Introduction 📜
Galatians is one of the four letters of Paul known as the Hauptbriefe, which are universally accepted as authentic. It is typically dated c. 54 CE.
There is an old debate as to whether Paul’s letter was directed to northern Galatia, where the ethnic Galatians lived, or to southern part of the Galatian province, where cities such as Iconium are located. Raymond E. Brown states that the arguments for the northern theory “seem more persuasive” (An Introduction, p. 476).

Udo Schnelle writes (The History and Theology, p. 97):
“On the whole the arguments for the north Galatian hypothesis are stronger. In particular, the absence of the addressees in Gal. 1.21, the Lucan statement about Paul’s work in ‘the region of . . . Galatia’ and the address in Gal. 3.1, along with the well thought out arrangement of the letter as a whole, speak against the south Galatian theory.”

The epistle to the Galatians shows Paul in conflict with other missionaries. Jewish-Christians from Palestine had visited the congregations of the Galatians after Paul’s visit there and taught that Paul’s Gospel was incomplete. They persuaded some of the Galatians that salvation required observance of the Torah laws, including circumcision. Paul writes to rebuke and to persuade the Galatians in this letter. Indeed, the letter follows the outline of a Greco-Roman apologetic letter (The History and Theology, p. 99): prescript (1:1-5), introduction (1:6-11), narrative (1:12-2:14), proposition (2:15-21), proof (3:1-4:31), exhortation (5:1-6:10), and conclusion (6:11-18). But this is not to say that the argument for justification of faith in Galatians is cut-and-dry; far from it, Paul’s epistle to the Galatians is full of passion, anger, and drama.
The Non-Pauline Origin of the Parallelism of the Apostles Peter and Paul: (Galatians 2:7-8) by Eernst Barnikol 📜
Introduction:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43725070
In the Old Marburger period before the [First] World War, the lectures on the origin of the papacy delivered by my highly regarded teacher, in whose honor this work is presented -the historian who never forgot the theologians of his academic youth and who, as a theologian, also thinks historically-were especially valuable to me. Since today more than ever this earliest church history of the West forms the common field of work for critical historical scholars in both faculties, this occasion gives me the welcome opportunity to touch on a particular, hitherto unsolved problem of the “most historical” letter of Paul and, with a new, unique solution, to illuminate the ongoing formation of the text in church history and the wealth of new historical problems in the first two centuries.
Not primarily the judgment of history, but the proclamation of the early Catholic Church in the second century already exalts Peter and Paul2 as the two great figures high above all other Christian missionaries of the early period. Did Paul himself already have this concept in mind when he speaks of Cephas and dares to compare himself with him? Did Paul already see and profess this providential parallelism, this working alongside and with one another of the two great and united chief apostles Peter and Paul? Did he even, as has been thought until now, express this idea in writing? For he himself created this idea when, admonishing the wavering Galatians,
he affirms:
Those, I say, who were of repute added nothing further to me; but on the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised–for he who worked through Peter for the mission to the circumcised worked through me also for the Gentiles–and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised (Gal 2:6-9).
Our theme encompasses a mutually interwoven dual problem of the text and the parallelism. The starting point is the unsolved textual problem of the ten K�phas-Petros passages in Paul, i.e., in the Corpus Paulinum, in 1 Corinthians and Galatians, particularly Gal 2:7 and 8. As I hope to show, the new solution explains not only the hitherto puzzling evidence of the text but presents, above all, unexpected insights into the problems of the history of the origin of the apostolic parallelism in the second century and leads thereby to the church historical problem whose recognition confirms the origin and solution of the textual problem.
I. The Textual Problems of the Pauline Epistles: Cephas or Petros? :tm~1:
Paul mentions Cephas-Peter ten times in his letters, four times in the present text of 1 Corinthians and six times in Galatians. The following table concisely illustrates the evidence of the agreement and disagreement of the witnesses:

