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

Taking up Chapter Four at page 222:


Kahl elaborates in some detail the reasons for her assertion (p. 221) that the Apostle Paul's "innovation" - inviting non-Jews "into oneness with Israel and Israel's God constitutes a double offense - against Roman law and Jewish law as well."


This assertion requires to be established by demonstrating two facts.


(1) the Roman imperium punished unsanctioned religious practice;


(2) the imperium insisted on the active participation of occupied populations in the official Roman cult.


In addition, a look at the treatment of religious dissent under the Roman imperium should recognize a distinction between temple cult and public spectacle, the one conducted by an elite, the other sponsored by the highest local authority for public entertainment.


These distinctions needs to be acknowledged, else we are in a muddle.


Kahl states (p. 223) ". . . a threat of collective civic disobedience and non-conformity - was the core of the Galatians controversy as it was of Paul's theology of justification." This approach does not recognize the distinction between spectacle and temple cult.


Again (p. 223): "What is called for [by Paul] is nothing less than a new type of 'transnational' obedience, including Jews and non-Jews, self and other alike with all their differences, in one messianic community that worships God alone."


This sort of summary may be employed to emphasize the way in which Paul's thinking can be seen as relevant to modern eyes. But there is a caveat:


Using the tools of the historian, we cannot know that the recipients of Paul's Galatians letter would have given this meaning to his words.


Why? His letter's recipients are silent. We have no trace of a reaction from them. We cannot know so basic a fact as whether the intended recipients even received the letter. Our questions about what they though or did are answered by silence.


This book very straightforwardly intends for its readers to grasp how the Galatians letter must have been received by Paul's intended interlocuteurs. But the most we can hope for is to speculate about how they might have received Paul's words. All persons to whom Paul directed his letter are utterly silent - except if and when Paul implies their views through his words or through his statement of what we think we can make out to be a position in line with or counter to theirs. Even then, we speculate.


Encountering silence, which has become the silence of the aeons, are commentators given license to replace this silence with their own speculations? Yes, but only with qualification, which is the qualification of not knowing.


Do we penetrate the silence of the past by a resort to parsing and tweaking sentences, words, phrases, syllables of the one side of the discussion that we have? No, not with a high degree of confidence that we see things correctly, confident, too,  that others, who speculate to a different result, do not.


Do we penetrate this silence by the demonstration of magisterial command of the endlessly enlarging secondary literature? No. Parsing and commenting back and forth displays erudition, not insight.


Well aware of the chasm created by the silence of the past, Kahl wants to get at the views of the intended recipients by a project of 're-imagination' of the context of the recipients. Kahl does not want to wind up where many forays into the Galatians letter have wound up - telling us merely what the commentator thinks about Paul.


Kahl wants to pierce the veil of unknowing by telling us what the letter's intended recipients must have thought. Kahl is not satisfied with discovering what they might have thought. 


Kahl's project, placed before the reader in this book, proposes to move from might to must by way of an explication of visual imagery.With respect, I suggest that the project breaks up, titanically, upon hitting the glacial silence of history.


Kahl's approach poses a different sort of challenge, even before one can get to the hypothetical mental universe of the intended recipients. The project of mixing visual symbols (sculptures from an earlier epoch) with literary symbols (the written letter itself) is a daunting challenge for the projectionist, which I suggest, has not yet been met. Because it cannot be met.


The symbols, taken up as exemplary of the condition of Paul's Galatians, are too ancient, too readily subject to a variety of perspectives by a variety of ancient viewers, too ambiguous to get us past the unrelieved silence of the actors.


Kahl writes (p. 223-4), with emphasis added:


 "While this ultra-rigorous concept [Paul's theology] must have created sever problems for both Jews and their fellow citizens in any part of the Roman empire, one might imagine that it was particularly troublesome in Roman Galatia and that it almost inevitably lead into a showdown with imperial religion. For as, as we have seen, within the framework of city and civilization, Galatians were a special case. Unlike someone from other nations, anyone called a 'Galatian' was subject to particular scrutiny, required to pass a metaphorical test of loyalty under the eagle's watchful gaze at the staircase of the Great Altar."


This paragraph summarizes the problem:


"must have created" - is aspirational, indicating there is no evidence that anything was created;


almost inevitably lead into a showdown - almost transports this dreamy thought away into the arms of its lover, the god of secondary literature, Theos/Dios Speculator; 


"one might imagine" - one prefers not to imagine this far into the investigation; one wants facts;


"Galatians were a special case" - No. Galatians, as defeated and occupied peoples, forced into the Roman imperium by genocidal assault and brutal occupation were nothing special; the evidence for Galatians assigned a unique, spectral image by Roman religio-political image makers and emperors is dependent upon an interpretation of ancient art created in an earlier period; this image has not been demonstrated by factual indices.


"required to pass a metaphorical test of loyalty" - a metaphorical test is not an literal test; where are the decrees? the denunciations? the prosecutions? the official findings? the formal admonitions? the punishments of the intransigent? the confessions? the denials? the curtailment of unlawful conduct?


