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

Professor Kahl summarizes (p. 281) Galatians 3 and 4 as "a grand restatement of Genesis that revolves around the theme of oneness"  - by which is meant the one God, who reconciles divided humanity (Jews and Gentiles) into a new oneness as "siblings of Christ."


Kahl sees Paul's presentation here as "a programatic reconceptualization of God's people as a multitude of nations" (p. 281).


Kahl urges upon her readers the proposition that Paul's reconceptualization "cannot be seen as an innovation within the Jewish reference system alone" (p. 282).


This assertion is a fair summary of Professor Kahl's thesis that the Galatians letter is a semi-cryptic communication to oppressed communities, living under a brutal empire, against which regime the Apostle Paul in his missive, levels a subtle critique of its coercive, ideological pretentions.


Kahl's assertion that Paul's Galatians is more than a statement, which marks his distance from his former allegiance to Judaism, faces an important question, unanswered here: by whom "must" Paul's statements be seen as imbedded in a context larger than the "Jewish reference system?"


- By Paul himself? 
- By his intended readers? 
- By his opponents and critics?
- By readers today?


Doubtless, Kahl could answer that her book passes over many important issues because she has not written a commentary.


But if one intends to argue to specialists for a new interpretation of Galatians, one ought to clarify where and how key statements from Paul do not fit the traditional explanation(s) and fit better in the new understanding of these statements. 


Case in point: Gal 3:2-5 and 3:19-20, read together by Kahl (p. 283).






And




My Translation:


2: Let me just learn this from you: Was it by Torah observance that you received the spirit or by trusting in what you heard?
3: Are you so stupid? Beginning with the spirit, are you now perfected in the flesh?
4: Have you experienced so much for nothing?
5: Again, does the one who infuses in you the spirit - also energizes powers in you! - [do so] by your observance of Torah or by your believing what you heard?


and:


19: Then, why Torah? - As a supplement, because of misdeeds. That's why! Until the arrival of the promised descendant [seed] - conveyed through angels, by the hand of a mediator.
20: Now a mediator is not just one party. Yet God is one.  


Fundamental to translation is the choice whether to be literal or meaningful. 


Literally, ἐξ ἔργων νόμου (vv. 2, 5) means "by works of the law" but this awkward phrase appears more than once in the Galatians letter and demands a context for each appearance. Once a context is discerned, ἐξ ἔργων νόμου can be conveyed into English so as to permit Paul's statements to be comprehensible in his context. 


What is the context of Gal 3? Paul's remarks here are dictated in light of disagreement (Gal 2) about whether Jewish regulations as to food preparation and the acceptance of circumcision are mandated for those who give allegiance to Messiah Jesus. In this context, Paul is talking about Torah observance when he speaks of observance of the law (3:2, 5), and (v. 19) when he uses the word νόμος - law.


Professor Kahl's appears to acknowledge the Torah context but her re-imagination requires an added, broader aspect. 


The one offered by Kahl enlarges Paul's frame of reference to include the Roman occupation and its impact upon occupied peoples. The implication in Kahl's presentation is that both the immediate Jewish and the broader Roman context form the setting to Paul's comments.


But Kahl's broadening to include the Roman context effectively negates the context where Torah is in view. 


Kahl's interpretation of Gal 3:2 requires that 'works of the law' means the imposition of circumcision and Jewish dietary regulations by Roman authorities. If not a literal imposition, then Kahl would open the door to a worry by Diaspora Jews that this Messianic sect established by Paul, would get them all into trouble, if the sect claimed the Jewish exemption from worship of the emperor, yet without participating in conduct which clearly indicated Jewish identity.  


In this reading of 'works of the law' Paul is asking his erstwhile converts if they receive "the spirit" by either returning to the worship of the emperor or by way of their acceptance of the indices of Jewish identity?


But which is it supposed to be? Since dietary observances are no longer front and center in this letter and circumcision is, then 'works of the law' in Gal 3:2 is impliedly either circumcision or emperor worship, in the form of attendance at arena spectacles.


One doubts that nomos (law), appearing here in the singular, could have meant both Roman rule and also the Torah-imposed circumcision requirement. But Kahl thinks so, assigning to Caesar, not Moses, the role of transmitter of Torah. (See Kahl at p. 283, on Gal 3:19-20 and at p. 377, endnote 91, which I discuss, below.)


