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In Galatians, Paul describes the Torah as a guardian, using a Greek term for a servant who teaches children. This was common in the ancient world and appears in Rabbinic tradition such as Genesis Rabbah, where the Torah is also called a teacher.
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2500 BCE
1000+ CE
Galatians 3:24
New Testament
23 Now before faith came we were held in custody under the law, being kept as prisoners until the coming faith would be revealed. 24 Thus the law had become our guardian until Christ, so that we could be declared righteous by faith. 25 But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. 26 For in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God through faith. 27 For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female—for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendants, heirs according to the promise.
Genesis Rabbah 1
Aggadah
Rabbinic
Rabbi Hoshaya the Great began: “I was with Him as an amon, a delight day after day…” (Proverbs 8:30) – amon means a child’s caretaker, amon means covered, amon means hidden, and some say amon means greatness. Amon means a child’s caretaker, as it says: “As a caretaker [omen] carries a nursing child” (Numbers 11:12). Amon means covered, as it says: “Those covered [ha’emunim] in scarlet…” (Lamentations 4:5). Amon means hidden, as it says: “He was omen Hadassa” (Esther 2:7). Amon means great, as it says: “Are you better than No Amon [which sits in the rivers]?” (Nahum 3:8), which we translate in Targum as: Are you better than the great city of Alexandria, which is located among the rivers? Another matter, amon means artisan [uman]. The Torah is saying: ‘I was the tool of craft of the Holy One blessed be He.’ The way of the world is that when a flesh-and-blood king builds a palace he does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather based on the knowledge of an artisan. And the artisan does not build it based on his own knowledge, but rather, he has [plans on] sheets and tablets by which to ascertain how he should build its rooms, how he should build its doors. So too, the Holy One blessed be He looked in the Torah and created the world. The Torah says: “Bereshit God created” (Genesis 1:1), and reshit is nothing other than the Torah, as it says: “The Lord made me at the beginning of [reshit] His way” (Proverbs 8:22).
Date: 500 C.E. (based on scholarly estimates)
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Notes and References
"... The custom of having a pedagogue was so common in Paul's day that any of his readers would have well understood his meaning. "When Paul depicts the Law as a 'pedagogue' in the period of history before Jesus Christ came as 'the offspring' of Abraham, and those 'under the Law' as children 'under a pedagogue,' he introduces a conceptual field behind which there is a wealth of virtually universal experience in antiquity." References to a παιδαγωγός are found frequently in Jewish rabbinic writings, "where the Hellenistic origin of the concept is shown by the fact that pedagogue is a Greek loan word." A number of parables in the Genesis Rabbah use the word "pedagogue." Also Josephus referred to a παιδαγωγός a number of times in his writings and even wrote of his own son being under such an arrangement. Paul, however, introduced a new concept in using παιδαγωγός as a metaphor for the Law ... From such a collection of Greek and Jewish references it can be seen that Paul's use of pedagogue in Galatians 3:24-25, though creatively applied, is not an isolated phenomenon ..."
* The use of references are not endorsements of their contents. Please read the entirety of the provided reference(s) to understand the author's full intentions regarding the use of these texts.
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