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

Brigitte Kahl, in Chapter Six, endeavors to tie all the rhetorical threads tightly together, and so demonstrate the cogency of the re-imagination of Galatians, which has been the driving impulse of this book.


Added here (p. 245 f.) is an illuminating series of comments on the first nine verses of Galatians, chapter one.


Kahl's juxtaposition of Paul's amen and anathema is striking.


These terms operate exactly as Kahl states (p. 247); they "impose themselves at the outset of Paul's letter and at the onset of occidental Pauline interpretation as well." Again (p. 248): "If Jewishness is anathema the countervailing amen must affirm Christianity. This reading produced the birth of the Christian self, out of, and in anthesis to the Jewish other . . ."


This doctrinal development is a source of regret, and not only to Brigitte Kahl, but to many who see and lament an ethnocentric resonance down the centuries, which vindicates itself in Paul's angry condemnation of those of his own day, who display a narrowness even more constricted than his own.


Kahl would rehabilitate Paul but at the expense of the essential logic of his response to his circumstances. 


It is an overreach to assert (p. 258) that "Paul's Amen and Anathema echo from the Great Frieze" of the Pergamon altar.


Kahl would re-imagine a different circumstance, one in which Paul is not contesting the exclusionary praxis of Judaism but rather is contending with Augustus himself. 


Kahl (p. 247) would have Paul's rhetoric placing us, his late readers, "right back at the foot of the great alar in Pergamon" where she believes, all of his readers are directed by Paul's own deepest concerns - resistance to the empire of the caesars.


Kahl's explication of an "intertextual retelling" (p. 251) helpfully opens Paul's text to creative re-application as anti-imperial in its essence. This is a homiletical gambit. 


Kahl and the scholars Kahl cites with approval, as experts in 'intertextual' matters, delineate the indices of the 'intertextual' markers which, coincidentally, have been found in the material they wish to see as relevant. This is like cutting out puzzle pieces and then announcing that one has been successful in putting a puzzle together.


As I have suggested in earlier comments , the context of the material found in Paul's Galatians letter is not illuminated by the linkage Kahl finds between the text of this very specifically focused letter and representational art found at Pergamon.


The constant harkening back to visual art, fashioned decades if not centuries earlier, is warranted neither by what can be surmised from Roman republican and imperial history nor from the circumstances of Paul and his messianic converts in Galatia. 


Nor is it illuminating to suggest that what can be called "cryptic" in Galatians is best understood (p. 252) as "a semi-hidden (or semi-public) transcript circulating among the dominated that has an anti-Roman core message." 


This is all too forced. Here is an example:


The "single man" of Gal 1:1 is not the emperor in Rome, and so, is not a clue to Paul's intended readers, that "the whole of the following letter needs to be read in an anti-imperial key" (page 257).


Gal 1:1





contains the phrase, 'nor through (a) man' which Kahl takes as a reference to Caesar and from this, concludes (p. 257), that "the law and religion that Paul primarily criticizes are the law and religion not of Judaism but of the Roman empire."


But a perfectly acceptable translation of the verse and therefore of Kahl's cornerstone phrase is:


Paul, an emissary, neither through men nor by a man, but through Messiah Jesus and Father God, who raised him from the dead


Kahl takes "a man" as a cryptic reference to a specific individual, Caesar. This conclusion is stated without addressing a more likely reading. 


Paul is asserting that his credentials as a missionary-organizer have been conferred upon him by God. Paul is contradicting his critics, who have asserted that Paul is lacking in qualification and/or proper appointment. 


This being the case the reading that suggests itself is that Paul means to contrast positively, his assertion of his own divine commission with a commission or credential dependent, negatively, merely upon human agency. It is not likely that Paul has a specific person in mind. 


Even if a specific person is referenced here, as some commentators suggest - someone whom Paul intends to denigrate - the reference is to a leader of the messianists in either Antioch or in Jerusalem. 


The human-agency conclusion has been reached by many; ("human channel" Burton, p. 3 [1968]; 'human in origin" Betz, p. 39; "not depend on human authorization" Dunn, p. 26; anthropos = "the human orb" Martyn, p. 84).


Kahl, in proposing an entirely new interpretative direction, i.e., that Paul is here referring however cryptically to Caesar, ought first contend with comments which point, cogently, in another direction - not through any human being.  