"under the eagle's watchful gaze at the staircase of the Great Altar" - a clause which reminds this reader that we are carried along on a journey of interpretation of visual imagery, of art objects which can receive a variety of interpretations, none of which may claim pride of place or may declare what is in the mind of the recipients of an ancient letter, written decades after the eagle was sculpted - recipients who, from the facts we know, never saw the eagle in question or ever had any connection of any kind with anyone who did.


When Kahl does get to historical events, the import given to these events feels forced, so as to fit the picture of a dramatic conflict, otherwise undocumented, between "social control agents" (p. 223) of the Roman order and adherents of the views of the Apostle Paul.


Kahl's descriptions, to be persuasive, requires the imposition of a dramatically coercive state religion. But Roman state religion, with equal or greater appeal to facts, can be described as adaptive and tolerant of imported religious practices, and also as not requiring temple-cult participation in sanctioned Roman religious rites by occupied populations.


Religions which had developed outside Roman imperial reach but which had penetrated the empire and found large followings, include the following: the cult of Cybele, adopted in parts of the empire beginning around 200 B.C.E.; the cult of Isis and Osiris, of Egyptian origin, found in Rome approximately 100 B.C.E.; other mystery religions (e.g. Bacchus), mysteries, so called, owing to secret rituals known and shared only among the initiated, many of uncertain first appearance within the empire; Judaism, recognized and permitted to celebrate its cult unmolested, by Julius Caesar, in gratitude for the help of Jewish arms in Alexandria; the cult of the Persian sun god Mythras, which was carried to Rome during the first century, C.E, primarily by infatuated Roman soldiers.


The twin pillars of Roman religion were a temple-based cult and the well known officially sanctioned and sponsored festivals and celebrations. As stated, and worthy of emphasis here, a distinction needs to be drawn between the spectacles in the arenas and temple sacrifices offered to the gods and to the emperor.


". . . one must not be led away by modern analogies to suppose that there was ever anything like a rigid constraint on the private citizen for the observance of festivals. The state-festivals were in the strictest sense offerings made to the gods by the representative magistrates or priests, and if they were present, all was done that was required: the whole people had been, by a legal fiction, present in their persons. No doubt the private citizen would often attend in large numbers at the celebrations, especially at the more popular festivals, but from some, such as the Vestalia, he was actually excluded. On the other hand, though it did not demand presence, the state did—at least theoretically—demand the observance of the feast-day by private individuals. . . . it is characteristic of Rome that the state did not seek for offense, but only punished it if accidentally seen: on a feast day the rex sacrorwm and the flamines might not see work being done; they therefore sent on a herald in advance to announce their presence, and and actual conviction involved a money-fine." (The Religion of Ancient Rome, by Cyril Bailey, London: Archibald Constable and Co, 1907, pp. 93-94.)


Bailey concluded, then, far from being publicly coerced to show loyalty by worship of the emperor, the state "did not seek offense," which offense, if discovered accidentally, resulted in a fine. 


This is a picture of benign imperial tolerance. But is the picture of indulgent authority limited to the treatment of Roman citizens? Perhaps, but there are indications that among the occupied peoples of the empire, Christians, for many decades after the time of Jesus, were not viewed as a great threat to Roman power. 


We have evidence of this even from Anatolia. 


Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, wrote to the emperor Trajan in A.D. 110/111, asking for guidance about how to deal with Christians. "Do not go looking for Christians," Trajan told his governor, in response to this letter from the governor:

"It is my custom, my Lord, to refer to thee all questions concerning which I am in doubt; for who can better direct my hesitation or instruct my ignorance? I have never been present at judicial examinations of the Christians; therefore I am ignorant how and to what extent it is customary to punish or to search for them. And I have hesitated greatly as to whether any distinction should be made on the ground of age, or whether the weak should be treated in the same way as the strong; whether pardon should be granted to the penitent, or he who has ever been a Christian gain nothing by renouncing it; whether the mere name, if unaccompanied with crimes, or crimes associated with the name, should be punished. 

Meanwhile, with those who have been brought before me as Christians I have pursued the following course. I have asked them if they were Christians, and if they have confessed, I have asked them a second and third time, threatening them with punishment; if they have persisted, I have commanded them to be led away to punishment. For I did not doubt that whatever that might be which they confessed, at any rate pertinacious and inflexible obstinacy ought to be punished. 

There have been others afflicted with like insanity who as Roman citizens I have decided should be sent to Rome. 

In the course of the proceedings, as commonly happens, the crime was extended, and many varieties of cases appeared. An anonymous document was published, containing the names of many persons. Those who denied that they were or had been Christians I thought ought to be released, when they had followed my example in invoking the gods and offering incense and wine to thine image,--which I had for that purpose ordered brought with the images of the gods,--and when they had besides cursed Christ--things which they say that those who are truly Christians cannot be compelled to do. Others, accused by an informer, first said that they were Christians and afterwards denied it, saying that they had indeed been Christians, but had ceased to be, some three years, some several years, and one even twenty years before. 

All adored thine image and the statues of the gods, and cursed Christ. Moreover, they affirmed that this was the sum of their guilt or error; that they had been accustomed to come together on a fixed day before daylight and to sing responsively a song unto Christ as God; and to bind themselves with an oath, not with a view to the commission of some crime, but, on the contrary, that they would not commit theft, nor robbery, nor adultery, that they would not break faith, nor refuse to restore a deposit when asked for it. 

