Professor Brigitte Kahl's description of the situation in Galatia may be summarized as follows
Galatians:
- were peoples living under the harsh regime of Rome occupation;
- were represented in Greek-inspired sculpture, which the Roman Imperium adopted to represent the Galatians as defeated, "lawless," outsiders, whose incorporation within the Imperium remade ("resurrected") them as properly subordinate and, passive;
- as defeated and occupied people, were subject to the Roman demand that they take part in the cult of the emperor;
- had (some of them) come under the influence of the Jewish missionary, Paul;
- were addressed by Paul in a letter he dictated and directed to them.
the Apostle Paul:
- proclaimed faith in a Jew, Messiah Jesus, allegiance to whom brought them into a divinely governed epoch, which allegiance contradicted their enforced allegiance to the Roman emperor, who was to be worshipped as the one true God;
- organized his messianic converted into worshipping congregations, participation in which entailed a refusal to participate in the cult of the emperor and thus implicated his converts in at least latent if not actual civil disobedience;
- insisted that the status before God of his converted was not dependent upon submission to the Jewish rite of circumcision.
In the section of Chapter Five, under review, Kahl proposes to answer two questions:
Why had Paul's converts been told they must be circumcised?
Who had told them this?
Kahl's answers these questions in this way: those who insisted that Paul's Galatian converts must be circumcised were Jews, living in Galatia.
These persons ("control agents" acting on behalf of the Jewish community) demanded that Paul's converts be circumcised.
Why did the "control agents" make this demand? Kahl gives her answer:
Important elements within the Jewish community were afraid of the Roman authorities. The specific Jewish fear was that the authorities would target Jews for persecution, since Paul's converts no longer participated in the cult of the emperor. The converts, if Paul had his way, withheld themselves from emperor worship because, as heirs of Abraham, they had become Jews, and could invoke the Jewish-Roman accommodation, which exempted Jews from the enforced requirement that all occupied peoples participate in the emperor cult.
In order to allay persecution of the Jewish communities in Galatia, the Jewish control agents insisted that the messianic converts demonstrate their incorporation within Judaism, by undergoing the Jewish rite of circumcision, thereby displaying the physical mark of male Jewish identity.
The problems with Kahl's description of the situation among Paul's converts, as reflected in his letter to them, are an absence of data and implausibility.
MISSING DATA
There is no evidence I know of, that Jewish representatives would have insisted that non-Jewish males, who did not participate in synagogue activities, could be deemed part of Judaism so long as they got themselves circumcised.
There is no evidence I know of, that a circumcision requirement alone was ever accepted by Rome as the only identity marker for a non-Jewish male, so as to declare this person to be Jewish.
There is no evidence I know of, that Roman authorities in Galatia inquired of Paul's converts whether they were circumcised, as a proffer of proof of their embrace of Judaism.
ABSENCE OF PLAUSIBILITY
It is not plausible that synagogue representatives would approach non-Jewish males, members of a messianic sect, and insist they get themselves circumcised because of a fear within the larger Jewish community of guilt by association.
More plausible is the scenario that synagogue representatives would argue to Roman authorities that the new Galatian sect had nothing to do with the Jewish community, or with Jewish observances or with the Roman-Jewish accommodation, by which the emperor was prayed for in the temple in Jerusalem and diaspora Jews were thereby exempt from participation in the emperor cult.
Certainly, it is possible to confect a scenario that gives purchase to the idea that a circumcision requirement was insisted upon, by Jewish agents, or Christian Jews from Palestine. This scenario, with varying details, is the traditional picture most commentators find in Paul's Galatians letter.
But in order to make Jewish circumcision a matter of concern to local Roman authority, as Kahl does, the situation requires that Roman authority held circumcision to be the defining characteristic for the new sect to be deemed part of Judaism. This notion is not plausible, implying as it must, that Roman officials, although described as insistent on the overt participation by everyone in the cult of the emperor, and specifically concerned to see that Jewish men were circumcised, were at the same time, too obtuse to uncover a shell game, by which men who were not Jews, could claim they were, merely by displaying their naked circumcised members.
The suggestion that local authorities would have accepted evidence of circumcision as their only concern becomes even less plausible in light of Kahl's belief that Paul's converts, following his teachings, proclaimed themselves to be the only true Israel, in contradiction to Jewish self-identification and synagogue practice.
Such self-centric views - we are true Jews, you are not - openly expressed, would have led not to an overture made by Jewish synagogue representatives to messianic Gentiles to get themselves circumcised; it would have led to fistfights or worse.
If the we-are-the-only-true-Israel idea was articulated by Paul's converts, or even privately held, the theoretical Jewish "control agents" likely would have denounced the Gentile messianics to the authorities. What better way to demonstrate their respect for the Jewish-Roman accommodation than to denounce impostors?
Since Kahl would have it that Paul adheres to Torah for himself and his converts, it all comes down, for Kahl, to circumcision, plausibly, as it must, since this is a strong theme in the Galatians letter.
But is it plausible to think that local Roman authority would have made to-be-or-not-to-be-circumcised the salient concern, in a situation where Gentile men asserted they were Jews, yet were not enrolled in any synagogues and declared themselves to be the only true Jews? I suggest, not; this is not a plausible circumstance.
Is it plausible that local Roman authority would declare everyone Jewish, including men who were not Jews by ethnicity and were not recognized as Jews by local Jewish leaders, so long as the authorities' own examination turned up a number of circumcised penises? No other questions asked?
This is very far fetched. If Pliny the Younger is close to typical, local Roman officials were conscientious in conducting investigations into allegations of disturbances against public order.
Far more likely is it that the debate in Galatia over circumcision was conducted between Jews or Christian Jews, on one side, and Paul on the other, with his Jewish and non-Jewish converts ranging between one or the other position.
Kahl bolsters her assertions with - at long last - some detailed examination of the text of the Galatians letter. These texts will be talen up in a later post.
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