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

Professor Kahl discusses (pp. 281-85) Gal 3 and 4, proposing that this section of Paul's letter offers specific support for her re-visioning of the letter by way of Paul's discussion of "Father Abraham" (Ch 3) and "Mother Sarah and Mother Paul" (Ch 4). 


To Kahl's credit, the phrase living under Roman occupation must be evaluated as a factor in assessing the context of Paul's letters, just as living under occupation must become part of any summary description of Paul's career.  


But Kahl's further assertion, that the emperor was the focus of Paul's belletristic productions, remains unproven. This is so because Kahl's engagement with Paul is conducted in this book in a manner removed from a detailed consideration of what Paul wrote. 


A second reason why Kahl's placement of the emperor at the center of Paul's Galatians polemic is a failure to assess Paul essential Jewishness. Paul, Jew of the Diaspora, was a rigorous practitioner of Torah observance, prone to violence against Jews who asserted that Messiah had come and dethroned Torah. When Paul himself was  converted to the same conviction by way of a mystical experience, he felt himself called to missionize Gentiles; his message was: you can know life through Messiah Jesus as spiritual heirs of Abraham without observance of the ritual law of the Jews, without Torah. 


Failing to come to terms with the center of Paul's polemic, Kahl misplaces the Pauline emphasis on ritual law, by shifting the discussion away from Torah and seeing Roman law as the actual center. This is a misconception of Paul's central concern with Torah.


Paul's primary focus on Torah and Kahl's neglect of this focus comes clear, I believe, by looking more closely at the third and fourth chapters of Galatians, which Kahl treats (pp. 281-85) in summary form.


Paul's Galatians letter is addressed to the collective membership of assemblies he had organized in Galatia (present day central Turkey). Paul writes (dictates) this missive after antagonists in Galatia had denounced Paul to his converts. Neither the substance of the criticisms directed against Paul nor the identities of the opposition are made clear in the letter. What is clear that Paul's critics have had an effect upon his converts, to the detriment of Paul's work and reputation among them.


Paul's Galatians letter is framed as an answer to arguments made by these antagonists. Neither the tone nor the substance of the arguments Paul makes in Gal 3 and 4 is defensive. Rather, he is re-stating motifs he had presented in person, earlier, when present in Galatia.


In Gal 3-4, Paul asserts that his stupid erstwhile converts must have come under an evil eye, since before their own eyes Messiah Jesus was portrayed as executed (v. 1). 


Paul demands to know: 
- was it by observance of Torah or believing your own eyes that you received the divine presence within you (v.2)
- have you begun with the divinity only to end with mortality? (v. 3) - - was everything you did in vain? (v. 4)
- did the One who infused divinity in you and worked miracles in you accomplish this by your observance of Torah or believing your own eyes? (v. 5)


Paul answers his own questions (v. 6) by invoking Torah (Gen 15:6): Abraham trusted in JHWH and this was deemed a righteous act.


Paul offers (vv. 7-29) a commentary on Gen 15:6, which becomes a commentary on Torah generally:


- surely you remember that those who live by trust [in God] are Abraham's descendants  (v. 7)
- Torah prophesied that those who trust in God are the righteous among the nations since God promised to Abraham beforehand (Gen 12:3) that all nations will be blest in you (v. 8)
- which means that all who trust in God are blest through Abraham's faith (v. 9)
- because those who observe Torah are cursed, as it is written (Deut 27:26): cursed are all who do not keep and fail to do all that is written in the book of the law (v. 10)
- since it is obvious that by keeping Torah, no one is righteous before God because (Hab 2:4): only by demonstrating faith lives the righteous man
- keeping Torah is not a matter of trust (Lv 18:5) since by what one does, one lives (v. 12)
- Messiah has nade us no longer objects, to be bargained, under the curse of Torah because he has become cursed himself, fulfilling what was written (Deut 21:23): cursed be all who are hanged on a tree.
- so then: in Messiah Jesus, to the Gentiles has come the blessing upon Abraham, since you have received the divine presence through your own faith.
    
Jewish religious history foretells the appearance of a Messiah, who will, by divine intent, draw adherents from among both Jews and Gentiles. Paul further asserts that the Messiah has now come, was executed and was raised from among the dead, into the height of divine cosmic rule.


Paul argues that the death by execution of Messiah Jesus brings life grounded in the power of the advancing reign of God. Life in God entails, for Paul, freedom from reliance on any base (basic, elemental) cosmic forces. Paul adds that these cosmic elements never did possess the power to give freedom and life.


What about Torah? 


Paul concedes that Torah has its source in the one, true God but, Paul argues, Torah is inferior to the promise made gratuitously by God to Abraham, a promise of life based upon the new messianic foundation, available to all of Abraham's spiritual heirs.