When they had done these things, their custom was to separate and to assemble again to partake of a meal, common yet harmless (which is not the characteristic of a nefarious superstition); but this they had ceased to do after my edict, in which according to thy demands I had prohibited fraternities. 

I therefore considered it the more necessary to examine, even with the use of torture, two female slaves who were called deaconesses (ministræ), in order to ascertain the truth. But I found nothing except a superstition depraved and immoderate; and therefore, postponing further inquiry, I have turned to thee for advice. 

For the matter seems to me worth consulting about, especially on account of the number of persons involved. For many of every age and of every rank and of both sexes have been already, and will be brought to trial. For the contagion of this superstition has permeated not only the cities, but also the villages and even the country districts. Yet it can apparently be arrested and corrected. At any rate, it is certainly a fact that the temples, which were almost deserted, are now beginning to be frequented, and the sacred rites, which were for a long time interrupted, to be resumed, and fodder for the victims to be sold, for which previously hardly a purchaser was to be found. From which it is easy to gather how great a multitude of men may be reformed if there is given a chance for repentance." 

The emperor Trajan responded:

"The actions you have taken, my dear Pliny, in investigating the cases of those brought before you as Christians, are correct. It is impossible to lay down a general rule which can apply to particular cases. Do not go looking for Christians. If they are brought before you and the charge is proven, they must be punished, provided that if someone denies they are Christian and gives proof of it, by offering reverence to our gods, they shall be acquitted on the grounds of repentance even if they have previously incurred suspicion. Anonymous written accusations shall be disregarded as evidence. They set a bad example which is contrary to the spirit of our times." (Notes to Eusebius' Ecclesiastical History, book III, ch. 33, The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, series 2, volume I, Hendrickson Publishers,1994.)

I have so far found no reference by Professor Kahl either to Pliny's letter of inquiry to Trajan or to Trajan's response (generally referred to as "Trajan's Rescript"). 

This may be because the genuineness of the Pliny-Trajan documents may be questioned. After all: "The correspondence of Pliny with Trajan depends on a single manuscript, of unknown age, found in Paris about 1500, apparently taken to Italy in the next few years, used by several persons before 1508, and never since seen or known."(Ramsey, cited below.) 

But the documents are considered authentic: ". . . the correspondence is indubitably genuine" states William Ramsey (The Church in the Roman Empire Before A.D. 170, New York & London: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1892, p. 196). The correspondence appears in Pliny's Complete Letters in the Oxford World Classics Series, translated by P.G. Walsh (Oxford, 2006, 2009)

Assuming the documents are authentic, they are directly relevant to Kahl's investigation, not least because, as Ramsey concludes, persons denounced to the governor of Bithynia as Christians, might escape death by agreeing to forego their common evening meal, thereby avoiding condemnation as having formed an illegal sodalitas. 


Ramsey (pp. 219-20): "The regular morning meetings which Pliny speaks about, and which, as we know, must have been weekly meetings, were not abandoned, and Pliny obviously accepts them as strictly legal. Amid the strict regulations about societies, the Roman Government expressly allowed to all people the right of meeting for purely religious purposes.* (NOTE: * Unless, of course, the religion was a forbidden one; but the Empire had quite given up in practice, though not in theory, the old objection to non-Roman religions as illicit.) The [weekly?] morning meeting of the Christians was religious; but the [weekly?] evening meeting was social, including a common meal, and therefore constituted the Christian community a sodalitas. The Christians abandoned the illegal meeting, but continued the legal one. This fact is one of the utmost consequence. It shows that the Christian communities were quite alive to the necessity of acting according to the law, and of using the forms of the law to screen themselves as far as was consistent with their principles."


The Pliny-Trajan exchange is suggestive of several facts: (1) the faith of the Christians had spread, extending within sixty years of Paul's time to Bithynia-Pontus (2)  there was an illicit aspect to Christian gatherings, with a distinction drawn by the authorities between a social gathering (the common meal) and the permissible [weekly?] cultic observances (3) some of the accused tried to shield themselves from punishment, by denial of faith or by agreeing not to participate in the social gathering of the common meal, while limiting their participation to a gathering where the cult of Jesus was celebrated.


It is also apparent from Pliny's letter and Trajan's response, that there were no empire-wide decrees, and no decrees limited to some portion of Anatolia, which forbade the Christian cult, and that would have guided the governor's actions. If there had been any such authority, the well informed and conscientious Pliny would have known this. Apparent too, is the attitude of this particular emperor toward illicit religions, or at least toward Christians - do not search out practitioners, nor rely on anonymous complaints.


The Pliny-Trajan correspondence also demonstrates that the forces of occupation took coercive and brutal notice of Christian belief and practice in Bithynia, next door to Galatia, within a few decades of Paul's era. This suggests, further, that such dangerous official notice - or the fear of such notice - might have occurred in Galatia in the time of Paul. 


But might does not mean did.

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

This response is to Kahl's Chapter Five, pp. 209 - 222.

Kahl answer a question she poses; one she considers (p. 209)  "most directly relevant to the reading of Galatians: Why is the messianic association of circumcised Jews and uncircumcised Gentiles a controversial issue in Roman Galatia?"

Is association of circumcised and non-circumcised men THE question in the Galatians letter?

