41 PLEASING GOD PLEASING PEOPLE ? OR his reputation as a gospel preacher reached believers who knew he was not associating with the other apostles (1,22-23). Paul gives his itinerary up to this point. Paul’s testimony about his trip to Jerusalem has been called into question as well because of the correspondence between Gal 1,18-19 and Acts 9,26-29. In both instances Paul goes from Damascus to Jerusalem (Acts 9,22-26 ; Gal 1,17-18) ; and in both Paul then leaves Jerusalem for the same area, with Acts 9,30 naming the cities, Cesarea and Tarsus, and Gal 1,21 the regions, Syria and Cilicia. Luke and Paul have different emphases: Luke focuses on the trouble Paul stirs up (Acts 9,28-30) whereas Paul relates the brevity of his visit and of his contact with Peter and James (Gal 1,18-19). The difficulty is that Luke has Barnabas bring Paul to the apostles (Acts 9,27), and Paul denies seeing all but two of them. Although it might be said that two apostles are still apostles, Luke did say “the apostles ” and not merely “some apostles”. And although other biblical writers could be a bit loose with their references by today’s standards — Paul says Jesus appeared to Cephas then to the twelve (1 Cor 1,5) at a time when there were only eleven apostles, and John says Jesus appeared to “the disciples” when Thomas was absent (John 20,19, 24) — two would hardly constitute a quorum. However, it was valid in Luke’s time, as it often is in our own, to refer to the leaders of a group as the group itself. For example, Pilate says in John 19,35 that Jesus’ nation and the chief priests delivered Jesus to him when it was the chief priests as the leaders of the nation, together with at most a small portion of the populace, that actually did so 45. As Gal 2,9 indicates, Peter, James, and John were the leaders among the apostles. If Barnabas brought Paul to two of the three leaders, Luke could correctly say that Barnabas brought Paul to the apostles. c) Conclusion: Galatians 1,11-12 via 1,10 As noted earlier, Paul constructs in 1,10 two mutually exclusive but all inclusive categories: that of pleasing people and that of pleasing God. By arguing that he kept his distance from Jerusalem and the other apostles when he began preaching, Paul demonstrates See Matt 26,14-15; 27,9 for another example. The “sons of Israel” in 45 27,9 were the chief priests in 26,14-15.