Paul further asserts that Torah is also subordinate to the contract (covenant) made directly between God and Abraham. The contract between these two parties specifies that, by virtue of Abraham's offer of faith, the gifts of life and freedom would be shared by all who, like Abraham and his primary heir, Messiah Jesus, trust in God. Torah plays no role in the implementation of the covenant.


What then was the purpose of Torah? 


Paul asserts that Torah is a divine but inferior gift that was given to restrain misconduct. Torah, in Paul's view, never did offer life to anyone.


The conditional nature of Torah is demonstrated, Paul asserts, in the conveyance of Torah by way of angels and Moses, third parties, acting as mediators between God and the people. This mode of conveyance, Paul asserts, is in contrast to God's direct dealing with Abraham, inasmuch as God made a promise directly to Abraham and entered into a contract directly with Abraham.


The promise to Abraham was made gratuitously by God and remained effective as to Abraham's heir, Messiah Jesus, and also to Abraham's many additional heirs, of many ethnicities, who subsequently adhere to Messiah Jesus.


The contract between God and Abraham bound both parties; Abraham offered faithfulness to God and God, by way of Messiah Jesus, offered both freedom from elemental forces and eternal life.


Because of the chronological and authoritative inferiority of Torah to the prior Abrahamic promise and the contract made directly between God and Abraham, Paul classifies Torah as a no-longer effective cosmic element.


Professor Kahl does not address many specific statements found in the Galatians letter. Instead, Kahl proposes a dramatic shift in the meaning of Galatians 3 and 4, by isolating certain of Paul's statements from the argument in which they appear. 


Kahl also proposes a different understanding of nomos, law. 


Nomos in Gal 3 and 4 is taken by Kahl to refer to Roman law, in the sense of Roman rule and domination of subject peoples. This shift in the meaning of nomos enables Kahl to propose the emperor of Rome as the one who affirms both Roman and Jewish nomos in a domineering and brutal way, which is antithetical to the freedom and messianic life Paul has offered in his preaching in Galatia. 


Kahl's second thrust toward a new perspective on Gal 3 and 4 is made by isolating discrete Pauline arguments, thereby freeing these Pauline rhetorical forays for a new interpretation, which is otherwise not plausible (to this reader), if kept within the contours of Paul's sustained argument. 


Two Examples: 


(1) Kahl's treatment (pp. 283-4) of Paul's reprise of the Galatian messianists' initial reception of him (Gal 4:12-20)


and


(2) Kahl's treatment (pp. 284-5) of the Hagar-Sarah analogy (Gal 4:21-5:1) 


Paul's Initial Reception in Galatia:


Professor Kahl sees this passage (Gal 4:12-20) as a paradigm of the Christian life, wherein Paul, sickly, possibly near-mortally ill, embodied the Messiah in his otherness and weakness. 


But to this reader Gal 4:12-20 is not about the Galatians' "solidarity with a weak and despised other" (p. 283). Kahl is reading too much into Paul's invitation to his converts to reminiscence about their initial reception of him. 


These verses contain a dramatic outline of Paul's helplessness and the Galatians' generous hospitality towards him. This recollection reads like an individual, who finds himself estranged from his interlocuteurs, reminding them, how well they had treated him at first, when he was ill.     


The Hagar-Sarah Analogy


In Paul's analogy, the first son, born of the enslaved handmaiden, persecutes the second son, born of the free wife. Isaac and his lineage is favored by father Abraham, over his half brother, who is outcast, together his spiritual lineage. Paul presents these mythic events as analogous to the situation of the Galatian messianists, who are the spiritual heirs of Isaac.  


Professor Kahl sees Gal 4:21-5:1 highlighting the image of Jerusalem "above" as "representing a new international exodus of Jews and nations out of Caesar'e empire." In this reading, Hagar "becomes the allegorical representation of the not-one (3:19) as one-against-other that has hijacked Torah . . . " (p. 284). 


This is very forced. It is unlikely that Paul's auditors were expected by him to identify Hagar, an enslaved concubine, with contemporary representatives of Judaism, who demanded circumcision of them and who are stand-ins for Jewish representatives, who supposedly reached an agreement with Caesar, by which the emperor is prayed for in the temple and Diaspora Jews thereby are exempted from participation in emperor-worship throughout the empire.  


Kahl's take on the reminiscence passage (Gal 4:12-20) and the Hagar-Sarah analogy (Gal 4:21-5:1) loses purchase when isolated from Paul's argument in Gal 3-4. In these chapters, Paul is attempting a summary of Jewish religious history, which includes, from a Jewish perspective (then and now), an intolerable denigration of Torah. 