The first impression from this table is that: four references, all of which belong to 1 Corinthians, have exclusively Cephas; two others in Galatians have exclusively Petros; the remaining four passages in Galatians have both forms. In other words, while 1 Corinthians has only Cephas, Galatians has in part, at the two verses 2:7-8, only Petros attested, and thus has textual evidence for Petros in all six passages, and only in four of these six passages also for Cephas.
How is this puzzle solved? Not in the way that Zahn himself struggles to do: “Here in 1 Cor (1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5) Cephas is transmitted steadfastly and unanimously; in Galatians, on the other hand, Petros securely stands twice (2:7, 8), but in the remaining passages (1:18; 2:9; 2:11; 2:14) the tradition fluctuates between the Greek and the Aramaic forms of the name; so it is beyond doubt that Paul alternated in this letter between both forms ( Galatians (3 ed. 1922), 70, n. 84).”
This is an odd conclusion! Why did Paul alternate? (Zahn’s artificial attempt at an explanation, namely, that Paul in 2:9 by the transition to Cephas “as well as by stu=loi, conveys the manner of speech of the Jewish Christians who came from Palestine” (Einleitung II, p. 14), demonstrates exactly the difficulty.)
Holl recognizes the impossibility of this explanation and recommends the bold move of assuming and inserting Cephas everywhere as the original Pauline form-even in Gal 2:7 and 8, although no witness offers Cephas there. (“It seems to me that everywhere in Paul, even where Petros is inserted in the editions of the N.T., specifically on the basis of the Latin tradition, Cephas must be written.” (“Der Kirchenbegriff des Paulus in seinem Verh�ltnis zu dem der Urgemeinde,” in Sitzungsberichte der Pr. Akad. d. Wiss. Ph.-hist.Klasse, [1921], Vol. II, 921, n. 3. Ges. Aufs�tze, II, 45 n. 3.)
In addition, Holl is defenseless against the obvious question, which he does not address: Why does the form Petros stand in four of the six passages of the same letter? (It would be understandable if, from the six Galatian passages, K�phas remained in 2:11 and 2:14, since one already soon finds in Clement of Alexandria (Euseb. HE 1.12.2) the well-known hypothesis of K. Lake, revived in 1921(HTR. 14, pp. 95/7), that this Peter whom Paul repremands was not the apostle, but one of the seventy disciples, and that one sharply distinguished between them for that reason. As far as can I see, this seems to have a later effect in the Vulgate. It has the chief apostle “Peter” in Gal 1:18; 2:7-8, but “Cephas” in 2:9; 2:11 and 2:14, and perhaps originally means one of the seventy as a scapegoat. That this transformation begins already in 2:9 can not be disturbing since thereby the two persons in 2:7/8 and 2:9/11 would be sharply distinguished, but this would not be the case if it first occurred in 2:11. However that may be, this “Cephas” (or Cephas and his “double”) hypothesis and exegesis, whose influence in the Vulgate text and elsewhere deserves an independent investigation, does not solve our problem for the time of Paul).
Holl had a predecessor (Whether he knew it, I do not know). It is Merx who actually-along with Nestle-was the only one to set forth the problem with great precision. He saw it in a splendid way from the perspective of textual history, but unfortunately not in the same way from the perspective of church history, so that he missed the obvious solution. In 1902 Merx wrote:
Petros forces its way into Galatians, which must be the work of an editor who made the text more acceptable to Greeks. ….What a basis for criticism of the Greek text! Where would there be a critical task so peppered with thistles and thorns as this, where canonical and dogmatic reflection has been applied to the text? Our Peter problem may also be connected with it. And so the majority of exegetes still believe they can get by with the decree “this is formulated according to S B D in one way or the other,” while each step is made uncertain by pitfalls. ….Criticism is nothing but the practical application of the knowledge textual history [I would add: and of church history and the history of doctrine] with a view to determine the oldest accessible form. This oldest form in Galatians was definitely Cephas. Then, however, against all witnesses-except the Peshitta, which retains the ambiguous (K�phas or Petros) )pyK-in 2:7/8, Petros must be deleted and Cephas must be inserted.
The error of Merx and Holl is more frightful than the convenient conservative persistence of many exegetes and commentators who cling to the Textus Receptus. In this case, what they both recognized is rightly preserved, namely, that Paul did not write Petros in Gal 2:7/8. So they conclude that he wrote Cephas also in Gal 2:7/8. But did Paul write Gal 2:7/8 at all? Van Manen as well as the new radical school have already summarily denied this.
Did Paul have reason to change? No! He wrote only in Greek, and therefore Cephas. The first letter to the Corinthians, or as the case may be, the collected fragments of letters to the Corinthian congregation, sufficiently testifies that Paul said and wrote Cephas, even to the Greeks, indeed exclusively. For him there was then-it was the common time of the letters to the Corinthians and Galatians-still no Latin or Greek rendering of the Aramaic title of honor, just as little as for maranatha! If it is certain that Paul only externally graecized the Aramaic terms in a proper and liturgical way, then both passages in 2:7 and 8, which alone have Petros, which is foreign to Paul, could not have been written by Paul. Basically it is really one passage, a conspicuous parenthesis. That is the most obvious conclusion. The other conclusion of Merx and Holl could be considered more justified if all witnesses in all other passages consistently proferred Cephas and if the early transformation of the original Cephas into Petros could be made credible exactly here and only here. Neither Merx nor Holl attempted that.
Even without being able to justify it from the content, I would not hesitate in this case to regard the two Petros passages in Gal 2:7/8, i.e., the one section encompassing both references to Peter, as an interpolation of a later time. For in this case everything is clear with regard to Paul: He wrote only Cephas not Petros! The later inserted passage with the double but otherwise isolated Petros leads to the mishmash of the textual attestations of all other passages, i.e., original passages in Galatians, but not in 1 Corinthians, and because of its secondary origin, remained itself unanimously attested, a sign of its non-Pauline origin.
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II. The Non-Pauline Structure of Gal 2:7-8:
In addition to the manuscript evidence, the non-Pauline style supports the non-Pauline character of our passage. Paul does not employ the use of energein with the dative, which we meet only here in the transmitted Corpus Paulinum: energ�sas Petr�… kai emoi. Especially in Galatians, Paul joins this verb with en; en humin (3:5). In a second passage (5:6) it stands absolute. In Phil 2:13 the Pauline combination meets us again with en humin, just as in 2 Cor 4:12 with en humin, 1 Thess 2:13 with en humin, and even Col 1:29 with en humin. This evidence could not be any clearer: Paul writes energein en emoi; he never wrote energein emoi!
The other major terms of the interpolation are also foreign to Paul in this connection. The man who according to Gal 1:6-9 admits no other gospel than the gospel of Christ and its truth (Gal 2:5), knows, alongside this absolute gospel, nothing about an — apologetically later differentiated — euaggelion t�s akrobustias and t�s peritom�s and a corresponding divided apostol� t�s peritom�s and eis ta ethn�, although he occasionally uses the words individually (For example, Paul writes apostol� elsewhere only in Rom 1:5 and 1 Cor 9:2).
Stylistically, the form of the parenthesis is also remarkable. Certainly self-interpolations occur in Paul, as just before in Gal 2:6. But precisely for this reason the immediate repetition in the present text is suspect. If one examines it closely, one senses that the second, subsequently interpolated parenthesis qualifies the increasing impact of the decisive sentence, since it breaks apart and abrogates the essential connection between the two closely related participles, dokountes kai gnontes, in a way one would not expect of an original letter writer and missionary who was concerned with making an impression. In addition, for their part, the two sustaining participles are already sufficiently burdened. Against Harnack, Sch�rer once rightly pointed to the significance of the fact that this “seeing” and “recognizing” first happened and had to happen at the missionary conference,20 because it did not previously exist with those who were of repute. How then can one exegetically suggest that Paul interrupted his important and highly-charged account of the events at the missionary conference with a summarily conceived retrospective glance and quashed its impact with a comparison inappropriate at that time.
The content of the interpolation is entirely non-Pauline because it is precisely a retrospective view which presupposes the completion of the missionary activity of Peter as well as that of Paul and also the recognition of the apostle to the Gentiles. Paul did not have in mind such a retrospective view; he did not aspire to a position alongside and thus parallel with Peter. He defended only his independence, i.e., his absolute dependence on the messiah himself. In addition, as 1 Cor 9:5 and 1 Cor 15:5-11 show, he knows Simon Peter only as “Cephas,” not as “the” (or “an”) apostle. Not until the following period which no longer knew “Cephas,” (Already 1 Clement has, as is well-known, Petros in 5:4, Cephas in the citation of the Letter to the Corinthians 47:3. 2 Clement has only Petros, which, as the Synoptics prove, prevailed early on. Cephas survived alongside thanks only to the citations of the Cephas-letter passages), since one had no community with the Jewish Christians, did anyone see the problem: Paul and Peter! The schematic conception, which perceives Paul as the apostle to Gentiles and Peter the apostle to the Jews, is foreign to Paul.23 First Corinthians especially contradicts this. In his struggle against factions and parties, against the parties of Apollos and Cephas, Paul never thinks that the Jewish Christian minority might appeal to Cephas as their delegated apostle to the Jews. For him the problem whether the Jewish Christian minority might be identical with the Cephas Party does not yet exist at all. For Paul Simon “Cephas” is not an apostle, but precisely the Cephas beside, before, indeed, above the Jerusalem apostles. Therefore Paul could not have written these sentences in Gal 2:7-8.
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III. The Original Text of Paul :tm~1:
But what did Paul write in our passage in Galatians? Can the Peter insertion be removed and the genuine text of Paul be restored? Fortunately, this is possible. The revised text, whereby I set off the interpolation with bold, reads:
emoi gar oi dokountes ouden prosanethento,
alla tounantion
idontes hoti pepisteumai to euaggelion
tos akrobustias
kathos Petros tos peritomos,
ho gar energosas Petro eis apostolon tos peritomos
enorgosen kai emoi eis ta ethno
kai gnontes
ton xarin ton dotheisan moi,
Iakobo kai Kofas kai Ioannos,
hoi dokountes stuloi einai,
decias edokan emoi kai Barnaba koinonias,
hina homeis eis ta ethn, autoi de eis ton peritomon.
The interpolation connects with hoti pepisteumai to euaggelion; its closing words, eis ta ethno, have in view the result of the missionary conference: homeis eis ta ethno, autoi de eis ton peritomon.
Accordingly the original Pauline text reads:
emoi gar oi dokountes ouden prosanethento,
alla tounantion
idontes hoti pepisteumai to euaggelion
kai gnontes
ton xarin ton dotheisan moi,
Iakobo kai Kofas kai Ioannos,
hoi dokountes stuloi einai,
decias edokan emoi kai Barnaba koinonias,
hina homeis eis ta ethno, autoi de eis ton peritomon.
The original text possibly also included the connection: to euaggelion eis ta ethno, which then would have been expanded by the insertion before eis ta ethn�. The strongest reason for the originality of eis ta ethno is that, from a stylistic perspective, it somewhat explains the remarkable absence of the apostol� in Paul, i.e., this peculiar non-parallelism. However, even the Pauline eis ta ethno of Gal 2:9 suffices as a stylistic precedent. And there is a striking parallel for the absolute use of to euaggelion in connection with pisteuein in 1 Thess 2:4. Paul affirms:
alla kathos dedokimasmetha hupo tou Theou
pisteutonai to euaggelion
outos laloumen, oux hos anthrwpois areskontes,
alla Theo to dokimazonti tas kardias homon.

