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

This post offers some considerations of Professor Kahl's reference to Luke-Acts in Chapter Five.


Sprinkled through Chapter Five, are citations to Biblical texts, put forward to bolster Professor Kahl's argument that representatives of Diaspora Jews insisted to Paul's messianic converts they must accept circumcision. 


The circumcision requirement was in reaction, Kahl argues, to the risk posed by uncircumcised Gentile males who had identified themselves with the messianic proclamations of the missionary Paul. These men were perceived by Jews also resident in Galatia, as persons who were deceptively benefitting from the Roman-Jewish accommodation, whereby the emperor was prayed for in the Jerusalem temple and the Jewish Diaspora was permitted to follow its own observances, exempt from participation in public emperor worship.


Kahl offers several New Testament texts in support of these views.


One citation is to chapters 13 and 14 of Acts, offered to the reader in toto (note 63, page 355) as independent evidence of the situation Kahl has described, i.e., (p. 224) "portions of the Jewish population in Asia Minor negotiated rather successfully the compromise between Jewish otherness and civic and imperial integration, which brought them in some cases closer to the civic and imperial establishment in the cities." 


This heavily qualified statement may well be true, just as its opposite might also be true. That is, one could say, "in some cases" . . . "portions of the Jewish population" . . . "negotiated" un"successfully" . . . etc.


The varying  situations described in Acts 13 and 14 can be said to show many configurations beyond the one Brigitte Kahl is proposing.  


In these chapters, Jewish figures are portrayed as hospitable to Paul and his colleagues (13:5, 15, 42, 14:1)  but also as inhospitable (13:45, 50, 14:2, 19). Similarly, local representatives of Roman occupation and official religions are likewise both hospitable (13:6-7, 12) and hostile (13:50), sometimes in apparent collusion with Jews, in demonstrating hostility to Paul (13:50, 14:5), but then again, sometimes joining with Jews in praise of Paul (13:44, 14:7, 13, 18).


An allusion to Luke-Acts, especially if the subject under discussion is insistance by some that others accept circumcision, should include mention of Act 15:1, where it is stated that those Jews in the Diaspora, who are portrayed as arguing forcefully that Gentile messianists must be circumcised were "some men came down from Judea." 


This reference ought not be overlooked and should be explained in  light of Kahl's thesis that those who insisted on a circumcision requirement were not followers of Messiah Jesus nor were Judeans, but were Diaspora Jews.


The fact that Acts 15:1 is overlooked serves to remind that the description of a course of events, teased out of selected Biblical texts, retains cogency only if it accounts for other relevant texts.


To put this another way, a proposed new understanding of Paul in Galatians carries the burden of inter-connective textual coherence.


There is also the need to come to terms with a cited text, in its inherent literary integrity. Mention of a text in Luke-Acts, it seems to me, requires placing a given citation in the context of Luke's role as a writer. 


Much of the work done on Luke-Acts in the past half-century or so has demonstrated that the writer of Acts, sequel to Luke, was interested in developing a chronology that was friendly to a Gentile mission as an already established fact. 


Acts reveals a greater freedom to pursue this objective, than is apparent in the earlier work, Luke, in the writing of which, Luke was constrained both by the existence of a prescribed "gospel" form and by the subject matter of the earlier work, the career and the mission of Jesus. 


Citations to Acts 13 and 14 need to be given with their context within Luke's theological objectives as demonstrated elsewhere in Acts. A casual reference to these two chapters falls short, by not addressing Luke's redactional role. This failing is compounded by the fact (see above) that these chapters present a quite varied picture of the interaction between Paul, Diaspora Jews, and local authorities.


Further, a citation to Luke where the Apostle Paul is concerned, has to contend with the (to me) well established conclusion that the writer of Luke-Acts, though an admirer of Paul, did not understand Paul and placed words in his mouth, which are quite foreign to Paul's actual thoughts, expressed in the letters. If Luke felt free to compose speeches for Paul, did Luke also freely manipulate the context of those speeches? Since Dibelius' work on the Paul's speeches in Acts, this question must receive an affirmative answer. 


In the context of the research and the conclusions reached in the past decades about Luke's role as a creative historian and editor of material at hand, are their grounds, in the citations made by Professor Kahl, for concluding that these Lucan passages can be taken as references to actual events, or rather are we dealing with Luke's redactions?


Ironically, the Paul of Acts does displace Judaism as the essential ground and home of the Gentile mission. A further indication of this displacement is that the Jewish claim to be the people of God is not echoed in the speeches of the Paul of Acts, yet Jewish option may be found in the letters, as in Romans 9-11. Paul, letter writer, also who urged upon his converts the image of the body of Christ, not as in Acts, their unity as members of the human race. (See the Areopagus speech of the Paul of Acts,  at 17:22-31.)


All this is the work of Luke, not of the historical Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles.