Biblion Bible Commentary
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Three Years, Then Fifteen Days
Galatians 1:18-20
18 Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to visit Peter, and stayed with him fifteen days. · WEB
The numbers are the argument, and Paul interrupts his own narrative to swear that they are accurate.
Two figures carry this paragraph. After three years he went to Jerusalem , and he stayed fifteen days.
The first number establishes that he was preaching for three years before meeting any apostle. The second establishes that the meeting was too short to be a training. Fifteen days is a visit, and the verb Paul uses for its purpose means to go and see someone — to get acquainted, not to be instructed.
He saw two people. Peter, and James, the Lord's brother — and the second name is given a relationship rather than an office, which is how the letter will refer to him again at the Jerusalem meeting Galatians 2:9. Of the other apostles, none.
Then verse 20, and it stops the narrative cold: now about the things which I write to you, behold, before God, I am not lying.
An oath in the middle of an itinerary tells the reader what was at stake. Someone was circulating a different version of these events — most plausibly that Paul had received his gospel at Jerusalem and had since departed from it, which would make him a subordinate who had gone off script rather than an apostle with his own commission.
The defense is verifiable in principle. Dates, durations, names, places. Paul does not answer the charge with an assertion about his integrity; he answers it with a record and then swears to the record.
settled What this mark means