The genuine earliest text presents a clear picture, free from obfuscation that has lasted until now. Entirely in the historical sense of Gal 2, “Here Paul wants to know and must know whether he is running or had run in vain. Here Paul strives for the fundamental decision whether he was regarded as a Christian by those of repute27 and whether his congregations were regarded by them as Christian congregations.”28 He does not think about equal status with Cephas. The situation at that time, and likewise in the Galatian conflict, would not have allowed him to parenthetically claim a schematic parallelism-a schematic, a racial, and therefore impractical parallelism. For the unifying decision of the missionary conference and the meaning of the handshake of the five does not signify a racial, but a geographical parallelism: We go into Gentile territory, into the diaspora, but they remain in the homeland, in Palestine, in the land of Israel. This corresponds with the missionary activity of Paul, who surely went forth into the Gentile world to win Jews as well for the Messiah Jesus.

In a similar way, the insertion has other unhistorical schematic concepts of the the Gentile world, Jewish and Gentile gospels, Jewish and Gentile apostolates, which first correspond to the situation of the second century and the developing church.
If the insertion was the work of a Jewish Christian before 70-100, then one could expect: “For the one who worked through Cephas and James and John for the mission to the circumcised…”! Why only Peter?29 The one who immediately thereafter, at the handshake, originally stood in second place! Likewise, the characterization, or conception, of the three speaks against an immediately preceding absolute characterization of Peter. The popular image of Paul as the apostle to the Gentiles is foreign to the historical Paul, although we certainly find it in the revised 15th chapter of the transmitted Epistle to the Romans (v. 16): eis to einai me leitourgon Xristou I�sou eis ta ethn�, which represents the same later conception almost word for word and presumably arose at the same time.

Paul knows nothing about the problems and schematizations of the Church of the second century. It was enough for him to be able to say to the Galatians: “Those, namely, who were of repute imposed nothing further on me, but on the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel and when they perceived the grace that was given to me, James and Cephas and John, who were reputed to be pillars, extended to me and Barnabas the hand of fellowship, so that we should go to the Gentile world, but they-as until now-to the circumcised (as Messiah missionaries).
IV. History of the Early Text and the Interpolation
When, where and why did this important and skillful interpolation taken place? Those are the further questions. The answers, especially the facts of the case, show that we are on the right track.

Is there a history of the early text? No. We do not come across it until a century later — c. 160/180. This is indeed the century of silence about Paul. But more precisely, it means that the earliest text does not meet us until the time of the interpolation.
If we once more assume, however, that Paul had indeed written the entire document, original text and interpolation, around 55, then he himself would have already provided the best solution of the Peter-Paul problem, in the same way as it was sought–and found–a century later by the early Catholic church! Would he not have already provided in advance a decisive refutation of the Marcionite heresy, for which Paul was the apostle, while all others, especially James, were pseudo-apostles? It is almost embarrassing to have to say that to my knowledge no commentator (not even Burton in his commentary, p. 93) noticed this and asked when the entire passage was first cited, if it has been there since 55. If one is suspicious of every argumentum e silentio, then one should still make the effort to explain why, in a foolish way, this brilliant trump-card was first cited so late, and investigate when it first appears (or appears again).
Marcion did not have our present-day text. In this Zahn and Harnack are almost in agreement with respect to Marcion. “Gal 2:6-8 was probably missing from its place,” Zahn says, for “Tertullian could hardly have left 6-8 unused if he found it.” Of course, according to Zahn, Marcion had utilized Gal 2:6-8 in Phil 1:14-18. “[Van] Manen included vv. 6-8 without justification in Marcion’s text.” Harnack concludes more decisively: “vv. 6-9 (the introduction to the apostle conference with the distinction of euaggelion tos akrobustias and t�s peritomos and the sentence gnontes tos xarin ton dotheisan moi) are quite unattested and must have been absent, if not completely altered.” But since Marcion retained 9b-10, he also must have had or recalled a preceding sentence, even our early text, which was identical with the surviving text still preserved in Tertullian, and thus offered no cause for complaint! How advantageous would it otherwise have been for Tertullian to be able to triumphantly hold up to him, on the basis of this parallelism, the acknowledgement of the Petrine Jewish apostolate by Paul himself, with this sentence to be able to negate the entire position of Marcion, or at least to remark scornfully: “Naturally, heretic that you are, you had to strike this sentence of Paul.”
No, around 206/207 Tertullian still knows nothing of the present-day interpolated text, although he certainly cites the handshake several times. Here there can be no evasion. Here also neither the familiar timidity concerning the argumentum e silentio nor apologetic makeshift is of any help, i.e., the suggestion that he knew, but did not mention it. For not only can one point to the absence of any citation, the absence of the interpolated text can also be established with certainty. The man who wrote, in a characteristic apologetic argument: Paul went to Jerusalem, “to gain the protection of Peter and the other apostles,” he “felt the need to become recognized and strengthened by them,” how it was proper that “for one inexperienced and still wavering belief regarding observation of the law,”36 Paul “wished to support his belief and his manner of preaching by the authority of his predecessors,” wanted “to become acquainted with and question the apostles,” and bring his gospel “into harmony” with their belief, the man who selects the opposite of Paul’s opinion out of the genuine epistle to the Galatians, namely, that, through the handshake when “his predecessors gave him the right hand,” Paul first then “took over the office of preaching among the Gentiles, having been attested by them”-this Tertullian can only interpret in this way and fabricate this kind of commission by the original apostles and the acceptance of the preaching office because he did not know Gal 2:7-8, according to which God had, long ago, already given and confirmed the commission of proclaiming the gospel more or less equally to both Peter and Paul!
We must conclude from these facts of the case that Tertullian–i.e., the African Bible of his time–did not yet know the interpolation as a biblical text. And from these striking facts of the case alone, we must suppose that the whole passage was reworked, and was available to Tertullian only as an unaltered early text. With regard to time, then, the interpolation can be sought not far from Tertullian’s time. The identity with Marcion’s text, whose Pauline dogma, as generally recognized, does not bear the parallelism, raises this to the level of certainty.