In sum, Professor Kahl, in chapter six, is engaged in homiletical gambits, not historical investigations. 


That's OK with me. "It's right to praise . . . not meaning, but feeling . . . "  ("Why I'm Here" by Jacqueline Berger, from The Gift That Arrives Broken. © Autumn House Press, 2010.) 


NOTE: The Greek text of Gal 1:1, used above, has been taken from Greek New Testament
    

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

Professor Brigitte Kahl has devoted the first half of Chapter Five (pp. 209 - 227) to an explication of the options, as Kahl perceives them, which confronted Paul's Galatian messianists: they must either participate in public emperor worship or accept circumcision and benefit from the Jewish exemption.


Kahl believes that these options are embedded in the language of the Galatians letter, whose re-imagined context includes a serious disagreement between Jewish accommodationists and Paul.


The Apostle to the Gentiles, so Kahl maintains, argued to his converts that acceptance of circumcision amounts to a refutation of Paul's invitation to participate in the dawning messianic age.


A Jewish accommodation, Kahl argues, extended in imagination 
(Kahl, p. 215: "Could one imagine . . . ?") to whether the icons found at the Great Alter might have been seen as including "Israel's anticonic God" as "nevertheless at least invisibly present" - a conclusion with which Paul "would vehemently disagree."


One could imagine many things.


One could speculate, as Kahl does, that a Jew, whom Kahl identifies - Flavius Josephus, and Jews Kahl sort-of identifies - "high-ranking Jewish power brokers" - "would probably" find the God of Israel invisibly present among the icons at the Great Altar at Pergamon. 


This reader is as willing as the next to give a writer an opportunity to make a case for a new appreciation of a venerable document, such as Paul's Galatians letter. 


But questions arise:


How might Josephus and "Jewish power brokers" find acceptable the notion that YHWH can be said to be "invisibly present" at the Great Altar? 


Professor Kahl answer: they "would probably" find this idea acceptable "in one way or another."


Illusive is the argument that moves between an historical incident and an invitation to use one's imagination, so as to speculate how others not associated with the incident, might have imagined its import, which import is then invoked "in one way or another" as central to the context of another event, the writing of Paul's Galatians letter.


We can speculate what Abraham Lincoln might have thought of the cave paintings at Lascaux, France and decide that he would have though they were the product of adolescent male fantasies and not invocations of hunting success, drawn by ancient shamans. But do such speculations about what Lincoln could have thought of a matter about which he has no recorded opinions, merit a re-imagination of the context of Lincoln's fraught relationship with his wife?


The existence of the Great Altar at Pergamon is a fact.


But speculation about how someone not known ever to have been present at this alter (Josephus, Paul) might have imagined whether an invisible god could be said to be invisibly present - when there is no data offered in support of the idea that any such interpretation or response ever was made . . . this is a bridge too far.

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-FOUR To Galatians Re-imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Fortress 2010) by Brigitte Kahl

The concluding remarks (pp. 125-127) which end Chapter Two prompt a further response from this reader.


Professor Kahl helpfully summarizes the three themes which Chapter Two intends to convey, namely (1) a detailed description of the Great Altar at Pergamon (reconstructed in Berlin), (2) an emphasis upon "the antithetical character" (p. 127) of the symbolism of the Great Altar, accomplished by applying a "semiotic square" (high - low, in - out) to the representations on the Altar and, interwoven in (1) and (2), is the third theme: (3) an association of the Altar sculptures with Paul's letter to the Galatians.


Kahl, I would allow, has accomplished (1) and (2) but not (3).


Finding an association between the Great Altar and Paul's Galatians feels forced.


A case in point is the identification of the Altar Giants with the Gauls / Galatians. Kahl states without qualification that "the Galatians / Giants have been set up as the archetype of lawlessness and rebellion" (p. 126).


But the Great Altar's mythological giants do not obviously represent the historical Galatians. The Galatian defeat by the Attalids is represented on the Great Altar in company with a separate sculpture of the mythological giants. (See Post Twenty-three.)


The Galatian-Giant correlation has to be established, it appears, in order to move on to explicate how (p. 126) "every single element in this construct [at the Great Alter] of divine and human order, the nature of God(s), and the nature of community, will be challenged by Paul in interaction with Galatian communities in the first century C.E."


