understanding what's happening here. And so I want to bounce around the New Testament a little more and look at some more places where this comes up, see what else we can glean from it. So we're just gonna split this one into two, and we'll pick it up next time around, right where we left off. All right, I'm Matt. This is the 10 Minute Bible Hour Podcast. Let's do this again soon.
SPEAKER_01This podcast exists because many of you kick in to make it happen, even though you don't have to. Learn more at thetmbh.com slash support. We're grateful because that supports our family.