If one questions further, and questions the Apostolic Fathers, the apologists, and all Christian witnesses before 180, prior to Irenaeus, not one mentions the present-day parallelism text, not even 1 Clement 5, not even Ignatius. Might the parallelism text not have existed at all before Irenaeus?
But what of Irenaeus himself? The parallelism text occurs first with him. Exactly in the sense and in the line of argumentation which we so sorely missed before him and after him with Tertullian. Irenaeus writes:
With regard to those who allege that Paul alone knew the truth, and that to him the mystery was manifested by revelation, let Paul himself convict them, when he says, that one and the same God wrought in Peter for the apostolate of the circumcision, and in himself for the Gentiles. Peter, therefore, was an apostle of that very God whose was also Paul; and Him whom Peter preached as God among those of the circumcision, and likewise the Son of God, did Paul [declare] also among the Gentiles. For our Lord never came to save Paul alone, nor is God so limited in means, that He should have but one apostle who knew the dispensation of His Son (Adv. haer. 3.13.1).
Here the text of the interpolation meets us for the first time, on the side of the early Catholic Church and Irenaeus, who triumphed with it.

But when did the interpolation take place? Since Marcion-like Tertullian-did not possess our present text, the interpolation did not take place before 140 nor after 185. Most likely, it took place shortly before 185, since it is not yet known to Tertullian. It is a reaction to the one-sided Pauline proclamation of Marcion, the affirmation of the unified parallelism of the early Catholic Church. Paul himself could not have written and made available a more suitable reply against Marcion for the benefit of Peter, who had been rejected by Marcion, than the way this interpolator meets this need a century later. This interpolation is the classic expression for the anti-marcionite church dogma of the harmonious parallel work of both apostles. As predecessors we are familiar with 1 Clem 5 and, some time later, Ignatius in Rom 4.3, who both place Peter and Paul together, still in the manner, to be sure, of Dionysius of Corinth.
Where did this interpolation take place? In my opinion, some testimony can be obtained here from the manuscript evidence. It was not in the East, where the Cephas form predominated, that the Petros interpolation was created, but in the West, along with the manuscript transformation there of Cephas into Petros. It is possible that the Latin Petros-sentence was inserted on the occasion of the first Latin translation of the Corpus Paulinum and was translated back into Greek manuscripts like D G and penetrated their bilingual prototypes. In addition, the possibility remains that a primary penetration of the interpolation is likewise present in Greek manuscripts of the West. There, where the perhaps simultaneous assimilation of the six passages in Galatians occured, as in the western manuscripts D E F G, is where we should also look for the source of the interpolation-in the West, certainly not in the Africa of Tertullian, but in Gaul or earlier in Italy, in Rome. There seems to be a connection with a (or the?) early Catholic edition and recension, for which some signs are still present in the Corpus Paulinum. In this Roman, early Catholic edition the interpolator changed Cephas into Petros throughout Galatians and neglected to do the same in 1 Corinthians.

In conclusion, I would still like to point out two remarkable parallels.
In the Acts of Paul, after the self-baptism, Thecla searches for Paul, finds him, and reports to him: “But perceiving this, she said to him, “I have taken the bath, Paul; for he who worked with you for the gospel has also worked with me for my baptism” (ho de sunidousa eipen auto Elabon to loutron, Paule. ho gar soi sunergosas eis to euaggelion kamoi sunorgosen eis to lousasthai).
Since according to Carl Schmidt’s convincing explanation, the Acts of Paul presuppose the Acts of Peter and are to be dated “certainly before 200,” this passage could easily be understood as the second attestation following Irenaeus. But we do not know if this passage in the Acts of Paul might not stem from earlier fragments. For the time being, I can not completely rule out the possibility that an apocryphal passage like this in the Acts of Paul was transferred to Peter and included in the canonical text.
Additionally, there is the second more distant parallel in the Acts of John. The prayer of the dying John begins:
ho eklexamenos homas eis apostolon ethnon,
ho ekpempsas homas eis ton oikoumenon Theos,
ho deixas eauton dia ton apostolon…

O thou who chose us for the apostolate to the Gentiles,
O God who sent us into all the world
who hast shown thyself through the apostles…”
However that may be, the non-Pauline origin of the interpolation passage seems to me in any case to be certain.

Not only after 200, but already in the previous century, Rome preserved tradition, as far as it remained alive, and moreover created tradition and also transformed tradition. Only the uncovering of these church-historical transformations in the texts of the canon and the liturgy, the confessions as well as in historical traditions, makes visible the beginnings of the Roman community. One layer of tradition covers up the other and covers up the real history. Perhaps this study opens an interesting process to the astonished eye. As I think I am able to show by working on this newly achieved basis, the Roman Church is not erected on the graves of the apostles Peter and Paul; rather, the Roman legends of the second century buried the Neronian grave of the last Pauline community.
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The Galatians 3:16 conundrum 📜
In Greek there is a plural for “seed” which distinguishes it from “seeds,” and the promise from the Septuagint (Gen 12:7, 15:5, 17:8, 22:17) is singular. As the notes in the New Oxford Annotated 5th edition point out, in Romans 4:16 Paul actually does interpret this in the plural. See Pamela Eisenbaum’s “A Remedy for Having Been Born of Woman” for a fascinating take on this (not primarily her point though).
In addition to pointing out that Paul probably used the LXX rather than Hebrew scripture, it’s important to understand Jewish exegesis, which, frankly, can look odd to the modern mind. It frequently sums to taking explicit words from sacred writings and connecting them section by stanza in a line of reasoning without essentially considering the setting of the words. In this particular instance, he uses the collective singular and re-contextualizes it to say, “this applies to Christ” (he re-contextualizes it as actually singular vs. collectively singular). In the larger context of his argument, he argues that faith in Christ is what makes you a party to God’s covenant, not circumcision (which is at issue throughout Galatians).
The much bigger problem, as pointed out by Sanders, is:
the words that come immediately after Gen. 17:10 (“you and your offspring”) are “every male among you shall be circumcised.” The covenant with Abraham includes not only God’s promises to him and his descendants but also a requirement: the males (plural) must be circumcised.

Sanders, E. P.. Paul (p. 528). Fortress Press. Kindle Edition.
He moves on however, to assess the argument:
We have seen what are, to most modern eyes, weaknesses in Paul’s arguments. I shall try to evaluate them in ancient terms. On the one hand, his terminological arguments do in general follow the rules of ancient argumentation, including especially ancient Jewish argumentation. Taking a word or half of a sentence out of context and using it to prove a point was not regarded as cheating (as it would be now). If he had offered this series of arguments to a room full of other Jewish experts, they would certainly have caught him on his implied claim that circumcision was not commanded until the Mosaic law. They would have wanted to discuss what happened to the people between Abraham and the Messiah, and it is likely that his interpretation of “offspring” as referring to the Messiah would have been challenged, though it might have had some support. But they would not have said, “Stop using terminological arguments that are based on prooftexting.”

Considering the difficulty of his task—using the Abraham story, which strongly supports his opponents, to prove his own point—I would say that he performed it brilliantly. He used words in the Bible to create sentences that are not there, and he combined the new sentences with remarkable agility. He overlooked a couple of flaws, which, however, he corrected in Romans. I think that any group of Jewish experts would have admired his effort.