I don't see how the challenge(s) posed by Paul in Galatians is made more coherent historically or more pertinent to ourselves, if seen as directed against the symbolism expressed at the Great Alter.


The Pauline challenge, understood as the subversion of imperial values, is implied in the symbolism of a crucified God, to whom allegiance is owed by communities gathered from among the oppressed.  

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

The balance of Chapter Two (pp. 82 -1250 is devoted to an elucidation of "the Great Alter" of Pergamon.  This edifice was part of a collection of buildings and is thought to have been built in the 180's B.C.E., under the rule of Eumenes II, to celebrate the final Roman-Greek victory over the Seleucids in 188 B.C.E.  Pergamon was one of the Greek city-states along the Aegean Coast, in what is today, the western coast of Turkey. Important to Professor Kahl's larger argument is the need to emphasize the role of Galatian clans on the Seleucid side of the conflict. 


Professor Kahl goes to considerable length in explicating the details of the Great Alter, with this objective (p. 86): "our focus here is on the question of visual impact . . . a coherent semantic system of meaning making this . . . readable even for the illiterate . . . and those who come (and still come) to visit the alter."  


Calling attention to the different perspectives offered the viewer (high/up and in versus low/down and out), Kahl suggests that the visitor today would likely share the impression made on the "majority" of contemporary visitors, described (p. 90) a second time by Kahl as "illiterate."


The visual impression we are invited to share, as we observe a conflict between the high and the low sculpted figures is to side with "the good cause." 


A case in point is a portrayal in a frieze of the higher placed Athena, wrenching away the child of earth-mother Guia (pp. 92-95). But this is not the point Kahl wishes to make. 


What is appended to this straightforward description of the frieze is the equating of sculptures of giants with Galatian enemies "at various stages of Pergamon history." 


Following this identification of Galatian enemies in the frieze, Kahl asks (p. 95), "How is this stunning metamorphosis of Galatians into giants to be explained?" 


By associating the Galatians in general, with the mythological giants, Kahl appears to me to be making a leap well beyond what is suggested either by Pergamon history or by the representations found on the sides of the Great Alter.


Galatians fought on all sides (apparently as mercenaries) in the wars between Roman and Greek armies against the Seleucid rules in Greece and Anatolia. This suggests to me that there is no apparent reason for the Greek builders of the Great Alter to have wanted to require a visual association to be made between mythological giants and Galatian tribesmen. 


The Galatians in defeat, are represented by the Dying Gaul, as Kahl has observed (see my previous two posts). 


But the Galatians are not obviously represented as giants in the mythology of warfare against giants, as they were represented already by the Dying Gaul. 


Professor Kahl thinks the Galatians were associated with the defeated mythological giants and, as evidence, cites  the traveler and sight-seeing Pausanias, when, in the 2nd century C.E., he observed a victory monument set up on the Acropolis in Athens by Atalos I. 


Here is what Pausanias seems to have seen: 











Here is what Pausanias wrote (I.25.2) about what he saw: "By the south wall [of the Athenian Acropolis], Attalos dedicated a) the legendary battle of the Giants [top right]..., b) the battle of the Athenians against the Amazons [bottom right], c) the battle against the Persians at Marathon [bottom left]; d) the destruction of the Gauls in Mysian --each figure being about two cubits [=3']."



(For the above image and quotation, see: http://employees.oneonta.edu/farberas/ARTH/ARTH209/Hellenistic.html 


A further descriptive leap is made when Kahl refers to the opponents of Greek and then Roman forces as "lawless" (p. 96), whether mythological or actual. 


Kahl finds lawlessness to be "a crucial layer of meaning" both as to the Alter at Pergamon and "also of the fight between Paul and his opponents in the letter to the Galatians."


The reference to Paul's letter to the Galatians prompts this reader to feel that Professor Kahl is straining to redefine what can reasonably be concluded from ancient visual representations. Such is the desire to associate these images with the venerable Apostle. 


Isn't that what the title of this book suggests?





 

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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

Professor Kahl continues the introduction of her subject by making comments under subheadings. This approach has the advantage of providing a set of first principles that are related thematically. The disadvantage is that the moment of the introductory argument seems lateral and not forward.