Paul does not assert that Torah was 'hijacked' by anyone. Rather, he argues that Torah never was adequate to fulfill God's salvific purpose for humankind, a purpose which entails freedom and new life, not by way of the continued observance of Torah but rather through allegiance to Messiah Jesus. 


These chapters read as the distinctive, idiosyncratic interpretation of Jewish religious history, which Paul worked out in the decade following his conversion to messianism, after his earlier career as a devout and violent enforcer of temple and Torah oriented Judaism. 

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

This post is prompted by endnote 91 in Chapter 6 (p. 367).

Professor Kahl, amplifying (p. 283) her comments about Gal 3:19-20, offers a unique reading of this text, which amounts to a concise summary of the thesis of her book.

Kahl is commenting on the phrase henos ouk estin (Gal 3:20)


“But a mediator is not one (lit: ‘not of the one’), but God is one.”

Kahl writes that “this most cryptic statement . . . is a coded reference to Caesar.”

Elaborating further, Kahl finds that Paul, “in guarded language . . . evokes the core conflict of the entire letter as the idolatrous claim of the Roman emperor as the supreme guardian and grantor of law vis-a-vis subject nations, including Jewish law, and the enslaving powers unleashed through his false promises and decrees of ‘law mediation.’

Is it plausible that Paul is referring explicitly, though cryptically, to Caesar? I suppose, once the view is taken that a comment is deliberately "cryptic" then it follows that a comment can mean anything. 


But the plausibility of a particularly novel suggestion comes always into play. Kahl in this footnote reads Gal 3:20 in light of Gal 1:1 - Paul’s assertion that his Gospel is “not from men nor through a man” - which Kahl suggests is “a puzzling reference” and which may also point to Caesar. 


In Gal 1:1 the emphatic, repetative negative (not from . . . nor through) does not suggest this is to be taken as a cryptic comment. More likely, Paul is asserting a divine source for his missionary authority, while denying a human source - as may have been alleged of him by critics in Galatia. If so, Paul does not have in mind the Roman emperor or any other particular individual and his dictated comment more likely means not from mankind or not from any human source.

My conclusion is that neither Gal 1:1 nor 3:20 should be taken as a reference to Caesar.

In this case Professor Kahl’s proposal is not sustained. Caesar is not characterized in Galatians as a false god, who is countered by Paul, who asserts belief in what he insists is the only true God, who made direct promises to Abraham, conducted arm's length dealings with Moses and is father of Messiah Jesus.

It follows that, if Caesar is not in view in Galatians, then nomos (law) in the Galatians letter is not to be taken as a reference to Roman law (however defined) and that the phrase “works of the law” ought to be read, not as the obligations of subject people to worship Caesar, but rather as a reference to Torah observance.

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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

Law As Imperial Compromise Formula (J. Taubes)

Under this sub-head, Kahl credits (page 9) Jacob Taubes’ 1986 lectures on Paul (The Political Theology of Paul, Stanford: 2004) with providing an insight which has proven to be “one of the decisive impulses behind the assumption of this book that in Galatians Paul does not abandon Jewish law but, on the contrary, wrestles, from a rigorously Jewish perspective, with a practice of Torah that has a least partly been ‘hijacked’ and desecrated by Roman imperial law and religion.” 

What Taubes says in the passages reproduced by Kahl is that nomos is imbued with an elastic essence, which permits “everyone to understand law as they want to” but that Paul rejects this “liberal” accommodation to imperial power, in favor of “the one who was nailed to the cross by nomos.”

I have not read Taubes but the statements of his, which Kahl has quoted, do not appear particularly controversial or groundbreaking.

The Roman occupation certainly enforced a religious consensus. Certainly, too, those who wished to preserve their own practices, had to seek some kind of accommodation, which satisfied both the Roman overload and their own identity and integrity.    

Paul, an adherent of Christ crucified, vigorously dissented from the imposed (and partly negotiated) consensus.

But it’s not clear from Taubes’ comments, how Paul’s Galatians letter is a forum in which it is demonstrated that Paul did not “abandon Jewish law” (Kahl) but rather “wrestles with a practice of Torah” (Kahl) that Roman law has “hijacked and desecrated.”

I can see grounds for describing Jewish practice under Roman occupation as a kind of “desecration” but I don’t – yet – see the target of Paul’s critique in Galatians not Torah but rather Roman law and its enforced practice. (As I have suggested already, my own take on Galatians is that it is a highly personal self-defense by the missionary, who was required to answer the charge that his violent abuse of Jewish adherents of Messiah Jesus destroyed his credibility as a religious guide.) 

Kahl refers the reader to earlier writings of her own and to chapter six, below.

We shall see.