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

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


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


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


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


One could imagine many things.


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


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


But questions arise:


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

This post offers some considerations of Professor Kahl's reference to Luke-Acts in Chapter Five.


Sprinkled through Chapter Five, are citations to Biblical texts, put forward to bolster Professor Kahl's argument that representatives of Diaspora Jews insisted to Paul's messianic converts they must accept circumcision. 


The circumcision requirement was in reaction, Kahl argues, to the risk posed by uncircumcised Gentile males who had identified themselves with the messianic proclamations of the missionary Paul. These men were perceived by Jews also resident in Galatia, as persons who were deceptively benefitting from the Roman-Jewish accommodation, whereby the emperor was prayed for in the Jerusalem temple and the Jewish Diaspora was permitted to follow its own observances, exempt from participation in public emperor worship.


Kahl offers several New Testament texts in support of these views.


One citation is to chapters 13 and 14 of Acts, offered to the reader in toto (note 63, page 355) as independent evidence of the situation Kahl has described, i.e., (p. 224) "portions of the Jewish population in Asia Minor negotiated rather successfully the compromise between Jewish otherness and civic and imperial integration, which brought them in some cases closer to the civic and imperial establishment in the cities." 


This heavily qualified statement may well be true, just as its opposite might also be true. That is, one could say, "in some cases" . . . "portions of the Jewish population" . . . "negotiated" un"successfully" . . . etc.


The varying  situations described in Acts 13 and 14 can be said to show many configurations beyond the one Brigitte Kahl is proposing.  


In these chapters, Jewish figures are portrayed as hospitable to Paul and his colleagues (13:5, 15, 42, 14:1)  but also as inhospitable (13:45, 50, 14:2, 19). Similarly, local representatives of Roman occupation and official religions are likewise both hospitable (13:6-7, 12) and hostile (13:50), sometimes in apparent collusion with Jews, in demonstrating hostility to Paul (13:50, 14:5), but then again, sometimes joining with Jews in praise of Paul (13:44, 14:7, 13, 18).


An allusion to Luke-Acts, especially if the subject under discussion is insistance by some that others accept circumcision, should include mention of Act 15:1, where it is stated that those Jews in the Diaspora, who are portrayed as arguing forcefully that Gentile messianists must be circumcised were "some men came down from Judea." 


This reference ought not be overlooked and should be explained in  light of Kahl's thesis that those who insisted on a circumcision requirement were not followers of Messiah Jesus nor were Judeans, but were Diaspora Jews.


The fact that Acts 15:1 is overlooked serves to remind that the description of a course of events, teased out of selected Biblical texts, retains cogency only if it accounts for other relevant texts.


To put this another way, a proposed new understanding of Paul in Galatians carries the burden of inter-connective textual coherence.


There is also the need to come to terms with a cited text, in its inherent literary integrity. Mention of a text in Luke-Acts, it seems to me, requires placing a given citation in the context of Luke's role as a writer. 


Much of the work done on Luke-Acts in the past half-century or so has demonstrated that the writer of Acts, sequel to Luke, was interested in developing a chronology that was friendly to a Gentile mission as an already established fact. 


Acts reveals a greater freedom to pursue this objective, than is apparent in the earlier work, Luke, in the writing of which, Luke was constrained both by the existence of a prescribed "gospel" form and by the subject matter of the earlier work, the career and the mission of Jesus. 


Citations to Acts 13 and 14 need to be given with their context within Luke's theological objectives as demonstrated elsewhere in Acts. A casual reference to these two chapters falls short, by not addressing Luke's redactional role. This failing is compounded by the fact (see above) that these chapters present a quite varied picture of the interaction between Paul, Diaspora Jews, and local authorities.


Further, a citation to Luke where the Apostle Paul is concerned, has to contend with the (to me) well established conclusion that the writer of Luke-Acts, though an admirer of Paul, did not understand Paul and placed words in his mouth, which are quite foreign to Paul's actual thoughts, expressed in the letters. If Luke felt free to compose speeches for Paul, did Luke also freely manipulate the context of those speeches? Since Dibelius' work on the Paul's speeches in Acts, this question must receive an affirmative answer. 