Some might argue the main question is not association between circumcised and uncircumcised males, but rather, a requirement of circumcision for non-Jewish males, who have alligned themselves with the Messianic group for which Paul had solicited recruits in Galatia.

Kahl promptly reframes the issue (pp.  209-10) not as association, when she describes Paul's "opponents" in Galatia, who "press for circumcision among the male Christ-followers."

This brings Kahl's discussion in line with more traditional views about the nature of the contentious issue in Galatia, i.e., that Paul is arguing against a circumcision requirement for Galatian males.

Kahl loses little time in departing from the traditional view.

Once more invoking the visual imagery displayed at the Great Altar at Pergamon, Kahl draws attention (p. 210) to the eagle with unfurled wings and claws, sculpted at the top and to one side of the staircase.

Who or whom does the eagle represent? Kahl applies an idiosyncratic interpretation, describing this work, despite its greater antiquity and the place of its creation, as "the Roman eagle."

Kahl then (in the next sentence) relocates the bird to its place of origin, the "eagle at Hellenistic Pergamon" but then quickly adds that the eagle is "the personification of Zeus's super logos and law."

Zeus? Super logos? Personification of . . . law?

The piling up of descriptive clauses, so as to make a sculpture do its mythic duty and then double duty and even triple duty as a portrayal of an aspect of Pergamonic history, of Hellenistic sensibilities, and then as a visual representation of the Roman Principate and finally, of the Imperium . . . this is a lot of rhetorical weight to ask a stone eagle to lift.

But lift that weight, this bird must.

The eagle is put forward by Kahl as the symbol of Roman imperial rectitude, a representation of the insistence by the imperium that all defeated peoples must accept their subordinate place in this stratified society, which functions top-down as a system of totalitarian oppression.

In several excursi, Kahl traces earlier Jewish settlements in Anatolia, and then emphasizes the tension between Jewish religious practices and Roman dictates that occupied peoples must offer civic, i.e., religious allegiance to the Emperor.

The Roman-Jewish compromise entailed daily sacrifices for the Emperor in the Jerusalem temple, in exchange for the unmolested maintenance by Diaspora Jews of their ban on images in their synagogues and more-or-less unrestricted freedom to follow their rituals, as decreed by Torah.

Noting the inherent contradiction of prayers for the emperor, offered in the temple of the one true God, Kahl asserts (p. 216) the Roman-Jewish accommodation meant "The Torah of the one God . . . had in effect become a favor granted . . . by the supreme representative of idolatry, the one other God, Caesar."

Given the power of Roman legions to enforce whatever was decreed by the imperium, Kahl is correct; any accommodation with Rome was coerced by Rome. But does this mean Jews on the ground, as it were, whether in Jerusalem or elsewhere, saw matters in this light? Is there any indication that Paul did?

A more nuanced description of matters between Jews and Rome probably ought to take notice of the perspectives of the first two dictators, Julius Caesar and Augustus, both of whom were inclined to extend respectful deference to local customs of great antiquity.

The Romans, not just these two dictators, were sensitive about the absence of explicit Roman connections to antiquity. Lacking ancient civic and religious traditions of their own, compared to the Greeks and others, the Julian-Augustan regimes, and successors, though to a lesser extent, were inclined to give limited scope to local practice, including Jewish customs.

The erratic, insane behavior of subsequent emperors (Caligula, Nero) might better account for strains brought to bear on the Roman-Jewish accommodation, more than speculation about theological turbulence on the Jewish side.

Kahl (p. 215) imagines that local Jewish thinkers might have pondered whether the literal absence of an image at Pergamon could have represented the "aniconic God" of Israel. Kahl speculates that Josephus and other "high ranking Jewish brokers" would have said, yes, the God of the Jews might well be found at the Great Alter. Paul, the Apostle, Kahl believes, "would have vehemently disagreed" and thus,  Paul would have been able to lay claim (p. 217) to the Hebrew "prophetic and exodus tradition, as well as of the Macabean resistance to the violation and usurpation of law." This speculation is and not part of an historical record I am familiar with.

By undertaking this gambit, Kahl positions Paul - in imagination - as  articulating "a counter-interpretation from below" since the view from above, that is, temple worship and the priestly caste were "tightly controlled by Rome."

Where does this mixture of imagination and history leave us?

"Against this overall backdrop the unspoken and unseen part of Paul's Galatian correspondence finally begins to emerge from historical oblivion" (p. 210).

What emerges, Kahl proposes, is this: the uncircumcised penises of the Galatians becomes, in their allegiance to Messiah Jesus, not simply a natural state (as shared by Roman soldiers and citizens) but a symbol of resistance to Roman occupation. Had the Galatians submitted to circumcision, thus signaling their conformity to the subordinate Jewish position, their circumcision would have been accepted by both Roman overlords and Jewish sensibilities. But their allegiance, as Galatians, to Messiah Jesus, while refusing to accept the sign of Jewish identity, was a serious act of rebellion - insisted upon by the author of their conversion, the Apostle Paul.