What non-Christian Jewish scholars of the Bible would not have accepted in Gal. 3:13-14 is that Jesus’ death was a sacrifice that saved his followers and had the goal of including gentiles in the people of God. That is, non-Christians would reject his specifically christological views.
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Galatians 1:20 (Why does Paul say “in what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!”) 📜
Robert Eisenman believes Paul was known to the Jerusalem church as “the liar” or similar terms such as “the lying spouter.” This is because he identifies Paul and James as characters in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls such as the Habakkuk Pesher. Most scholars are insistent that this scroll can only be dated to the 1st century BC or before, but the president of the carbon14 equipment has publicly argued the date is consistent with a 1st century AD date in the 60s.
One of arguments in favor of this association is that is occurs twice and there is no obvious context in either of the passages. A similar reference is in Revelation 3:9 (those of the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not, but lie).
See:
There are two fundamental reasons:

1. He argues that Paul’s and James’s movements became violently opposed to each, and sees most scholars as attempting to minimize or paper over the differences. Many of the insults and warnings in Paul’s letters seems to specifically target James. Paul writes scornfully of superapostles, those who don’t cut their hair or eat meat, and even wishes castration on those who teach circumcision. Paul’s letters show an increasing hostility to the Law and to Judaism by saying that Moses’ veil was intended to conceal the fading glory of the Law, and that the Jews have been cut off so that those of the New Covenant might be grafted in. Paul says he was mistreated at the hands of “the Jews,” and Acts says he was mobbed and attacked for bringing gentiles into the Temple.
2. Eisenman was involved with the Dead Sea Scrolls very early on, fought for their public release for years, and is critical of the consensus and standard interpretation in a number of ways. He agrees with Norman Golb that the DSS were written not only by the Qumran community, but contain large amounts of material from Jerusalem concealed in the Desert for safekeeping during the first revolt, the Copper Scroll being the most unambiguous. He also argues that the Qumran community was not isolated, but was constantly in touch with events in Jerusalem. Most importantly, he argues that internal evidence from the scrolls show a 1st-century AD environment such as increasingly violent buildup to the first revolt, whereas they illuminate nothing about the previous two centuries. No one else wants to dispute carbon dating or has compelling arguments for another date, so Eisenmann was the only major figure to dispute the original carbon dating to the 1-2nd centuries BC. Scientific arguments from the testing company president seem to have been ignored, possibly because they were published with an obscure academic.
3. Some of the scrolls such as the Habakkuk Pesher contain nicknames and indirect references such as the Teacher of Righteousness, the Wicked Priest, and the Lying Spouter. While there are some symbolic references in Daniel, the practice of sobriquets is concentrated in the 1st century AD. It is all over Paul’s letters and appears in Revelation, James, and Jude as well. Before and after that, not so much. Presumably this was done for plausible deniability in a period when attacks by name were poltically dangerous.
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   Galatians 3:28 seems to use a saying from Thales/Socrates 📜
   https://time.com/5410308/early-christian-solidarity/
   This creed was a riff on an ancient cliché, attributed by some to Socrates, others to Thales, that went something like this: “I thank the Fates every day that I was born a Greek, not a barbarian, free, not a slave, and a man, not a woman.” That was how ancient free men defined themselves and their privilege: by their ethnicity (Greek, Roman, etc.), their class (free), and their gender (male).
   https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Lives_of_the_Eminent_Philosophers/Book_I
   Hermippus in his Lives refers to Thales the story which is told by some of Socrates, namely, that he used to say there were three blessings for which he was grateful to Fortune: “first, that I was born a human being and not one of the brutes; next, that I was born a man and not a woman; thirdly, a Greek and not a barbarian.”
   Very interesting, it does appear that Paul is playing on that identity claim, with Christ dissolving such distinctions. I would like to point out however that here Paul is also adapting a Jesus saying that also appears in the Gospel of Thomas: “When you make the two into one, and when you make the inner like the outer and the outer like the inner, and the upper like the lower, and when you make male and female into a single one, so that the male will not be male nor the female female” (22:4-5). The same saying appears in the Gospel of the Egyptians (“When you have trampled the garment of shame, and when the two become one, and the male with the female is neither male nor female”) and 2 Clement 12:2: “When the master himself was asked by someone when his kingdom would come he said: When the two will be one (ἔσται τὰ δύο ἕν), and the outer like the inner, and the male with the female neither male nor female (τὸ ἄρσεν μετὰ τῆς θηλείας οὔτε ἄρσεν οὔτε θῆλυ)”. Compare with Galatians 3:28: “Neither is there male nor female (οὐκ ἔνι ἄρσεν καὶ θῆλυ) … for you are one (εἷς ἐστε) in Christ Jesus”.

This is interesting because it shows that some of the noncanonical sayings in the Gospel of Thomas may have an early history in the church.
This also shows up in Philo’s interpetation of the Logos as male and female or neither male nor female.
Allegorical Interpretation II, 13, On which account Moses says, “And besides he made…” and that what had been previously created were genera is plain from what he says, “Let the earth bring forth living souls,” not according to species but according to genus. And this is found to be the course taken by God in all cases; for before making the species he completes the genera, as he did in the case of man: for having first modelled the generic man, in whom they say that the male and female sexes are contained, he afterwards created the specific man Adam.
Conway, Colleen. “Gender and Divine Relativity in Philo of Alexandria.” Journal for the Study of Judaism in the Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman Period 34, no. 4 (2003): 471-91:
In the “one-sex” model, beyond differentiation is the ideal—the perfected masculine ideal. As Mattila puts it, “the transcendent God may even be said to be more “male” than “male” or “ultramale.” The same could also be said of Philo’s description of the first man. As Annewies Van den Hoek has noted, Philo makes a remarkable reversal when he comments on Gen. 1:27 and rereads the LXX αρσεν και θήλυ as “neither male or female.” I suspect that this rereading of the biblical text emerges because Philo must treat the Genesis text in some way but he cannot entertain the thought that God has a male and female aspect. He thinks too negatively of the feminine principle and females in general for this idea to be considered. He might support his negation of the text by arguing that “male and female” indicates a unified being, which may be more clearly expressed as “neither male nor female.” However, in saying “neither male nor female” Philo is not thinking of the absence of bodily distinctions between male and female. The point is that this initial human is undifferentiated, created in the image of the perfect unity that is God. Philo also understands this non-differentiation to be masculine — masculine asexuality, so to speak. Whereas we may hear this as oxymoronic, it makes perfect rational sense to Philo.
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Galatians 3:20 Meaning 📜
M Eugene Boring and Fred B. Craddock in The People’s New Testament Commentary (2009) state the following about Gal 3:20:
By a mediator: Moses (see Exod 19-20) A mediator involves more than one party: This difficult verse has been interpreted in more than three hundred ways! Whatever the exact meaning, Paul’s point seems to be twofold: (1) the law did not come directly from God (Christ did!); (2) a transaction that inolves a mediator is necessarily bilateral, something like a contract involving negotiation, but God’s promise is unilateral and nonnegotiable, a covenant not a contract. (emphasis Boring and Craddock) pg. 586
Shaey J. D. Cohen in The Jewish Annotated New Testament (2011) also holds that Paul’s point in 3:20 is that the Law did not come directly from God. Moses is often understood as mediator in the OT (cf. Deut 5:5) and Jesus is sometimes presented as the mediator between God and humanity in the NT (cf. Heb 8:6, 9:15, 12:21; 1 Tim 2:5). [Personal aside, Matthew also presents Jesus as “the new Moses” throughout his gospel.] pg. 338

