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

The concluding remarks (pp. 125-127) which end Chapter Two prompt a further response from this reader.


Professor Kahl helpfully summarizes the three themes which Chapter Two intends to convey, namely (1) a detailed description of the Great Altar at Pergamon (reconstructed in Berlin), (2) an emphasis upon "the antithetical character" (p. 127) of the symbolism of the Great Altar, accomplished by applying a "semiotic square" (high - low, in - out) to the representations on the Altar and, interwoven in (1) and (2), is the third theme: (3) an association of the Altar sculptures with Paul's letter to the Galatians.


Kahl, I would allow, has accomplished (1) and (2) but not (3).


Finding an association between the Great Altar and Paul's Galatians feels forced.


A case in point is the identification of the Altar Giants with the Gauls / Galatians. Kahl states without qualification that "the Galatians / Giants have been set up as the archetype of lawlessness and rebellion" (p. 126).


But the Great Altar's mythological giants do not obviously represent the historical Galatians. The Galatian defeat by the Attalids is represented on the Great Altar in company with a separate sculpture of the mythological giants. (See Post Twenty-three.)


The Galatian-Giant correlation has to be established, it appears, in order to move on to explicate how (p. 126) "every single element in this construct [at the Great Alter] of divine and human order, the nature of God(s), and the nature of community, will be challenged by Paul in interaction with Galatian communities in the first century C.E."


I don't see how the challenge(s) posed by Paul in Galatians is made more coherent historically or more pertinent to ourselves, if seen as directed against the symbolism expressed at the Great Alter.


The Pauline challenge, understood as the subversion of imperial values, is implied in the symbolism of a crucified God, to whom allegiance is owed by communities gathered from among the oppressed.