As Kahl puts it (p. 220): "When Paul declares that neither circumcision nor foreskin matters any longer because both circumcised Jew and uncircumcised Galatians belong to Abraham's seed and stand under the authority of Israel's God alone, that declaration smashes an icon of Roman law and order. And the Galatians' foreskin, never before of any significance, all of a sudden emerges as evidence of an illicit boundary transgression that claims for the God of the circumcised what lawfully belongs solely to the deified Caesar."

This view owes much to Kahl's method, which receives its momentum from imaginary, interpreted so as to admit of possible but historically undocumented developments and associations.

Kahl's method, as I appreciate it, works like this:

First, there is a description of art, followed by an interpretation, heavy with metaphor, of what the art might have meant to the overlords of the culture (Pergamon) wherein the art was inspired.

This is followed by an association of that art and the heavily metaphorical meaning assigned to it, with the highest levels of a heavily stratified culture (Rome), which preserved the artwork (the Great Altar) or reproduced it (the Dying Gaul).

Having established a metaphorical association between artworks and certain top-down power dynamics that were part of the Roman imperium, Kahl suggests that the meaning of the art is no longer limited to a metaphorical template but to a factual one. The Galatians of Paul's acquaintance are, in fact, dying Gauls, as represented, centuries before, by the Dying Gaul / Trumpeter sculpture, who "may redeem themselves, by doing the works of Roman law that 'redeem' them . . . ."(See p. 219).

The richer and more nuanced the transition from metaphor to fact, the better to bolster the proposition that representational art is not just as part of the Galatian background, but actually delineates issues that are addressed in Paul's Galatians letter.

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

The sub-title of Chapter Four is emblematic of a double aspect in Kahl's approach to the historical events she is investigating.

That sub-title is, "The Imperial Resurrection of the Dying Gauls / Galatians (189 B.C.E. - 50 C.E.)"

This sub-title conveys two ideas:

(1) a segment of human history is under review;

(2) the writer applies to this review a conceptual matrix,  a template of interpretation, through which past events are to be understood.


Imperial, resurrection, dying, all are suggestive symbols; each can resonate emotionally, especially (may I suggest) the latter two.

In combination, it appears to me, these language symbols become code for a perspective on past events, which the writer presses. Nothing wrong with this, of course. But it is good to keep in mind the writer's dual focus, which she is of course straightforward about, beginning with the title of the book. We are to consider past events and re-imagine the import of these events.

Chapter Four has the flavor of a legal brief; it is an argument intended to persuade. The opened-ended title of the chapter, ROMAN GALATIA, indicates neutrality, while the sub-title provides an interpretation. There is room, always (isn't there?) for more than one interpretation.

The strength of Kahl's presentation is its delineation of the startlingly brutal and pervasive methods of the Roman imperium to control occupied peoples. These methods, developed over centuries, sought to create  a publicly displayed consensus for and by subjugated peoples, a consensus which affirmed the facts of defeat, occupation and the sustaining principles of world empire.

Prior to chapter four, Kahl grounded her interpretation of events in a detailed examination of visual representations, mostly statues and sculptures.

A literary interpretation of  works of art is a translation of visual symbols into an array of written symbols. Although written interpretations of art are commonplace, bear in mind that an explication of a visually perceived set of symbols into a learned set of written symbols does not lend itself to a single, incontestable conceptual result.

There is always going to be room for disagreement about what a visual presentation means, in written form.

An example is Kahl's conclusion that Galatians are represented as mythological giants. I do not think this case has been made, because representations of Gauls (Galatians) and giants appear together. (See post number twenty-three.)

Chapter Four, under discussion here, is not a delineation of visual representations but of literary remains. Nevertheless, in following Kahl's presentation and the argument it presses, the reader is intended to make the assumption that Galatians are represented as giants. Kahl's insistence upon this (see pp. 173, 178-9, 184, 205) is a distraction and does not appear to me to be required or to serve the larger argument, that Paul's Galatians entails a critique of the Roman imperium.

There is much that Kahl has established and that is likely to endure. She persuasively demonstrates (p. 182) that ethnically more uniform north Galatia (the modern day environs of Ankara) and the ethnically more diverse Roman province to the south (designated Galatia by the Romans), were governed according to similar principles. The details of Kahl's presentation helpfully illuminates the background in which Paul propagandized among these occupied populations.

But this reader must register a caveat at the suggestion that the Roman administrative designation of the south Galatia population as Galatian, therefore, came to be a self-identification, "inclusive of all inhabitants" of the southern province. (p. 187, see also 180.)

I think Kahl, if pressed, would retreat slightly from this conclusion, as it is based on the perspective of the occupier, who intended that subjugated peoples "ideally" (p. 187) would trade in their ethnic allegiances and become compliant and quiescent.

Kahl's frequent reference to Gal 3:1 ("You stupid Celts!") suggests that the writer is pressing the all-inclusive Galatians designation so as to make Paul out in his Galatians letter, to be addressing an ethnically diverse audience, who would in their turn, have understood themselves addressed, even if they were not of Celtic origin.

What happened in 189 B.C.E.?

Kahl begins this chapter with a reminder that Manlius Vulso had conducted a punitive campaign of slaughter of Celtic tribes in Anatolia (see p. 66 f.) , which marked the end to Celtic brigandage (if Celtic occupation had been that) and influence in the region.

