Dogs, Workers, False Circumcision

In a 1985 article in Novum Testamentum , David Garland notes that Paul’s insults toward Jews and Judaizers in Philippians 3:2 are chiastically balanced by his commendation of the Philippians in verse 3. Thus:

A. Dogs

B. Evil workers

C. Mutilation

contrasts to

C’. Circumcision

B’. Spirit of God

A’. No confidence in flesh.

This becomes more illuminating when Garland suggests that each of the insults is a Jewish insult turned against them.

Citing Matthew 7:6 and 15:26-27, he suggests that “dog” was “a term apparently applied by Jews to non-Jews or lapsed Jews,” approirate since dogs eat “carrion, filth and garbage” and thus dog is “an apt description of those who did not conform to dietary laws.” Paul turns the insult back at them; they are the ones feeding on “rubbish,” sh*t, the fleshly inheritance that Paul has cast off (Philippians 3:8). In contrast to flesh-crazed dogs, Paul and the Philippians put no confidence in flesh.

Similarly, Paul uses peritome , the term used in the LXX for forbidden cuttings in the flesh, to describe circumcision: “Circumcision of the flesh has become pagan lacerations.” That is balanced by Paul’s reference to the true, Christian, circumcision.

Garland, following Caird, says that the insult “workers of evil” is borrowed from Jewish treatment of non-Jews who don’t keep the law. Paul uses the phrase “as a vilification of the Jewish pretension to religious superiority derived from obedience to the law.” By contrast, Christians serve by teh Spirit, using latreuein “because in the LXX it denoted the service rendered to God by Israel as his peculiar people.”