These interpretations might raise the question of whether Paul rejects the Mosaic covenant (ie the giving of the Law) specifically or even the Abrahamic covenant broadly. Luke Timothy Johnson addresses this concern in The Writings of the New Testament:
But was the Mosaic covenant simply a mistake? Only in its claims, not in its purposes. Torah was not eternal but only a temporary agreement; it was not given directly by God but only through the mediation of Moses, and angels; it did not, above all, lead to life (3:21). It could reveal transgression and teach morality, but it could not empower or transform. The law did not contradict, but neither did it fulfill the promise (3:21-22). Only in the Messiah’s faith is the promise fulfilled (3:22). pg 336
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Paul’s trip to Arabia 📜
This has been a topic for much speculation, see the articles by Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (CBQ, 1993), N. T. Wright (JBL, 1996), Martin Hengal (BBR, 2002), and Daniel Bajnok (AC, 2009). The two major theories are:
(1) contemplative meditation in the wilderness and (2) a mission to evangelize to Gentiles in Arabia. Wright points to the later reference to Arabia in 4:25 as where Mount Sinai was located and the focus on “zeal” in Paul’s religiosity prior to his conversion in ch. 1 as reflective of OT models in Phinehas and Elijah, with Galatians echoing the actions of Elijah who went to Mount Horeb to meditate with Yahweh on the end of his zealous mission who then was told to go to Damascus. He also considers Paul’s quotation of Eiijah from this episode in Romans 11:1-6 as possibly autobiographical. Other scholars reject such a view, pointing out that in 1:15-17 Paul first states his divine mandate to be a herald to the nations and then adds that he did not go to Jerusalem (a Jewish locale) or confer with the apostles but instead went to Arabia (a Gentile locale); he did not specifically characterize his journey as into the wilderness per se. Others, such as Stephen Carlson (ZNW, 2014), contest the relevance of 4:25 as a (possibly non-Pauline) marginal note and note the inconsistency of Arabia here representing Jews of the covenant under slavery of the Law (as opposed to Gentiles outside the covenant). I think one possibility to consider are the real-life circumstances of Paul suddenly adopting the faith of those he endeavored to persecute. He surely was not alone in his efforts and his rapid conversion to the apostasy that provoked his zeal (as Wright understands Paul’s motivations for persecuting the early church) could have put himself into danger, so it makes sense that he would pursue a mission among the Gentiles and he hastened himself to the nearest territory where he could preach to non-Jews.

Relevant also is this tantalizing autobiographical account:
“In Damascus, the ethnarch under King Aretas was guarding the city of Damascus in order to arrest me, but I was let down in a rope-basket through a window in the city wall, and escaped his hands” (2 Corinthians 11:32-33). This story is parallel to what is related in Acts 9 but the latter is problematic because it it omits Paul’s stay in Arabia and relates a single sojourn in Damascus from Paul’s conversion to his escape. So then the question is whether Paul had two sojourns in Damascus, or whether it was just one — as Paul says he immediately went to Arabia and only after three years did he go to Jerusalem for the first time. Also ὑπέστρεψα εἰς Δαμασκόν in Galatians 1:17 implies that Paul was converted in Damascus as Acts has it, but the dramatic circumstances of his escape suggests that this probably didn’t occur during his conversion (as per Acts 9:23-25) because he would visit Damascus again within a few years. Plus it is problematic that Paul would flee an ethnarch of Aretas to then go into Aretas’ principal domain in Arabia. So seemingly Acts left out Paul’s trip to Arabia and combined the two stays in Damascus into one. So as Daniel Bajnok discusses in his article, either Paul did something in Damascus that ticked off Aretas or the vassal ethnarch of Aretas, or something happened during Paul’s stay in Arabia that caught up with him in Damascus. Perhaps an original mission of preaching against idolatry to polytheistic Nabataean Arabs did not yield positive results?
There is also a historical problem with 2 Corinthians 11:32-33 posing the only historical evidence that Aretas IV had any control over the city of Damascus (which had formerly been part of the kingdom of Aretas III). Douglas Campbell (JBL, 2002) argued that it is quite plausible that Aretas briefly annexed Damascus along with the Decapolis in the fall of 36 CE following Herod Antipas’ defeat in his war with Aretas, at most until spring 37 CE when Gaius Caligula reorganized the administration of Syria (which for most of the 30s lacked direct Roman oversight). When Philip the Tetrarch died in 34 CE, the regions of Ituraea and Trachonitis near Damascus were nominally incorporated into the province of Syria which had no Roman governor at the time, and had for much of the preceding decade been remotely governed by an absentee legatus.
So Damascus and the cities of the Decapolis were likely governed by local client rulers for much of this period rather than being under direct Roman administration. Josephus (Antiquitates 18.113) mentions that the war between Aretas and Herod involved a border dispute near Gamala, which was located in Gaulanitis which had been within Philip’s tetrarchy, indicating that Herod Antipas was expanding his territory eastward while Aretas was expanding northward, so it is possible he briefly reached Damascus or made an alliance with a local client ruler he appointed as ethnarch. So if Paul had left Arabia for Damascus after some trouble, it is plausible that trouble came looking for him once Damascus fell under Nabataean control for a brief period. A date of c. 36 CE actually fits rather well with Galatians and Acts, as 36 + 14 = 50 CE for the second Jerusalem visit, and following this was Paul’s visit in Corinth and here we have the next datable window with Gallio of Achaea’s procounselship (that is, if this datum from Acts is credible), whose term occurred from July 51 BCE to July 52 CE. Three years prior to 36 CE would point to 33 CE for Paul’s conversion, or 34 CE if “three years” is not a whole number but includes fractions of years.
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More interpolations 📜
Galatians 1:19:
Until now, the best case in favor of Gal 1:19 being a interpolation (together with its broader context Gal 1:18-24) is made by Dr. Detering here:
Inventing this first trip the editor wants to prove, against the text, that Paul did not delay entering into contact with the heads of the Jerusalem Church.
Against the above given explanation one might object: Why does the editor heavily emphasize the fact that he hasn’t seen anyone but Peter and James, since his interest is said to have been in connecting Paul as closely as possible with those in Jerusalem? Moreover, why doesn’t hi insertion follow even more accurately the depiction of Acts? Keeping in mind the editor’s task, these questions can adequately be answered: We have to consider: in 1,17, Paul had explicitly denied to have been in contact after his conversion with those, who were apostles before himself. The editor now could erase this statement, – or reinterpret it. As a skilled editor, who did not want to write a new text but to alter the extant one, he chose the second way. So he reinterpreted 1,17 in the sense, that Paul had seen Peter and James, yet not the other apostles. Because of the context, this was a concession he could not dispense with. Though this splitting up results in a rather artificial construction (as already B. BAUER noticed: did then the other apostles happen to be on a journey? did Paul consciously avoid meeting them?), Paul nevertheless was set into the Jerusalem tradition. Paul had seen Peter and James and had been with Peter for two weeks! — that should be enough to prove (to the Marcionites) that the Paul of Galatians had not any more than the Paul of Acts received a special revelation and consequently was not the subject of divine revelation in his own right. May then the report in Galatians not fully be in agreement with Acts (9, 27), where Paul is conducted
to the apostles (the author surely meant ‚all of the apostles’) by Barnabas.
It is the logical result of the special task undertaken in this place by the editor: one way or the other, he had to pervert the meaning of 1,17 to get Paul in contact with the other apostles after all. And his depiction does not really contradict Acts: by his construction he managed to explain why, in 1, 17, Paul nevertheless could say he had not gone up to Jerusalem to those, who had already been apostles before himself (in fact, he had not gone to all of the apostles!) — and, the all important project, he had managed to confirm the Catholic point of view.
https://peterkirby.com/marcions-shorter-readings-of-paul.html
Gal 1:18-24
These verses are unattested as being in Marcion. Irenaeus (AH 3.13), Tertullian’s quotation of Marcion (AM 5.3.1), Augustine (Quaestionum Evangeliorum 2.40, Migne PL vol. 35 col. 1355), John Chrysostom (Commentary on Galatians 2.1, Migne PG vol. 61 col. 633), a certain Greek Catena in epistulam ad Galatas (e cod. Coislin. 204, page 27, line 10), the Bohairic Coptic version, and a manuscript of the Vulgate have Galatians 2:1 without the word “again.”