But Kahl moves from 189 B.C.E. to discuss events of a century later, (89 B.C.E) when Mithridates (Mithradates VI of Pontus and Armenia Minor), a competitor of Rome, then residing in Pergamon, invited prominent locals to a feast, where he slaughtered most the guests. The victims included leading Celtic figures, whom Mithradates believed would side against him and with Rome.

Professor Kahl interprets (p. 172) this event as evidence that the local Celtic tribes, during the past century had "undergone a miraculous metamorphosis" and were no longer viewed as lawless outsiders.

Kahl also suggests (p. 174) that Mithradates' "decapitation" of local Celtic leadership served Roman interests after his defeat by Pompey in 63 B.C.E, by facilitating Roman selection of a single Celt, Deiotarus, as ruler and enforcer of Roman hegemony.

The coercive principles of Roman provincial governance are chillingly arrayed in this book.

Kahl is undoubtedly correct in stating (p. 181) that the pervasive presence of Roman roads "spells out what it means for a region to become a province."

Inscriptions on milestones (p. 181) placed upon the newly established Roman roads, praised the emperor as "holy" (in Latin: augustus = august; in Greek: Sebastos = august). The road along which the milestone was uncovered was proclaimed on the milestone as a holy gift from the emperor, designated Via Sebastos. This suggests similar designations were given to other (all?) Roman roads in this region.

Oddly missing from the book are maps, which certainly would aid the reader to measure distances and appreciate the value of a system of roads to be employed not only for the rapid movement of soldiers but also for the benefit of commerce and communication, generally.

Kahl believes that surviving rosters of military units, unfortunately not reproduced in this book, suggest (p. 185) that impressment into military service entailed the loss of ethnic identity.

But one wonders if too much is being made, by Professor Kahl, about what an individual soldier's enrollment on a clerk's roster might say about that man's status vis a vis the emperor. Kahl thinks the paperwork appears to indicate that the legionnaire is referred to as "f" - and takes this notation to mean "son" of the unit commander.

Kahl believes this designation is a "tangible" indication that the Roman imperium was declaring it had ". . . officially 'fathered' and newly created these men 'out of nothing' shaping them uniformly in the image of empire . . ."

But ". . . documentation was probably not intended to be read outside the unit and many features (such as the marks annotating rosters) remain unclear." (See Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate, by Sara Elise Phang, Cambridge University Press, 2008 p. 208.)

Kahl is very good in describing the koinon, the provincial council (assembly) composed of wealthy representatives of the occupied population, whose civic duty required the expensive sponsorship of local religious activities and public games.

The koinion functioned as n echo and therefore a cooptation of the ancient Celtic assembly, the drunemeton. The koinon built temples, paid for public feasts and staged blood-soaked events in the arena(s) in the province - all of which were associated with observances of the imperial cult. Kahl states (p. 187) that, at the time of the apostle Paul, at least ten cities in north and south Galatia sponsored events associated with the imperial cult.

Does the plethora of arenas and the ubiquitous staging of bloody entertainments demonstrate that the cult of the emperor was critiqued or countered in Paul's Galatians? Kahl believes so.

"It is important to understand," Kahl writes (p. 188), "the clash with imperial religion and its koinon that was provoked by Paul when his model of worship and koinonia/community turned out to be based on a quite different concept of the one God and the oneness of humanity."

If the Galatians letter reflects a "clash with imperial religion" then one needs to see citations of the letter which establish this association. Kahl does cite the letter, more frequently in this chapter than earlier one. (A subsequent post will visit each of these citations.)

"Rome needed cities" (p. 189).

Kahl helpfully calls attention (pp. 188-191) to the Roman preference for urban centers. This empire was city-based, even to the extent of impoverishing the countryside and starving the rural population, so as to bring food (and force people?) into the cities.

The convening of a koinon is suggestive of the benefits to the occupier of centralization, to say nothing of the military impressment of large numbers of young men, the building of temples and the staging of entertainments and games. All of this indicates that the Roman imperium, through centuries, saw benefits in collecting subjugated peoples into cities, the better to supervise their behavior and keep everything under control.

Not the least of the benefits to the empire was the subsequent redistribution, to military commanders and others, of tracts of land as a reward for services rendered.

Kahl demonstrates the Roman preference for urban life, by drawing on her well honed power of interpretation of visual imagery. Harkening once again to works of art found at the Great Altar at Pergamon, Kahl reminds that Guia, goddess of the earth, presents her cornucopia to the city goddess, Athena. One wants to add, however, as Kahl noted earlier on, that the Great Altar was designed and constructed by Greek sensibilities and workmanship, later taken over by Rome.

The image of empire as an iconic city was embraced by the imperium. As Kahl expresses it (p. 191): ". . . Roma, the worldwide mother city, the unsatiable divine metropolis . . . [was] worshipped alongside the deified Caesar at Ancyra and elsewhere."

In addition to a discovered Roman military roster and the register of donations by members of a Koinon, Kahl calls attention to two other writings, which highlight the nature of the cult of the Emperor.

Portions of an inscription in Ancyra of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti - Acts of the Divine Augustus - have been found. These publicly displayed stone tables, carved in both Latin and Greek suggest the importance placed upon the giving by the divine emperor of good gifts to subjugated peoples - even in faraway Galatia.

