RESPONSE NUMBER EIGHTEEN To Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Fortress 2010) by Brigitte Kahl

CHAPTER ONE – “REMAPPING GALATIA”

Lawless Barbarians: The Representation of Galatians / Gauls in Imperial Ideology, pp. 42-51.

In this major subsection, Kahl cites and summarizes descriptions of Gauls and Galatians, which have been taken from antiquity. Kahl makes several points along the way, namely:

1. Ancient chroniclers largely reflected the imperial Roman take on these peoples (Diodorus: “mixed with the Greeks”) as dangerous adversaries.

2. All of the surviving materials are about the Gauls / Galatians and not by them.

3. “[O]ccidental scholarship has been shaped by the ancient stereotypes.”

4. The divide between New Testament and Classical scholars has hidden from view the “possibility” that Paul’s Galatians letter is exceptional as written from the point of view of the “vanquished” (See Kahl, p. 43) or as “a discourse among the vanquished.”

Elaborating on this last point – which is the most important one for the theory underlying this book – Kahl suggests that readers of Galatians should be “alert” to the “possible existence of linguistic codes and figures of speech that Paul employs in order to exclude unwanted conversation partners, codes and figures of speech that hide rather than reveal their true meaning” (Kahl, p. 48).

Paul’s Galatians letter is written in code? Now wait a minute.

Where is the citation to the contents of the letter itself, which might offer examples of the “code” we are to detect in Galatians?

By way of a textual citation at this point in her argument, Kahl offers a footnote (no 56).

Citing Galatians 3:1 (“you stupid Celts” – my translation), Kahl suggests the possibility (“maybe”) that Paul, writing as a member of “another vanquished nation,” employs language that could be “an element of colonial discourse,” offered ironically or sarcastically.


Without further ado, Kahl has introduced the idea that Paul in his Galatians letter is to be seen (by himself? by his readers?) as a representative Jew of his day. 


If we are to heed the appeal to place the ancient Galatians / Celts in their proper historical context, does not that rule also apply to an ancient epistle addressed to Galatians / Celts? 


And does not the reader  deserve more than a maybe-maybe not footnote for this fundamental re-defining of what the Galatians letter is all about?

Galatians 3:1 has its context, which is the document in which this phrase is found. This document has its context, too, which includes both what is known about the letter writer as well as what can be known about Galatia and the proposed recipients of the letter.

It seems to me that in the first instance, what is actually known must be sifted with results stated, before we move into more speculative areas involving possibly coded phrases and their supposed meanings.

Once again, I wonder if a comprehensive assessment of the Galatians letter isn’t the first order of business, if the letter is to be taken as a shaft of light, illuminating a neglected re-imagination of Paul and the context in which this letter was composed.