There is some level of expectation that Tertullian would have quoted it in an attempt to show subordination of Paul to Peter and James.

Some or all of these verses are considered an interpolation on other grounds by J. C. O’Neil (The Recovery of Paul’s Letter to the Galatians, p. 25), Frank R. McGuire (“Did Paul Write Galatians?“), Hermann Detering (“The Original Version of the Epistle to the Galatians,” p. 20), David Oliver Smith (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Paul, p. 72), Robert Price (The Amazing Colossal Apostle, p. 415), and in some comments online.
Gal 2:7-8
Jason BeDuhn comments, “Both Harnack (Marcion, 72) and Schmid (Marcion und sein Apostolos, 106) conclude that Marcion’s text lacked Gal. 3.6-9. Jerome, Comm. Gal. 3.6 says, ‘In this passage all the way to where it is written, “who from faith are blessed together with the faithful Abraham,” Marcion erased from his Apostle’ … Tertullian, who jumps from Gal. 2.18 to 3.10 in his comments without saying anything about an omission, goes back to note one when he comes to comment on Gal 3:26, contending that the logic of the latter verse is ruined by the absence of the connection to the faith of Abraham … Later (5.4.8), he seems to suggest that Marcion’s text of Galatians lacked any mention of Abraham except Gal 4.22.” (The First New Testament, p. 264)*
See: https://peterkirby.com/harnack-marcion-galatians.html
See: http://radikalkritik.de/DetGalExpl.pdf
Gal 3:15a (criterion 1 and criterion 2)
This is omitted in its current location. It is found instead immediately before Gal 4:3 instead. BeDuhn writes, “Tertullian, Marc. 5.4.1. Tertullian attests a transposition of 3.15a, adding ‘still’ (‘I still speak,’ Latin adhuc > Gk eti), to the beginning of this verse and omitting 4.3a ‘thus also you’ in agreement with Clement of Alexandria. Ephrem Syrus omits the clause at 3.15, but does not place it at 4.3.” (The First New Testament, p. 267)
Gal 3:15b-25 (criterion 1)
Harnack and Detering regard Gal 3:15b-25 as absent. BeDuhn regards Gal 3:22 as present in the Apostolikon because of “an allusion to Gal 3.22” found in a discussion of Romans 12 (Tertullian, AM 5.14.11). On the other hand, Detering argues, “As we have seen, the evidence is clearly provided by Tertullian who switches immediately over from 3,14 to 3,26 (s. above) and ironically refers to the haeretica industria which he blames for the omission of the passage 3,15-25.” (pp. 53-54)
https://peterkirby.com/harnack-marcion-galatians.html
Schmid regards Gal 3:15b-18 as absent, with 3:18 considered absent because of its reference to Abraham and because of the indication in Tertullian that Gal 4:22 was the only reference to Abraham. BeDuhn answers such an argument by saying that the Greek manuscripts 056 and 0176 show how the phrase containing Abraham in that verse could have been omitted due to scribal error.
http://radikalkritik.de/DetGalExpl.pdf
BeDuhn regards only the omission of Gal 3:15b-16 as secure. This much is explicitly identified as an omission by Tertullian. Tertullian quotes these verses and writes, “Let Marcion’s eraser be ashamed of itself! Except it is superfluous for me to discuss the passages he has left out, since my case is stronger if he is shown wrong by those he has retained.” (AM 5.4.1-2)
Gal 3:29 (criterion 1)
BeDuhn writes, “Harnack and Schmid think the mention of Abraham in v. 29 must have been omitted – Harnack on ideological grounds, Schmid on the basis of Tertullian’s apparent indication that Abraham was absent from Marcion’s text of the letter except for 4.22.” (The First New Testament, p. 267)

Detering writes, “A survey of the discussion on passage 3,27-4,2 shows that an overall consensus is limited to v. 29: all scholars acknowledge that because of the mention of Abraham (cf. Tertullian V,4), this verse cannot have occcurred in the Marcionite Apostolikon. There can indeed be no doubt that this verse was missing in the Marcionite version of the epistle to the Galatians. ” (The Original Version of the Epistle to the Galatians, p. 62)
Gal 4:1-2 (criterion 1 weakly, criterion 4)
BeDuhn writes, “Harnack, Marcion, 74, suggests that these verses probably were present as the referent of 3.15a, which was transposed to the beginning of 4.3. But Tertullian complains that 3.15a makes no sense because what follows in 4.3ff. is not an analogy from human practice, but a statement of actual spiritual fact; this criticism would lose its cogency if 4.1-2, with its analogy from human practice, immediately preceded, in which case 3.15a would be taken to refer back to it, just as Harnack supposes.” (The First New Testament, p. 267)

Following Bruno Bauer, Detering draws attention to the differences between Gal 4:1-2 and what follows, i.e., “that in 4,1-2 the heirs are acknowledged to be children even while still minors, whereas in 4,3ff they only become children and receive the quality of being children through Christ” and “that the heir as a child only has the appearance of a slave in Gal 4,1- 2, while the νήπιοι, of 4,3, are in fact slaves. ” (The Original Version of the Epistle to the Galatians, p. 64) Detering concludes, “The entire passage 4,1-2 obviously seems not to have had any other function than to introduce 4,3ff, rather badly used by the editor to lead from his starting-point, the keyword κληρονόμοι in 3,29, to 4,3. He overlooked the fact that his expositions, intended to lead to 4,3ff, were hardly compatible with the metaphor used there and in principle belonged to a completely different context. By the inserted οὕτως καὶ ἡμεῖς, a context is but very forcibly established — and it misses the mark i.a. because after such an introduction, a reader generally expects not another allegory but its explanation or application.” (p. 65)