For Kahl, the (enforced) generosity of the koinon is intended by occupier and occupied alike as a reflection of the 'good works' of the emperor. The generosity of the emperor, whether implicitly or explicitly, require a reciprocal gift from the koinon. Such gifts, in the expensive form of temple construction, public feasts or elaborate games in the local arena, preserve and enhance the honor of the individual patron. In turn, these sponsored activities invite (require?) reciprocity from the urban masses, which takes the form of gratitude, obedience and praise to the emperor who has made it all possible.

At this point a template of interpretation is proposed by Kahl, whereby the emperor's largesse is characterized as "works of the law" (p. 196), which is suggestive, in turn, to Kahl, of Paul's arguments in his Galatians letter.

The emperor's gifts are entitled, "benefactor/benefaction" which Kahl states, literally means, "doing of good works" (Kahl, p. 196).

Does the association of the emperor's 'good works' make inevitable, or even more plausible the notion pressed by Kahl, that Paul in his Galatians letter (2:16, 3:2-5) is critiquing the generosity of Caesar as "works righteousness" (p. 199)?

Kahl suggests (p. 199) that Paul is advocating and practicing a "faith righteousness" in opposition to "law righteousness." Paul's messianic allegiance, Kahl argues, does not mirror the "honor, benefaction, and patronage of the divine Caesar but the counter-hegemony of a crucified one."

Kahl also suggests that the prevalence of celebratory meals and public spectacles "resonate" in Paul's references in his letter to table fellowship ("community") and "public death spectacles, that is, crucifixion" (p. 199).

Kahl also argues that the title which has come down through church history of Paul as Apostle to "the Gentiles" needs to be re-examined, in light of the reference to Galatian tribes as ethne. This term, Kahl argues, ought not be assumed to mean Gentile - as opposed to Jew. 


There is much here that is persuasive in a general sense and much that provokes a re-consideration of established ideas, as to the background against which was dictated Paul's Galatians letter.

But questions persist:

By way of the mechanisms of Roman subjugation, have the Galatian tribes undergone (p. 204) a "stunning metamorphosis . . . from barbarian outlaws to imperial subjects and soldiers . . . "?

Does the imagery examined indicate that "Dying Gauls had become resurrected . . ." (p. 204)?

Kahl herself raises (p. 204) a question which is central to her investigation: Can we say that Paul "aims much more at the normative imperial master images than at perceptions of Jewish Torah?"

It seems plausible to this reader to agree with Kahl (p. 206) that Paul proposes a "dangerous messianic countervision." But this vision, diverging from the imperial imposition of emperor worship, expressed through public display, does not require that the Galatians letter be seen as an explicit counter to the cult of the emperor.

The messianic faith that Paul helped to found and propagate, did reach a kind of counter-position to Rome, but not until the rule of Constantine, and then, more as a cooptation of empire rather than as a counter to empire.

The continuing weakness of Kahl's presentation is a failure to document persuasively what is repeatedly inferred and increasingly asserted as fact, that the coercive, consensus-building methods of the imperium directed at an occupied population, are the subject matter of Paul's Galatians letter. This, the central thesis of Kahl's book, remains unproven.

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

Having focused on a literary conceit - the shield of Aeneas as described by imperial apologist Virgil - Kahl devotes the balance of Chapter Three (pp. 148 - 164) to an illuminating discussion of the public games. The Roman Games, icons of the empire, were famously staged in the Colosseum. Less well known is that the games were staged in arenas throughout the empire, and were sponsored by Roman authority long before the founding of the imperium of the Caesars.

The point of Kahl's examination of the Aeneas shield conceit of Virgil and, now, of the games, is to bring home the idea that Roman rule employed various modes of symbolism to legitimize its majesty in both the individual and collective mind.

Kahl delineates many of the horrendous details of the blood sport in all its gore and excess. For this reader, Professor Kahl persuasively reminds that the games served as ideological renforcement via the medium of lavish, murderous entertainment.

I found it illuminating that the status conscious emperors prescribed a fixed sequence of events as well as a mandatory seating arrangements. In the morning imported, exotic wild beasts were killed, by the thousands; at noon there were executions (crucifixions, often combined with animal tearing at the naked bodies of the crucified); afternoons were devoted to gladiatorial contests.

The arenas' seating arrangements did not reflect the high-low, in-out perspective, which Kahl has relied upon earlier, to demonstrate her theory that the Roman Empire (and the Republic before it) was given to visual representations of the defeated "outsider" by a depiction of the defeated lower down, in various aspects of the Great Alter at Pergamon.

The high-is-good, low-is-bad imagery is not what is found at the Colosseum or at Roman arenas generally. As Kahl points out (p. 155), the highest seats in the arena were consigned to women and to the lowest class, which meant, slaves. The immediate bottom seating, closest to the action, was reserved for the emperor, and (presumably, where the emperor was not present) the most powerful local officials.

The seating arrangements, Kahl explains, reinforced the official relegation of all segments of society to the Roman "order" - a term which is used in both senses, to mean public order as well as an assigned place.

Kahl looks (p. 150 ff) to the Roman poet Martial - Marcus Valerius Mattialis (38/41-102/04 C.E.) - as the contemporary voice that interpreted the games in the symbolism which Kahl finds in the games: a portrayal of the cult of the emperor, which represented the emperor as "father of the country" (pater patriae) who possessed "sacred power" (potestas sacra).

