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

Continuing our consideration of Professor Kahl's explication of portions of Galatians 2 (pp. 279-81), this reader is struck by the forced and, unfortunately, contrived conclusions reached.


In the previous post, I commented on Kahl's treatment of Cephas' reversal of policy as to eating with Gentiles. 


At first, he is down with it, then he withdraws. But Kahl does not acknowledge his earlier willingness to eat in a non-kosher manner. Instead, Kahl interprets his withdrawal as ( p. 279) "enforced 'judaizing' of the Gentiles (ioudazein, 2:14) as in fact a gesture of civic/imperial conformism."


Professor Kahl wants to use this incident in support of the theory that the failure to keep kosher would somehow endanger the observant Jewish community in Antioch, and presumably in Jerusalem.


But if attention is drawn to Cephas' earlier practice of eating with Gentiles, where is the fear of the Romans?


The incident tells us that Cephas withdrew from table fellowship upon the arrival of observant Jews, not because of a fear of the occupying power.


I suppose one might argue that if I refuse to eat with you, I am forcing you to follow my cleanliness rules, but this is strained. Cephas, after at first ignoring Jewish cleanliness rules, changed direction when observant, messianic Jews arrived from Jerusalem; their arrival caused Cephas to revert to kosher practice.


By this reversal, Cephas was breaking fellowship with Christian Gentiles; he was not insisting that they themselves follow kosher dietary rules, out of fear of the Roman occupation.


In a similarly forced reading of Gal 2:14, Kahl has Paul (p. 280) express condemnation "not of a Jewish apostasy but of an idolatrous apostasy towards a non-Jewish imperial way of life that he calls ethnikos." Thus, Kahl wants her readers to see Paul expressing antipathy towards subservience to Roman rule, as manifested by Cephas' insistence that Gentiles adopt Jewish ways - in conformity not with Torah observance but with world nomos.


World nomos. World rule. The law of the Romans. Can this be what Paul is talking about in Gal 2:14 and following?


Professor thinks so and reads Gal 2:15-21 and its reference to "Works of the law" as Paul entering upon a discussion not of Torah observance but of "works of self-righteousness and vertical distinction between self and other."


This comment and subsequent ones (p. 281) may be acceptable as homiletical applications of 2:15-21, but this is not a delineation of what Paul actually says.


The text:











My translation:


15: But we, being Jews and not wicked Gentiles,
16: Know that no one is found acceptable by observance of the law ("works of the law") but rather by the faith of Jesus Messiah, and we trust in Messiah Jesus, that we might be accepted by the faith of Jesus and not by observance of the law, by which no one is found acceptable.
17: But! In seeking acceptance by way of Messiah, do we find him wicked? Or a servant of wickedness? Of course not!
18: Now if I rebuild what has been demolished even I would consider myself a transgressor!
19: For I, through operation of Torah have died to Torah - so I might live to God.
20: I longer live. Messiah lives through me! Yet I live on in the flesh, I live in confidence in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself up for me!
21: I shall not denigrate God's goodwill. If acceptance is through observances, then Messiah died for nothing!


Paul is here engaged in a dialogue with Torah, that is, with his own former allegiance to God through the keeping of Torah. Although every reference to nomos - law in Galatians is not a reference to Torah, this is the meaning of nomos in these verses.


"Wicked Gentiles" (v 15) should be taken hyperbolically and perhaps sarcastically. To heighten the contrast between the Torah observance and non-Jewish uncleanliness, Paul may be saying filthy Gentiles.


Paul's assertion (v. 17) that "no one" finds acceptance before God by way of Torah is a statement no observant Jew could accept. Here, Paul has clearly placed himself outside traditional Judaism or even sectarian Judaism, since he is denigrating the very purpose of Torah.


Having positioned himself outside Judaism, he looks at this from the inside (v. 18) and acknowledges: if I were to re-enter the edifice of Torah observance, I would certainly see my former behavior (allegiance to a criminally executed Messiah) as a transgression against Torah. 


In v. 19, he steps back outside the old edifice to assert that his new status, life in God, has come about by virtue of his having abandoned Torah once and for all.


"I no longer live" (v. 20) ius yet another assertion of Paul's view that his former Torah observance way of life is "dead," having been replaced by his living confidence in the willing death of Messiah Jesus, who was a sacrifice for himself.


Verse 21 is shorthand; Paul way of summarizing the grand design (as he has worked it out) and asserting, 'Having worked out what God designed, which was that the futility of Torah observance would be demonstrated by the execution of the Messiah, I will not dismiss this design, since to do so would be to assert that it was for nothing that God permitted Messiah to be executed.' 


While I have misgivings about the edifice that has been erected on the rubble Paul declared to be Torah observance, there is no doubt that Paul is here talking about Torah, when he speaks of law. 


Professor Kahl sees matters differently.


