Galatians 1–5 as a Conflict over Covenant Standing, Not Torah Abolition

This study argues that Galatians 1-5 has been repeatedly misread as Torah abolition at the very places where Paul frames distortion as accursed. Read as a coherent conflict-letter rather than as a chain of detachable slogans, the epistle opens by naming a perverted good news, placing it under anathema, opposing men-pleasing, and identifying the traditions of the fathers as an operative force. The Antioch incident then governs Gal 2:16; Gal 3:10 is locked by Deut 27:26, where Moses places the curse on failure to uphold and do Torah rather than on Torah-doing; Gal 3:19-25 describes not the cancellation of Torah but its relation to transgression, custody, and condemnation over a people still under sin; and Gal 5 shows that ‘not under law’ cannot mean normlessness because the paragraph itself excludes flesh and reasserts the whole Torah in neighbor-love. The result is a sustained argument that Paul does not attack Torah as Yehovah’s covenant plumbline. He attacks fleshly covenant-standing, inherited boundary-traditions, and status-coded law-language misused within a separation-regime.