The symbolism which requires repeated, large scale, bloody death, Kahl illuminates in stark, persuasive detail.

Persuasive too, is the assignment of the outcast role to the victims killed in the course of the games, whether animals, criminals or prisoners of war.

Less persuasive is the role Kahl assigns (p. 151) to the spectators of the games, in their assigned arena seats, who, Kahl argues, saw themselves as "involved, committed, and transformed by actively participating as players in Caesar's games. It was as agents and partakers in the supreme sacrifice that all were becoming one and self: the life of the Other."

Spectators partaking, spectators as all becoming one, spectators as sharing the life of the other is phrasing that read as the language of Christian ritual, imported into the context of Rome's public games.

In subsequent chapters, is Kahl going to re-import this communion terminology back and forth, between Pauline Eucharistic references and the imperial cult, in order to make the case that Paul's missives to his converts were part of a subversive critique of the cult of emperor worship?

We shall see.

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

Urbs antiqua fuit -There was an ancient city . . . 


Virgil was commissioned by Emperor Octavian to write an allegorical narrative about the founding, the victories, the glorious future of Rome. 


This was at a time of civil unrest, which had culminated in the defeat, in 31 B.C.E., of Mark Antony's forces by Octavian, who was now interested in seeking to vindicate his imperial rule. 


Virgil accepted the commission but died before he completed his work. Octavian ordered that the work, the Aeneid, be published anyway. 


The Aeneid is the story of Aeneas, a Trojan, who journeys to Italy to become the ancestor of  Caesar Augustus and his adopted son Octavian, who also took the honorific, Augustus - the One who is Revered.


The 10,000 line epic poem includes a description of a shield used by Aeneas in victory. The making and employment of Aeneas' shield is explicitly paralleled upon the Homeric shield of Achilles. 


Professor Kahl devotes considerable attention (pp. 129-148) to comparing the two shields and argues that by the 40's and 50's C.E. "imperial monotheism" embodied in the emperors Caligula and Nero "constituted a fundamental challenge that Paul confronted in his Jewish-messianic theology of the One God - a God who is other than Caesar." (p. 144).


The shield comparison is necessary, following the larger argument of the book, so as to link as closely as possible, the cult of emperor worship associated most explicitly with Rome, to the earlier epics and events associated with Anatolia, which is the physical ground upon which Paul met and evangelized Galatians. 


Kahl is articulate both in descriptive and rhetorical gambits and her explication of the development and the historical importance of the cult of the emperor is persuasive as providing the larger context  for any examination of religious developments during the period of empire. 


But the linkage of the Galatians letter to the establishment of the official imperial religion is being oversold here.


It simply cannot be known to what extent emperor worship was only formally adopted or was taken on as a matter of personal conviction by subject populations - impressed, perhaps, that their local traditions had been incorporated into a pantheon of empire, proclaimed by apologists (like Virgil) as both universal and eternal.


Nor can it be known if the literary work of propagandists (like Virgil) was intended to influence non-Latin speaking illiterate 
or semi-literate subject peoples.


Nor is there any association, so far made, between the content of the Galatians letter and the cult of emperor worship, which Kahl has painted on the larger canvas.   


Kahl is of course aware of the issue of formalism vs. conviction in worship. But she does not resolve this historical problem, because it cannot be resolved. 


Kahl writes (p. 145) :


"The core issue was not primarily what someone really believed but what was embodied, depicted, monumentalized in stone and marble, and collectively practiced by concrete human actors."


But then again we read (p. 146):


"If the manifold practices of sacrifice, worship, feast, and commemoration of imperial cult were not 'empty rituals' but communicated and established the new worldview, created meaning and cohesion, identity and reassurance, they did so both collectively and individually."


"If . . ."


If we could know on which side of the coin conviction lies, we c0uld drop that "if" but we cannot know.


Perhaps in Galatia, whether north or south, there were individuals who truly believed what they were told to believe - assuming they were "told" anything at all.


Perhaps in Galatia, there were individuals, who went through the motions and enjoyed the feasts and games, but who would never in their heart of hearts have conceded a sintilla of truth to the religion of the Roman overlords, who proclaimed themselves a super race.

Or, how about this: 

Some among Paul's (former?) ethnic Galatian converts, preserving memories of the old ways, sneaked off into the woods to search out drunemeton, the oaken sanctuary, where the ancient Council met and where worship was conducted, secretly, in proper druidic fashion. 


One can well imagine an increase in the nostalgic tug for the forest sanctuary, prompted by squabbling that had broken out between Paul and former adherents of the cult of the Messiah. 


The former Messianic adherents had appeared in the Galatian assemblies to denounce Paul, who, with other thugs, had beaten them up, for their willingness to open their messianic worship to Gentiles in say, Damascus or Jerusalem. 


These victims of Paul's violence denounced him to his converts, as a persecutor of the followers of the very Messiah he now claimed to profess - and to proclaim to Gentiles!


Paul responded to those who sliped away into the forest: 


"How can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits? Whose slaves you would again become? You observe days and months and seasons and years! I fear I have labored over you in vain!" (Gal 4:9, 10)