Professor Kahl has Paul, voluntarily and for all important purposes, still on the Jewish side of the Jew-Gentile equation. She see Paul maintaining a double Gospel approach, one to Jews, one to Gentiles, over against Gentile world law, expressed through the Roman occupation. 


Kahl sees Paul expressing hostility towards those who bend the knee to Rome, by practicing a Judaism of civil conformism to the purposes of empire. 


It is this Judaism, which Paul condemns in Antioch and which Kahl suggests can, in an albeit convoluted way, as a sort of puppet of the all-controlling Gentile (Roman) way, condemns Paul as a "transgressor" (2:18).


But this very labored result - an observant Judaism of civil conformity - hangs together only by reshaping the Antioch narrative (Gal 11-14) to make it about coercion of messianic Gentiles, out of fear of local Roman authority. These themes are absent from the narrative, as Paul laid it out. 

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

Professor Brigitte Kahl, in Chapter Six, considers several sections from the Galatians letter. Kahl examines these verses to demonstrate the cogency of the primary themes presented in her book. 


A consideration of selected portions of the Galatians letter falls well short of a full blown commentary.  My opinion, expressed in earlier posts, is that a commentary is the best and possibly the only way to re-locate this document in a context different from the traditionally accepted one.


Kahl's central theme is this: those who have appealed directly to Paul's converts are representatives of Diaspora Jewish communities, who insist that Gentile, male messianists need to accept circumcision.


Why is this demand being made? 


Kahl speculates that representatives from the Jewish communities, residing in the province of Galatia, argued to Paul's converts that they all will come under severe sanction by the Roman occupiers. 


Why? Because the Gentile messianists must be observed by the Roman occupation as lacking foreskins to be deemed Jewish and thus, avoid punishment as irreligious traitors to the emperor.


The argument made in Galatia by Jewish representatives is that the Galatian gentiles, who desire to worship and live pursuant to the earlier preaching of Paul, must either accept circumcision or return to participation in the public worship of the emperor. 


As argued by Kahl, emperor worship, practiced publicly, would remove these Gentile messianists from the benefit of the apparent Roman-Jewish accommodation, by which the emperor is prayed for in the Jerusalem temple and Jews in the Disapora are not required to participate in formal, public spectacles by which the emperor is honored and worshiped. These public events include attendance at festivals, processions and staged, often bloody, death-dealing spectacles in local arenas. 


Kahl argues that Paul, in his Galatians letter, rejects both the accept-circumcision and the attend-spectacles options for his converts.


Why?


Kahl thinks that Paul's view, expressed in his Galatians letter, is that circumcision of the Gentile messianists - just as it is for Jews, also living under occupation - amounts to a denigration of Torah, since the Jewish-Roman accommodation is an unsavory collaboration with the empire. 


The second option, public worship of the emperor, is likewise, as Kahl has Paul argue, out of the question.


Why? Public worship of the emperor would amount to a denial of the messianic faith, which Paul preached among the occupied, non-Jewish  populations of the empire.


Kahl believes that many statements in Paul's Galatians letter are encrypted, double messages. She holds that Paul expressed himself in this manner because of the same anxiety that animated his critics - the danger of running afoul of a cruel occupation, should he or his intended recipients be caught out as anti-Roman.


To line up Paul's statements with the book's thesis, Kahl looks at Gal 2:11-14: 

My translation:

11 But when Cephas came to Antioch, I got in his face because he stood condemned. 

12 Before some people from James arrived, he would eat with non-Jews. But after they arrived, he stood back and held himself apart, fearing those of the circumcision. 

13 The rest of the Jews practiced this hypocrisy along with him, so that even Barnabas was carried away into hypocrisy. 

14 But seeing that he did not walk in the truth of the gospel, I told Cephas in front of all of them, 'if you a Jew comport yourself as a Gentile and not as a Jew, how can you insist that Gentiles act in a Jewish manner?'

Before getting to Kahl's understanding of this pericope, a few observations seem appropriate here:


(1) Paul's truncated re-telling of these events (more than a single incident), which occurred in Syrian Antioch, is the point of departure for the balance of Paul's comments in his letter.

(2) Paul is so focused (or anxious) to get into an anti-circumcision polemic that he offers no resolution or conclusion to the incidents he recounts.

(3) Paul passes over how others present might have reacted either to the withdrawal from table fellowship of observant Christian Jews or to Paul's confrontation with Cephas.

(4) The Gentile messianists in Antioch, whom Paul, ostensibly, was protecting against humiliation and rejection by their Jewish co-adherents, have no reaction whatsoever (in Paul's re-telling) to the events Paul describes. 


(5) Were the Gentile believers in Antioch as angry as was Paul, at the Torah-observant withdrawal from fellowship? Were they also critical of Barnabas? These questions cannot be answered but if the Gentile messianists in Antioch had joined Paul in an expression of anger, one might expect Paul to report this to the Gentile messianists in Galatia. 