The section labeled “Re-Imagining Paul” is a case in point. Here, Kahl re-emphasized the project of re-imagining Paul by identifying “two issues still widely neglected” by other scholars of the Galatians letter.

The first of these issues is “the power of Rome and the representative of this power in images.”  Kahl states that the most important of these images are the ones “developed at Pergamon (Asia Minor).” Kahl adds that the “major burden” of her exploration will be a “visual reconstruction of the Galatian world behind Paul’s letter.”

The second neglected issue, Kahl says, is “to re-imagine the historical context in which Paul and the Galatians met, not as an end in itself but as an element of a comprehensive historical-critical rereading (relectura) of the letter that has been handed down through history as the material imprint of their encounter.”

Kahl adds that she will not undertake “a comprehensive exegesis” of the letter. Why not? – “space does not permit” this.

I am not persuaded that the Apostle Paul can be better understood by a presentation of visual images taken from the ancient world, when this presentation is not anchored in an explication of the only material we have from himself – his letters – because “space” in a four hundred page book does not allow room for exegesis of the short Galatians letter. It may be, however, that past Kahl’s introductory remarks, sufficient reference will be made to Paul’s comments in the book itself, to address this concern.

Not for the first time has Kahl stated that she is presenting material that has been “neglected.” Yet, numbers of commentaries on Galatians have identified the intended recipients of the letter and have gone into greater or less detail about Galatia in history. I am not sure this aspect has been neglected.

More likely to be a new approach by Kahl, is the emphasis on visual representations.

But here, one wonders how this is likely to lead to a better understanding of the Apostle in his relations with the Galatians, when the presentation is not associated with an explication of the letter. Kahl does state that “a re-reading of Galatians drives, informs and molds the contextual inquiry throughout.”

This is helpful to hear.

Helpful also is Kahl’s phrase, “contextual inquiry” which seems to provide a description of what this work is all about.

I will hazard a tentative conclusion that the book will prove to be helpful as adding details about the larger context of the intended recipients, and less helpful as a persuasive new portrait of the Apostle. This may already be conceded, as Kahl is rather insistent that her project is one of “re-imagining” rather than describing Paul.

Kahl speaks of her intention to delineate “a new way to read and hear Paul” and of a “liberating (0f) Paul.” Kahl, admittedly, is not about delineating Paul’s own thoughts and motivations. Rather she is about replacing “the figure of Paul” as it presently exists “in the collective conscious and unconscious heritage of the Christian occident.”

This very sweeping rhetoric strikes me as too much sugar for my nickel. How are we going to assess “a figure” hidden away in a place called the “heritage,” which is not only “collective” and also both “conscious and unconscious?” I must hope that the coming chapters will spell all this out.

And why is the Eastern Church let off the hook? I should have thought that the iconography of Eastern Orthodoxy, might provide an insightful comparison or contrast to Kahl’s promised visualization of what can be seen at Pergamon.

Kahl concludes this section of the Introduction by identifying herself with positive, recent attempts to reconstruct (and therefore rehabilitate) Paul’s image rather than with the more negative “deconstruction” of Paul statements, and of Paul himself, which have prompted him to be taken as a symbol of a “post-Constantinian interpretation” of history.

Kahl, then, would not simply re-imagine Paul, but would “retrieve an image of Paul” which Constantine’s conversion of empire to faith by conformation of faith to empire had buried. This implies that the picture Kahl intends to paint of the Apostle is one that has existed all along, though buried by Constantine’s accommodation.

Kahl will undertake this task of re-imagining Paul, because she is “convinced that scripture is re-imaginable outside the confines of the occidental pattern, that history matters, and most of all, that Paul matters.”

This rhetoric seems to race well ahead of the actual project. This last quote from Kahl begs questions which cannot be ignored and, hopefully, will not be ignored in the book.

What does it mean to assert that scripture is “re-imaginable” except that scripture is imagined, in the first instance?

What exactly and precisely, are the “confines” of what is asserted but not explicitly described as “the occidental pattern?” What precisely are “confines” anyway?

In exactly what ways can the Apostle be said to “matter” more than history?

This flourish is more sermonic than informative. But that’s OK. This is only the introduction.