Gal 4:4b (criterion 3)
Harnack describes how Tertullian’s citations in Against Marcion stop short just before quoting these particular words (AM 5.4.2-3, 5.8.7):
Tertullian (V, 4): “‘Cum autem evenit impleri tempus misit deus filium suum‘” [But when it came about that the time was fulfilled, God sent his Son]. … Tertullian himself wrote shortly afterwards [quoting the same verse in V, 8]: “At ubi tempus expletum est” [But when the time was fulfilled]. – Erased the words γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικός γενομ νον ὑπὸ νόμον [born of a woman, born under the law].”
Detering writes, “There is a consensus of all scholars that the words γενόμενον ἐκ γυναικός, γενόμενον ὑπὸ νόμον were missing in Marcion’s edition. The fact is unambiguously confirmed by Tertullian. He surely would not have omitted the words that showed Christ’s genuine human nature to be true and that therefore could be used as an excellent argument against Marcion’s docetism, if then he had found them in Marcion.” (The Original Version of the Epistle to the Galatians, pp. 65-66)
https://librivox.org/the-origins-of-christianity-by-thomas-whittaker/
Persecutor Interpolation:
Here is his confession in the first chapter of Galatians:
13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it; 14 and I advanced in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers… 22 And I was still not known by sight to the churches of Christ in Judea; 23 they only heard it said, “He who once persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they glorified God because of me.
O’Neill believes a strong case that those verses were interpolated by a second century editor wanting to glorify Paul (my bolding, formatting and added translations, pp 24-27):
These verses have been interpolated into Paul’s argument by a later writer who wished to glorify the apostle.

The argument is irrelevant and anachronistic, the concepts differ from Paul’s concepts, and the vocabulary and style are not his.

Paul is arguing that he was directly commissioned by God, through a revelation of his Son, to spread the good news among the Gentiles. Although he visited Jerusalem to get information from Cephas,1 and there saw James, the Lord’s brother, he was not indebted to them for his special commission. That visit was three years after his call, and his first reaction to the call had not been to go to Jerusalem but to go to Arabia.
What is at stake is his right to serve Christ as he has been called to serve him. The astounding reversal of roles he underwent, from a fierce persecutor of the Church to an evangelist of the faith, and from a precociously zealous Jew to an opponent of Jewish customs, is no argument in favour of Paul’s position. His position stands or falls on the revelation he has received and the recognition accorded him by the “pillars” in Jerusalem.
E. Bammel has suggested that the trouble-makers in Galatia had attacked Paul because he had once been a persecutor of the Church, and that Paul was defending himself by admitting all, and then citing the praise of him that was used in the Judean churches:
Ὁ διώκων ἡμᾶς ποτὲ
νῦν εὐαγγελίζεται

τὴν πίστιν ἥν ποτε ἐπόρθει.

The one persecuting us then
now is preaching
the faith which once he destroyed.
It is hard to imagine the men who visited Galatia finding ammunition to use against Paul in his activities before he was called. Even if this were brought up against Paul, it is even harder to imagine that Paul would cite the approval of the Judean churches as support for his case. His case rested solely on the commission from God and, the subsequent approval he received from the authorities who might otherwise have been thought of as his commissioners. What the Judean churches thought was neither here nor there. Paul had asked the Galatians ironically in verse 10 whether he should now try to please men, and he is not likely, a few sentences later, to quote the men he had pleased.
The interpolation is anachronistic because it regards Judaism as an entity distinct from Christianity.3 Jews at the time used the term Ἰουδαϊσμος [=Judaism] to describe their faith in opposition to heathenism (2 Macc. 2.21; 8.1; 14.38; 4 Macc. 4.26; synagogue inscription in Frey, C.I.J. 1.694), but the use of the term in a Christian context seems to imply that Christianity is a system completely distinct from Judaism. Paul was well aware of the tragic gulf that had opened up between those Jews who believed in Jesus Christ and those who refused to believe, but he still held fast to the fact that “theirs were the fathers” (Rom. 9.5), that the fathers of those who believed in Christ were also the fathers of the unbelieving Jews.

But this interpolation speaks in the terms to be found in the Apostolic Fathers of the second century, when Judaism had become a foreign entity (Ignatius 1Magfz. 8.1; 10.3; Philad. 6.1).The concepts employed are rarely found in Paul, or are entirely absent. In verse 23 πίστις [=faith] is used of the Christian religion, as in Acts 6.7, and the only possible parallels in Paul are at 3.23-5, 6.10, and Rom. 1.5, all passages that are of doubtful authenticity.

When verse 13 is read in conjunction (with verse 23, it seems likely that ἐκκλησία [=church] is used in the first instance as the word for the Church as a whole; either the universal Church, or the Church of the Judean provinces. Although Paul was active as a persecutor only in Jerusalem, he planned to persecute Christians in Damascus; the destruction of Christian congregations everywhere is what is contemplated in the phrase καὶ ἐπόρθουν αὐτήν [=and was destroying it]. The Judean churches which did not know him by sight regarded him as persecuting them.
But Paul almost always uses the word to refer to a local congregation.5 He had an ideal opportunity to use the singular in 1.2, if that was his custom, but there he wrote ταῖς ἐκκλησίαις τῆς Γαλατίας [=in the churches of Galatia]. In 1 Thess. 2.14 he spoke of “the churches of God that are in Judea in Christ Jesus”.6

The vocabulary of this section is unusual. The word ἀναστροφή [=way of life] occurs only in Ephesians and 1 Timothy among the books of the Pauline corpus, and Ἰουδαϊσμος, πόρθέω, συνηλικιώτης, [=Judaism, destroy, my people] and πατρικός [=fathers] are not found elsewhere in that corpus. The enclitic ποτέ [=former] occurs three times here, once more in Galatians (at 2.6), and only nine times elsewhere in the Pauline corpus, excluding Ephesians and the Pastorals (where it occurs seven times).

The style of the section is even and steady, unlike the style of Paul. The sentences consist of 20, 19, 12, and 20 words respectively. καὶ joins distinct clauses with verbs in the indicative three times (1.13, 14, 24), which is rather frequent in comparison with the five times in the rest of the epistle (1.17, 18; 3.6 O.T.; 5.1; 6.2). The imperfect ‘occurs seven times in this section, and only eight times elsewhere in the epistle (1.10 twice; 2.67; 2.12 twice; 3.23; 4.3, 29). Two of the imperfects are periphrastic, and we are told that the periphrastic construction was on the increase.7

The case for regarding 1.13, 14, 22, 23, 24 as an interpolation is a strong one as it stands, but to complete the case I must try to explain why anyone should wish to add this sort of note to Paul’s text.
E. Bammel has already shown that verse 23 probably contains a citation from a Judean church tradition, and I think it likely that this thesis can be extended to cover the whole of the section I have isolated. The author possessed Judean traditions about Paul, the persecutor who became the champion of the faith, and he inserted them into Galatians at the appropriate points in the story. His source was Judean as opposed to Jerusalemite,8 so that he has to explain that, although they used to say “He who once persecuted us”, they did not know him by sight.Because he was employing old traditions, the interpolator did not regard his additions as illegitimate. He saw himself as enriching a treasured epistle by an edifying reminiscence of the conversion of St Paul, which could appropriately be put onto his lips.
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