In 3:5, Paul asks the same rhetorical question of his erstwhile converts: what is the source of the gift of the spirit? This time Paul adds (shouting?) also, what is the source of the power you experience at work in your midst?! 


The difficulty posed by Professor Kahl's invitation to re-imagination a broader context is the unlikely circumstance in which Paul's readers could have thought about their experience(s) as messianic converts and reflected on these two, no three, options Kahl proposes: reception of spirit and power (1) by attendance at the games or (2) acceptance of circumcision, or (3) by Paul's impassioned preaching?


Abstractly, and especially in a document that is labeled as encoded, nomos can be taken as the Jewish rite of circumcision or attendance at the arena spectacles - all in contrast to Paul's impassioned preaching. But concretely, and more coherently, in the context of a discussion that began with a debate about dietary laws and, now about whether to accept circumcision, the clearer meaning for νόμος / nomos is Torah and not the Roman occupation. 


Because the word, nomos, most naturally means Torah in Gal 3, then the phrase ἐξ ἔργων νόμου - works of the law - is an incapsulated reference for:  Torah observance. The phrase does not mean: the required submission by subject peoples to the emperor's law and the imposition of Torah upon Diaspora Jews. 


Specifically (contra Kahl), works of the law does not mean: acquiescence to the demand made by local Roman authorities that the Galatians, not being exempt as are Diaspora Jews, attend spectacles in the local arena or amphitheater(s). 


Gal 3:19, 20: ". . . conveyed through angels, by the hand of a mediator. Now a mediator is not just one party. Yet God is one."  


These words are taken by commentators as a reference to the Sinai myth, in which Moses receives the laws and conveys it to the children of Israel. Some ancient traditions embroider the scene by the inclusion of angelic hosts. (Deut 33:2 LXX; Acts 7:38, 53; see Dunn's Galatians commentary [1993, p. 191]). This is doubtless the meaning intended by Paul.


Paul implies that the provisional aspect of Torah (coming 430 years after the promise: Gal 3:17) is evidenced by its conveyance with the aid of a mediator, assisted by angles. The absence of these two additional parties distinguishes and diminishes the reception of Torah from the promise of YHWH made directly to Abraham. 


Clearly, Paul has Torah in mind for his next sentence implies (v. 20) that the use of a mediator diminishes nomos inasmuch as "a mediator is not just one. Yet God is one." 


Kahl's view is quite different (p. 283). It is Caesar who mediates, i.e., enforces the Roman nomos upon the Galatians: "The law that condemns and exposes them as unlawful owing to their nonconformist identity is the law that is 'mediated' by Caesar, the idolatrous not-one in contrast to the one god of Israel (3:19-20)."


A mediator facilitates negotiations or communications between two parties. A mediator may also be thought of as a conveyor of some particular item or content between parties. The Talmud suggests that Moses' mediation at Sinai is analogous to a synagogue reading of Torah, with YHWH in the role of the Hebrew reader while Moses translates and interprets. 


But a mediator is not an enforcer. One does not think of a prosecutor or a police officer as a mediator of the law. 


Kahl's view that Caesar is the mediator of the law to the Galatians goes beyond both the plain meaning of mediator and the more coherent context found here: a reflection by Paul on the giving of Torah at Sinai, involving the mediation of Moses as well as the participation of angels, which is evidence, to Paul, that the giving of Torah is of a lesser quality than the earlier giving of the promise to Abraham.  


Sources for Galatians in Greek :

(1) http://www.kimmitt.co.uk/gnt/gnt.html


(2) http://www.greekbible.com/index.php

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

  

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

Further along in Chapter Six, one finds a fuller engagement by Brigitte Kahl, with some of Paul's statements taken from the text of the Galatains letter. This engagement is welcome but problematic. 

A discussion of only selected statements falls well short of detailed exegesis. The lack of this kind of investigation is a disappointment in a book, which wants to see Paul in Galatians mounting a critical (yet cryptic) argument against the public worship of the emperor.

Professor Kahl’s treatment of Gal 6:4 (p. 271) may serve as an example. 

My translation:

“Each person should assess one’s own work and so take pride in (eis) one’s own alone and not in (eis) that of another.”

