CHAPTER ONE – “REMAPPING GALATIA”
"Universalized Galatian Barbarians and the Worldwide Roman Savior" (189 B.C.E. – 25 B.C.E.)
In this section, which completes Chapter One, Professor Kahl continues a narrative of the many battle(s) between Roman armies and Galatian clans.
The purpose of this retelling is to demonstrate that the Galatians, whether in the east (modern day Turkey) or west (Italy, France) have come to represent to the Romans (p. 65) “universal agents of disorder and rebellion.”
Just prior to this assertion, Kahl had taken note of three acts of human sacrifice conducted by Roman officialdom. In 228, 216, and 113 B.C.E, Roman authorities sacrificed a Galatian man and woman in order to placate the Gods.
These events are especially significant for Kahl, who argues that these executions were significant to the Romans – especially the second of the three sacrifices, coming as it did, after a defeat, rather than as an invocation of divine favor before battle.
The executions in 216 B.C.E., Kahl writes, “might indicate” that “the Roman construction of the Galatian/Celtic enemy had undergone a profound metamorphosis” being both “universalized” and simultaneously incorporated into “Roman state religion.”(p. 56).
The problem with reading such grand symbolism into these 216 B.C.E. executions is that we know what prompted them, as Kahl acknowledges. These executions were carried out in response to an accusation of unchastity against the vestal virgins. There is more, as Kahl also recognizes; the victims sacrificed were not just Galatians. Also killed were a Greek man and woman in both the first (228 B.C.E.) and the final (113 B.C.E.) instance of sacrifice.
Nevertheless, these deaths occasion Kahl’s agreement with Karl Strobel, who concluded that the Celts / Galatians had come to be seen as the “enemy per se,” by Roman officialdom.
Another conclusion, also cited by Kahl (footnote 67 to Chapter One), is that of Rankin, who felt that Celtic invasions might have stimulated a more generally applicable Roman sense of “real or imagined menace from foreign peoples.”
Despite the fairly slim evidence Kahl asserts (p. 64) that the Galatians represent to the Romans “agents of godless and lawless disorder.” It is not clear to me how Kahl can associate the Celts with ‘godlessness’ or why Kahl concludes that the Romans did.
Nonetheless, Kahl goes on (pp. 64 – 74) to narrate the nearly two centuries of struggle (189 – 25 B.C.E.), which ended with Galatian slaughter, destruction and submission in both the Roman west and the regions, which had comprised the Seleucid empire in the east. In this latter area, the kingdom of Pergamum was placed in control of the surviving Galatian clans, by virtue of military allegiance given to Rome by successive Pergamene kings.
The final nail in Celtic independence is hammered home by Cesar’s campaigns in Gaul, modern day France.
Kahl concludes that the Galatians, by the end of this period and by virtue of their resistance to Greek and Roman hegemony, had become influential as a representational adversary, far beyond what they had accomplished on the battlefield.
This conclusion permits Kahl to further assert (p. 75) that “the entire vocabulary of Paul’s justification theology” needs to be read “within the framework of the Roman-Galatian encounter.”
“Texts are cultural constructs, and we need to treat them as such.” This statement, Kahl has cited (note 91 to Chapter One) with approval and it has relevance for her own text, I think.
Professor Kahl is reviewing and retelling certain historical events with an agenda in mind. She is interpreting as she goes, with the idea of demonstrating that a new perspective needs to be taken by Pauline scholarship, as to the correct interpretation of a text found in Christian scripture, Paul’s letter to the Galatians.
Kahl (p. 75) would remove this text from its traditional interpretation (“issues of Jewish law”) because the larger context – the Roman one – means that the recipients of Paul’s letter “were already firmly and categorically condemned or justified by Roman law and power, and had been granted grace through faith as loyalty and allegiance to the Roman emperor.
I remain unconvinced.
Neither Kahl’s reading of the history of the period nor her assertions about the Galatians letter – accompanied by little in the way of citation to the letter itself – are persuasive. So Far.
Much depends on the reading of the letter. As noted earlier, this reading is absent, which means that fundamental questions, related to Kahl’s thesis cannot even be asked, much less answered.
Here are a couple of examples:
If the Celts / Galatians came to be represented as the barbarian arch enemy by Roman ideology, and if this is the context in which Paul writes to the Galatians, what can be made of the fact that many of Paul’s statements and assertions in his Galatians letter are also found in others of his writings, addressed to peoples other than Galatians?
What about the fact that different New Testament writers make use of some of the same terminology Paul employed, but again, in a non-Galatian context?
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