Galatians 1:18-19

"Then" (Gr. Epeita, "Next") introduces the next event in Paul’s experience chronologically (cf. Galatians 1:21; Galatians 2:1). He gave a consecutive account of his movements omitting no essential steps. He did so to show that he had functioned as an apostle before contacting other apostles. His critics seem to have been saying that the other apostles had really sent Paul.

It was three years after his conversion, not after his return to Damascus, that Paul finally revisited Jerusalem and met Peter, for the first time, and James (i.e., A.D. 37). [Note: Fung, p. 73; Morris, p. 59.] He went there "to get personally acquainted with" them, not to get information from them or to make inquiry of them. [Note: O. Hofius, "Galatians 1:18: historesai Kephan," Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 75 (1984):73-84. Cf. R. Schnackenburg, "Apostles before and during Paul’s Time," in Apostolic History and the Gospel, p. 290, footnote 1.] These were hardly indications that he had to check his message with them. Furthermore he only stayed 15 days and did not see any of the other apostles. If he had needed to work out a theology consistent with the teaching of the other apostles, extended meetings with all of them would have been necessary.

"These brothers [of the Lord] have been regarded (a) by the Orthodox churches as sons of Joseph by a previous marriage (the ’Epiphanian’ view), (b) in Roman Catholic interpretation as Jesus’ first cousins, the sons of ’Mary wife of Clopas,’ who was the Virgin’s sister (John 19:25; the ’Hieronymian’ view), and (c) by Protestant exegetes as Jesus’ uterine brothers, sons of Joseph and Mary (the ’Helvidian’ view). This last view accords best with the natural implications of Mark 6:3, where the context suggests that the brothers, together with the sisters unspecified by name, were, like Jesus himself, children of Mary." [Note: Fung, p. 75. Cf. Gunther Bornkamm, Paul, p. 28.]