I actually addressed this above: the words Paul uses – and Paul is generally very careful with his choice of words – does not indicate that “hypocrite” is something permanent about Peter, it is a short aberration. Just that choice of passive voice and aorist tense contains or at least points to the Gospel: we may find ourselves crying, “What a hypocrite I am!”, but we can know that as with Peter it is the new man, the man in Christ, who will win; the old sinful flesh still has power, but as with John the baptist, it is decreasing while Christ is increasing.
I’d say there are two different situations there: Paul “became like a Jew”, etc. in order to show them respect so they would listen to the Gospel and be saved, so it’s in the context of winning others to Christ; Peter was among those already won to Christ and so his action is measured differently.
Though it’s worth noting that his action was measured differently because of who he was: Peter, sometimes called “first among the Apostles”. He held what used to be called an “office”, a position of authority and responsibility; as opposed to a job this is a 168-hour per week duty/function, not an eight-hour or even twelve-hour a day task. If it had been just some ordinary Christian Jew from Galilee, Paul probably wouldn’t have confronted him publicly but would have taken him aside and admonished him to correct his behavior, but it was Peter’s always-on-duty function to proclaim and teach the Gospel in word and deed.
Not if they read Greek, which when Paul wrote this letter would have been most people; as I noted, the verb form indicates this was a temporary error, not a characteristic of Peter’s identity. I think rather Christians reading about this would have been encouraged in a way, thinking that if even Peter could stumble and recover then so could they.
The first was a strong custom, largely because back then the house of any Gentile was almost certain to have statues of figurines of one or more pagan gods. eating together was different; obviously they wouldn’t eat in a Gentile’s house, or in a pagan temple, or even in a hall where pagan images were present, but then as now a lot of business got conducted over meals and so Jews were free to meet and eat with Gentiles in neutral places (I suspect that a lot of such meetings were outdoors since it was hard to find a public building, even a rented hall, that didn’t have pagan images).
Heh. There really wasn’t one; the Roman empire had so many accepted gods and goddesses and so many different peoples an customs that while the obvious rules like no murder were shared, some things that were mandated by one person’s “Law” could be forbidden by someone else’s “Law”. It’s one reason that Rome’s law at that time was centered on keeping things quiet.
Every different people in the Roman empire had their own customs and rituals. Paul as a Jew could therefore be expected by everyone to follow Jewish customs and rituals, which is where whichever type of vow he made fits. It isn’t a mask when you follow your culture. Additionally, when as a Jew Paul honored the customs of others that itself was a message to those others; it said that they didn’t have to turn themselves into Jews in order to gain what the Messiah offered.
I have often pondered the fact that it was common knowledge across the empire that Jews were expecting a deliverer – which was probably a joke to most people; after all, what kind of deliverer could knock down Rome? But then when Paul came announcing that this deliverer, this Messiah had come and He was for everyone, not just Jews, that would have made a fair number of people sit up and think.
Peter was certainly more concerned with his reputation, with not wanting to be looked down on by people from his culture and religion. He was also probably feeling out of his element since he had grown up and lived in a primarily Jewish society. This was, after all, in Antioch, which was a very cosmopolitan city: founded by Greek general, it had been an imperial (Seleucid) capital, then a provincial capital once Rome captured the area. The general who founded it encouraged Greeks from all over the Mediterranean and clear to India to come settle in it, and others came as well. By the time of Christ, Antioch was on par with Alexandria as the center of Jewish culture across the Roman empire and beyond. It sat on two different trade routes and could have merchants from anywhere between Britain on the west and China to the east. It would have taken Peter some time to adjust!
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. So now I think that it also depends on the individual view besides the cultural view.
