Who are the Agitators in the Letter to Galatians?

Abstract

Galatian Christians abandon the Pauline message to accept “another” gospel proposed by agitators. The history of the research has proposed very different hypotheses for their identification, provenience, message and motivation. The article defends the classical theory, according to which Christians of Jewish origin have come to Galatia to preach the circumcision
and to impose the observance of Jewish calendar to try to escape from persecution.

Claudius’ edict of the year 49 in Rome showed to the Jews that the Christian communities in the diaspora were a danger and they could not adopt disciplinary measures that disrupted public order. Since then, they report to the Roman authorities that Pauline communities don’t belong to this tolerated religion, because they are not circumcised, nor do they observe the Jewish cultic calendar. Faced with this situation, members of the Christian community of Jerusalem undertake an anti-Pauline mission to demand those Jewish prescriptions to continue under the umbrella of Judaism.