(6) Perhaps the Gentile messianists in Antioch expressed sympathy toward Barnabas or toward Cephas, either of whom could have been seen as a searcher for a middle ground between extremes.  


(7) Some of the Gentile believers in Antioch, in addition to welcoming Jewish guests from Jerusalem, might have been understanding of their guests' lifelong Torah-inspired observances.

(8) The divisive issue in Antioch is Torah observance, specifically table fellowship between Jews and Gentiles. Notably, Cephas, by eating with Gentiles, was going further than required by the earlier agreement in Jerusalem; his conduct in Antioch signaled that he was freeing not only Gentiles but also Jews from Torah observance. Cephas' practice at table may have pleased Paul but not other Christian Jews, arriving from Jerusalem.


(9) After recounting his confrontation with Cephas, Paul, launches into an anti-nomos diatribe (Gal 2:16), which is sustained throughout the letter. He is in such a hurry to do this, he does not give Cephas an opportunity to respond even to a question, which Paul directed to Cephas (Gal 2:14). 


(10) Paul's questioning of Cephas appears to be a rhetorical ploy, a launching pad for the dense and forceful remarks, which follow.

Paul's narrative also serves as a launching pad for Professor Kahl. 


Throughout her book, Professor Kahl argues that Paul's anti-nomos critique is directed at Roman law, not at Torah. 


Consistent with this, Kahl does not see in these verses an occasion for Paul to denounce the Torah observance of those whom Paul calls "those of the circumcised" (2:12). Nor does Kahl observe that the issue in dispute in these verses is table fellowship, not circumcision. 


Kahl understands Paul to be taking to task those who withdrew from the Gentiles, not because of their Torah observance but rather because the separators demonstrated "collective hypocrisy . . . as an idolatrous act of public window dressing that officially quotes Jewish law but secretly bows to civic religion and order."


This comment is typical of Kahl's analysis of the Galatians letter, as we find here 


- a generalized reference to "hypocrisy" in lieu of a specific comment about the actual issue in dispute: table fellowship;
- an illusion to a public  display of some kind, which is not otherwise apparent or even detectable in Paul's statements;
- the characterization of some aspects as secret;
- allusion to Roman civic religion and order, although the actual language found in the pericope under study does not readily suggest any such thing.

Kahl emphasizes (also p. 278), "Peter's enforced 'judaizing' of the Gentiles . . . as in fact a gesture of civic/imperial conformism . . . ." 


But Peter (Cephas) may have been a passive or a vacillating actor, conducting himself first in one way, then in another in Antioch. 


In Gal 2:12, Cephas entering into table fellowship with Gentiles is described in the imperfect, active indicative -   
which is common to story telling but which may suggest repeated past activity - 'Cephas used to eat. . .' or 'Cephas was eating . . .'


In either case, Professor Kahl's comments do not address Cephas' initial willingness to share table fellowship with non-Jewish messianists in Antioch. 


It's not clear to me why Kahl characterizes Peter (Cephas) as enforcing anything on Christian Gentiles, when the issue is whether Christian Jews must be Torah observant at table. 


Kahl associates the perspective of Torah observant messianists as public window dressing but there is nothing I can detect in Paul's telling that indicates a public aspect to gatherings for the sharing of a common meal. 


The absence of a public component in Paul's retelling of his dispute with observant Christian Jews is a difficulty for Kahl's theory, that Gentile males in the province of Galatia were urged by synagogue representatives either to become circumcised or return to participation in public worship of the emperor. 


There is no evidence that I know of that Roman authorities punished ordinary residents of occupied cities, who did not attend public festivals and events staged in the arenas. 


Nor is there much to suggest that Roman-occupied populations eschewed such sponsored, public activities out of religious sensitivity.


There seems to have been a distinction drawn in the empire at this time between temple worship of the emperor and public spectacles. Emperor worship was conducted though religious observances, which also focused on officially accepted divinities, who were worshipped privately at temples build for this purpose. 


Public spectacles, on the other hand, were intended as entertainments for the occupied urban populace. At these events, the emperor was honored, to be sure, but not in such a manner that non-attendance was punished.  


Interestingly, and in a way supportive of Kahl's invitation to re-imagine the context of Paul's Galatians letter, gatherings for a common meal - but not gatherings for worship - might have caused trouble with the Roman administration in Syrian Antioch. This seems to have been the case in Anatolia (north Galatia) a few decades later, when Pliny the Younger served there as governor under Trajan. The Romans were nervous about unsanctioned social gatherings. (See an earlier post.) 


But getting back to Gal 2:11-14, there is a forced quality about Kahl's construal of Paul's statements to find in them a Jewish anxiety about public worship of the emperor, discovered in the conduct of Christian Jews, who wished to maintain an allegiance to some aspects of Torah observance, including kosher meals. 

NOTE: The Greek text of Galatians has been taken from

Greek New Testament
http://www.kimmitt.co.uk/gnt/gnt.html