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

Kahl, at p. 224 f.


Professor Brigitte  Kahl's description of the situation in Galatia may be summarized as follows


Galatians:


- were peoples living under the harsh regime of Rome occupation;
- were represented in Greek-inspired sculpture, which the Roman Imperium adopted to represent the Galatians as defeated, "lawless," outsiders, whose incorporation within the Imperium remade ("resurrected") them as properly subordinate and, passive;
- as defeated and occupied people, were subject to the Roman demand that they take part in the cult of the emperor;
- had (some of them) come under the influence of the Jewish missionary, Paul;
- were addressed by Paul in a letter he dictated and directed to them.


the Apostle Paul:


- proclaimed faith in a Jew, Messiah Jesus, allegiance to whom brought them into a divinely governed epoch, which allegiance contradicted their enforced allegiance to the Roman emperor, who was to be worshipped as the one true God;
- organized his messianic converted into worshipping congregations, participation in which entailed a refusal to participate in the cult of the emperor and thus implicated his converts in at least latent if not actual civil disobedience;
- insisted that the status before God of his converted was not dependent upon submission to the Jewish rite of circumcision.


In the section of Chapter Five, under review, Kahl proposes to answer two questions:


Why had Paul's converts been told they must be circumcised?
Who had told them this?


Kahl's answers these questions in this way: those who insisted that Paul's Galatian converts must be circumcised were Jews, living in Galatia.


These persons ("control agents" acting on behalf of the Jewish community) demanded that Paul's converts be circumcised.


Why did the "control agents" make this demand? Kahl gives her answer:


Important elements within the Jewish community were afraid of the Roman authorities. The specific Jewish fear was that the authorities would target Jews for persecution, since Paul's converts no longer participated in the cult of the emperor. The converts, if Paul had his way, withheld themselves from emperor worship because, as heirs of Abraham, they had become Jews, and could invoke the Jewish-Roman accommodation, which exempted Jews from the enforced requirement that all occupied peoples participate in the emperor cult.


In order to allay persecution of the Jewish communities in Galatia, the Jewish control agents insisted that the messianic converts demonstrate their incorporation within Judaism, by undergoing the Jewish rite of circumcision, thereby displaying the physical mark of male Jewish identity.


The problems with Kahl's description of the situation among Paul's converts, as reflected in his letter to them, are an absence of data and implausibility.


MISSING DATA


There is no evidence I know of, that Jewish representatives would have insisted that non-Jewish males, who did not participate in synagogue activities, could be deemed part of Judaism so long as they got themselves circumcised.


There is no evidence I know of,  that a circumcision requirement alone was ever accepted by Rome as the only identity marker for a non-Jewish male, so as to declare this person to be Jewish.

There is no evidence I know of, that Roman authorities in Galatia inquired of Paul's converts whether they were circumcised, as a proffer of proof of their embrace of Judaism.

ABSENCE OF PLAUSIBILITY


It is not plausible that synagogue representatives would approach non-Jewish males, members of a messianic sect, and insist they get themselves circumcised because of a fear within the larger Jewish community of guilt by association.


More plausible is the scenario that synagogue representatives would argue to Roman authorities that the new Galatian sect had nothing to do with the Jewish community, or with Jewish observances or with the Roman-Jewish accommodation, by which the emperor was prayed for in the temple in Jerusalem and diaspora Jews were thereby exempt from participation in the emperor cult.


Certainly, it is possible to confect a scenario that gives purchase to the idea that a circumcision requirement was insisted upon, by Jewish agents, or Christian Jews from Palestine. This scenario, with varying details, is the traditional picture most commentators find in Paul's Galatians letter.


But in order to make Jewish circumcision a matter of concern to local Roman authority, as Kahl does, the situation requires that Roman authority held circumcision to be the defining characteristic for the new sect to be deemed part of Judaism. This notion is not plausible, implying as it must, that Roman officials, although described as insistent on the overt participation by everyone in the cult of the emperor, and specifically concerned to see that Jewish men were circumcised, were at the same time, too obtuse to uncover a shell game, by which men who were not Jews, could claim they were, merely by displaying their naked circumcised members.


The suggestion that local authorities would have accepted evidence of circumcision as their only concern becomes even less plausible in light of Kahl's belief that Paul's converts, following his teachings, proclaimed themselves to be the only true Israel, in contradiction to Jewish self-identification and synagogue practice.


Such self-centric views - we are true Jews, you are not  - openly expressed, would have led not to an overture made by Jewish synagogue representatives to messianic Gentiles to get themselves circumcised; it would have led to fistfights or worse.


If the we-are-the-only-true-Israel idea was articulated by Paul's converts, or even privately held, the theoretical Jewish "control agents" likely would have denounced the Gentile messianics to the authorities. What better way to demonstrate their respect for the Jewish-Roman accommodation than to denounce impostors?


Since Kahl would have it that Paul adheres to Torah for himself and his converts, it all comes down, for Kahl, to circumcision, plausibly, as it must, since this is a strong theme in the Galatians letter. 


But is it plausible to think that local Roman authority would have made to-be-or-not-to-be-circumcised the salient concern, in a situation where Gentile men asserted they were Jews, yet were not enrolled in any synagogues and declared themselves to be the only true Jews? I suggest, not; this is not a plausible circumstance.


Is it plausible that local Roman authority would declare everyone Jewish, including men who were not Jews by ethnicity and were not recognized as Jews by local Jewish leaders, so long as the authorities' own examination turned up a number of circumcised penises? No other questions asked? 


This is very far fetched. If Pliny the Younger is close to typical, local Roman officials were conscientious in conducting investigations into allegations of disturbances against public order.  


Far more likely is it that the debate in Galatia over circumcision was conducted between Jews or Christian Jews, on one side, and Paul on the other, with his Jewish and non-Jewish converts ranging between one or the other position.


Kahl bolsters her assertions with - at long last - some detailed examination of the text of the Galatians letter. These texts will be talen up in a later post.

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.