Kahl translates differently,

“Everybody should evaluate the work of himself or herself and then will have the boast in front of (eis) himself or herself alone.”

By way of this awkward translation, Kahl utilizes this statement to assert (see quotation below) that Paul, sarcastically, is arguing against public display, that is against the public show of allegiance to the emperor.

To enlist Paul’s sentence in the service of an argument against a display of public allegiance to the emperor, Kahl deploys the preposition eis, in translation to mean, “in front of.” By way of this translation, Paul can be said to have public acts ("works") in mind, which he then, sarcastically, dismisses: display yourself privately, not in front of anyone else.

But the issue in this statement is not display but judging. Kahl substitutes display for judging by combining the two appearances of the preposition, eis. 


The preposition eis entails a range of meanings depending on its context (see Gal 3:17 and 4:11). 


But this preposition cannot be said to mean “in front of” to the exclusion of the notion that Paul is calling on his readers to make, individually, an internal or private assessment of one’s own conduct. 

In Gal 6:4 Paul clearly admonishes his readers not to assess the conduct of others. Kahl does not allow this meaning to be given to this verse.

Why not?

Kahl wishes to use Gal 6:4 to characterize Paul as mounting an “up-front attack on the competitive system of euergetism/benefactions, which, as we have seen, is a key feature of imperial order in a province like Galatia, ‘works’ are declared to be no longer the showcase of the self in the public race for status.”


To make Gal 6:4 carry all of this weight, Kahl declares that chapters 5 and 6 of Galatians have been dismissed by many of the commentators, who find earlier sections of the letter to be more substantive.


But in fact, the very statement Kahl enlists here, Gal 6:4, is best understood as Paul’s invocation of a general counsel to right conduct.




NOTE: The Greek text of Gal 6:4 has been taken from:

Greek New Testament

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

What we have proposed here, by Professor Brigitte Kahl, is a meaning ascribed to a document by virtue of associations that have been made between the document and pre-existing art. 


The success of this procedure is dependent upon the establishment of an historic link between the one and the other. This is an exercise in historical investigation. 


Unless an historical link can be shown, we have metaphorical associations.

No one would presume to declare that a given object could not be exploited as metaphor by a perceptive or creative observer.

Professor Kahl has associated the visual art found at the Great Altar at Pergamon with the Galatians letter, a primary literary source of the later-developing traditions of a faith community. 

But while Kahl's presentation sees more here than a metaphorical association, her procedure does not follow the rules of the historian. Her procedure does not begin either with facts, or with an assertion of a theory to be proven by the marshaling of facts. Nor does her conclusion offer a summation of facts presented with assertions or inferences drawn as to the meaning or the importance of past events.


Instead of laying out a set of facts to support the assertion that Paul opposes circumcision, which is seen, supposedly by Paul, as a collaboration with the Roman Empire, the reader too often is given citations to scholars who, in one way or another, are used to bolster Kahl's primary argument. The scholars cited hold views on some aspect of Paul's argument, that are tangential to Kahl's central argument and opinions.  


It may be, for example, as Kahl suggests (p. 260) that the emphasis on apocalyptic in Paul (cf. J.C. Beker) requires to be supplemented or even modified by insights into his letters, which demonstrate Paul's allegiance to his roots in Judaism (cf. Roy Ciampa). 


But this sort of adjustment does not require an association between the images found on the Great Altar and Paul's pre-literary context, that is, the circumstances which occasioned his Galatians letter.


Once one has opened the door onto the idea whether Paul retained a place, even a contentious place, within Judaism, one must admit this idea and take it on directly.


The notion that Paul, in working out his messianic theories, retained an underlying embrace of Judaism must answer Schoeps, who pointed out a half-century ago (1961) that the Judaism Paul characterizes in Galatians is a caricature. 


Schoeps wrote (p. 174), "There are no Jewish parallels to [Paul's] assessment of the law." 


If, as Kahl contends, Paul is rehabilitating Torah from a messianic perspective, rather than upending Torah from an apocalyptic one, something must be done about Schoeps. But in this book, nothing is.


