Paul’s relationship with the Jerusalem church is best attested in the epistle to the Galatians. It seems clear that certain people had entered the Pauline communities in Galatia, and were preaching an alternative gospel to that taught by Paul (1:6-9). In direct contrast to the Pauline message, this gospel specified that following Jesus involved both faith in Christ and observance of the Jewish Law (Martyn, Galatians, 120-26; Elmer, Paul, 131-62). That it involved obedience to the Torah is clear from a number of passages that contrast justification by faith and justification by the Law (2:16-21; 3:2, 10 14; 21-25; cf. 4:21), and Paul specifically focuses on circumcision (5:2-12. 6:12; cf. 2:3, 12) and the rules concerning the Jewish holy days (4:10). An integral part of their message that Gentile believers in Jesus should obey the Law seemingly concerns the figure of Abraham who, as the prototypical Gentile, obeyed the command of God and circumcised himself and his household (cf. Gen 17:9-27). Paul’s response to their version of the gospel, including his doctrine of faith alone and not by works of the Law, the futility and even soteriological dangers of circumcision, and his re-interpretation of the Abraham tradition (cf. 3:6-29; 4:21-31), are well known and need not be repeated here. In addition to their own preaching of faith in Christ married to observance of the Torah, a further strategy on their part was to discredit Paul and his under standing of the gospel (Philip F. Esler, Galatians, 71).

There seems to have been a number of components to this plan (Dunn, Beginning from Jerusalem, 726-30). First, these people claimed that Paul was not a legitimate apostle. Secondly, they argued that Paul came under the direct authority of the Jerusalem church and was answerable to it. Thirdly, these opponents seem to have circulat ed a version of the apostolic council according to which Paul was breaking the terms of the agreement by continuing his Law-free mission to the Gentiles. Paul responds to these three charges in the initial section of his letter.

Paul fights fire with fire. He states that these people trouble the Galatians (1:6; 5:10) and have even bewitched them (3:1). They preach a contrary gospel which perverts the gospel of Christ (1:6-7), and are therefore accursed (1:8-9). In an extreme moment of polemical attack, Paul even wishes that those who unsettle his converts would mutilate themselves (5:12). There is no question that Paul vents his anger against these Christian Jewish missionaries, but an important question still remains. What was the relationship between these intruders and the Jerusalem church? The most plausible answer is that they were agents of the Jerusalem community and were acting under its direct instructions. This is indicated on first inspection by the fact that both groups questioned Paul’s status as an apostle. But over and above this, Paul makes it very clear that his anger in this epistle is directed not just towards the troublemakers in Galatia, but also towards the Jerusalem church and its leadership, and this suggests that there were close relations between them (Martyn, Galatians, 459-66). That Jerusalem was behind the mission of these outsiders explains why Paul spends so much time in the early part of the letter spelling out his own relation ship with the original Christian community. He states that after his conversion experience when his commission and gospel were revealed to him, he did not immediately go to Jerusalem to visit those who were apostles before him (Gal 1:16-17). Then after a three year gap he went to Jerusalem for two weeks where he met with Peter and James the brother of Jesus (1:18-20).

The major issue that divided Paul and Matthew, as Luz acknowledges, was the role of the Torah in the light of the Christ event, and this was clearly no minor matter. It was the single issue that underlay the apostolic council, the dispute between Peter and Paul in Antioch (Gal 2:11 14) and Paul’s conflict in Galatia. I have no doubt that Paul’s Christian Jewish opponents in Galatia would have agreed with the apostle over all sorts of theological and christological questions, but they bitterly disputed his understanding of the place of the Torah for Gentile converts and sought to undermine his apostleship and authority because of it. For his part, Paul responds in Galatians with a bitter polemic of his own. The lesson to be learnt here is this. If the point of disagreement is fundamental and serious enough to both parties in a dispute, then it can easily outweigh the many other factors that they may share in common. Matthew stood theologically close to Paul’s “judaising” opponents in Galatia, then it would seem to follow logically that Matthew would have responded to Paul in much the same way as they did. He would have over looked their agreements and focused his attention on questioning Paul’s gospel and his claims to authority and leadership.