The associations made here, as in earlier chapters, are inviting if proposed as metaphor. Offered as historical, these associations are not persuasive (as in this example, p. 273):


"As the social practice of a new creation (Gal 6:15) Paul's empire-critical theology has a profoundly ecological dimension as well. Combat, competition and mindless consumption of the other - the other human and the other of the Earth - in Paul's system are the 'works of the law' and the signature of the 'flesh' (sarx) in enslavement to sin, crying out for the liberting transformation of the spirit."


Is all of this actually Paul's theology or an interpretation of it with metaphorical associations to the Great Altar in mind?


It may be that Paul's "messianic retelling of the Genesis story" (p. 261) functions, as a "counterimage" to the imperial, Roman story of the founding of that empire, exemplified by the use employed by the caesars of the imagery on display at the Great Altar. But it is quite another matter to assert that Paul had this counterimage in mind, which is more than to assert that his arguments can function in this way, in a later interpretation. 


To the extent that the reader is told that Paul was actually engaged in a conscious repudiation of Roman imperial mythology, with Pergamonic images infusing both the Galatians' and also the Roman mind, the reader is offered a post hoc argument. 


Paul's assertions, in the hands of a creative reading of his Galatians dictation, may become a critique of prior or subsequent imperial systems or of all such systems. 


But we are not entitled, for this reason, to state that Paul had such in mind, or that his intended readers did. 


It simply is not the case, made from the letter, that the "core" of Paul's opposition to "works of the law" (p. 262) is alarm that his messianic converts are on the point of slipping back into "conformity with the imperial body" by either accepting circumcision or participation in emperor worship. This is not Paul's argument in Galatians. 


To reduce Paul's law-critique to "works of imperial violence and competition" is an unwarranted reduction of the argument  to be found in his Galatians letter.


Kahl, as promised in the Introduction, places (p. 265) the novel of Peter Weiss front and center, as an important template with which further inferences about Paul's Galatians can be made. 


Weiss is important to Kahl because of the prominence Weiss gives to the imagery of the Great Altar, in his story about resistance to nazism. 


But the reader is given Weiss' novel and not exegesis of the Galatians letter. 


Instead, there is in a circular way, frequent reversion to the visual art at Pergamon.






   


  

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

  

Kahl presents (p. 227 f.) four different slants on the oppression of the Roman regime, which are offered as evidence of defeated and dominated peoples pitted against one another "while being consumed together" by Roman overlords. 

These four examples, it is suggested, sustain the writer's larger argument: a re-imagining of the context in which Paul wrote his Galatians letter demonstrates that his converts to messianism were urged by him not to submit to circumcision. Why not? Acceptance by non-Jewish males of this fundamental marker of Jewish identity would amount to intolerable collaboration by these messianists with emperor worship, the official religion of the Roman empire.  

The four markers are (1) the references to Galatians in I and II Maccabees; (2) Galatian bodyguards, formerly the property of Cleopatra, assigned to Herod the Great after her defeat and suicide; (3) Augustus' Jewish toleration edicts, specifically one placed on temple walls at Ancyra. which benefitted Jews in Anatolia; (4) the person and place of Julia Severa. Galatian priestess of Roman civic religion, who sponsored a synagogue a Acmonia, in the province fo Asia (adjacent to Galatia).

The treatment of these four brief excursi typify Brigitte Kahl's procedure throughout - these excursi join the more extensive treatment of visual art and are likewise offered as proof of a thesis. 

But this is a circuitous route through a fairly well documented historical epoch. 


Rather than work with disparate and disconnected matters, why not lay out the salient events that prove the proposed thesis? 


Why not let history speak to the reader and, in this way, invite the reader to determine what, if any, re-imagining is in order?

There is unease in this reader, who is asked

- to accept Maccabean pericopes as historical records;

- to see the bodyguards of the humiliated Cleopatra as symbols of the defeated Galatians of centuries before;

- to accept Augustus' edict of Jewish toleration as evidence that the Jews of the Diaspora would have - illogically - insisted that Gentile messianists accept circumcision, or 

- to see the Galatian, Julia Severa, Roman citizen and priestess of the official cult and benefactor of a synagoge, as a type of wealthy Gentile, who would have felt her position threatened by uncircumcised Gentile messianists.

Transforming a fact into a metaphor can be an arresting and informative exercise. It is the work of the poet. 


But it is not the work of the historian.