In the context of the research and the conclusions reached in the past decades about Luke's role as a creative historian and editor of material at hand, are their grounds, in the citations made by Professor Kahl, for concluding that these Lucan passages can be taken as references to actual events, or rather are we dealing with Luke's redactions?


Ironically, the Paul of Acts does displace Judaism as the essential ground and home of the Gentile mission. A further indication of this displacement is that the Jewish claim to be the people of God is not echoed in the speeches of the Paul of Acts, yet Jewish option may be found in the letters, as in Romans 9-11. Paul, letter writer, also who urged upon his converts the image of the body of Christ, not as in Acts, their unity as members of the human race. (See the Areopagus speech of the Paul of Acts,  at 17:22-31.)


All this is the work of Luke, not of the historical Paul, Apostle to the Gentiles.

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

CHAPTER ONE – “REMAPPING GALATIA”

Galatia As Primeval Background in the Christian Theological Imagination (page 33)

Yet more prolegomena, which Kahl justifies in the final sentence of the preceding section:  “It is important first to note just how different that topology is from the conventional imaginary location of ‘Galatia’.”

This is followed by the assertion that “Galatia is terra incognita in the Christian imagination” and that the Galatians addressed in Paul’s letter “seem” more at home in the Wittenberg of Martin Luther and in modern “dogmatic mindscapes” than in the actual environment “where Paul first met them.”

We then are told that the last hundred years of “exhausting” scholarship has “obscured” the true context in which the letter was originally and presumably still is, to be read.

Instead of providing examples, which might support any of these assertions, Professor Kahl goes on to further assert that the letter itself is more “secretive” than others of Paul’s letters “in terms of contextual markers.”

If Kahl’s assertion is correct, that the Galatians letter is lacking in contextual indicators, would this not explain why many later readers of Paul’s letter, looking over the shoulders of the intended recipients, are left to speculate about much of the original setting?

Does the suggestion about deliberate secretiveness on the part of the letter writer not indicate all the more why a consideration of the text of the letter is of first importance?  

Kahl focuses on the secretiveness of the letter, but not as a possible explanation of the letter’s uncertain context. Rather Kahl merely wishes to announce that Paul is being deliberately obscure. Again, without providing anything that could be assessed as evidence, Kahl simply asserts that Paul has not provided a “standard” opening but rather is perhaps engaged in “a conspiratorial concealment” of the location of the letter’s recipients.

The pinball approach to issues – moving rapidly from one assertion to another without supporting with evidence what has just been stated – does not clarify either the import of ‘traditional’ scholarship, of which Kahl is critical, or her own announced plan to establish a needed, re-imagined context in which the letter is to be assessed.

Beyond North and South is the first sub-head under this section. Yet again, Kahl wishes to make something decisive of scholarship, which is inconclusive as to whether Paul’s Galatia is the Roman province of that name or the likely more ethnically uniform region to the north of the province.

Enough already about the inherently inconclusive north-south debate! 

Kahl brings up the debate, yet again, in order to make the point that “self-congratulatory” scholarship, by not finding a conclusive answer to the location question has itself “decontextualized” the letter.

This cannot be the case. The letter itself does not provide enough information for clarity as to where the letter’s recipients resided. Scholars who point this out are not congratulating themselves.

One gets drawn into blind rhetorical allies, when one looks beyond the silence of a text, to fault previous research which has concluded, the text is silent.

It is true, and Kahl points this out forcefully and correctly, that the Romans, present as conquerors and occupiers of Galatia (whether north or south Anatolia), have been “conspicuously absent “in the “imagined geography of religious spaces and counter spaces,” that is, in the efforts to understand the letter.

Kahl is correct also to remind us that the letter’s likely recipients probably (Kahl insists they did) walked Roman roads, paid taxes, were present at events at Roman temples, fought in Roman legions, attended Roman meals and games, fulfilled their civic obligations.

But if the Romans are to be seen as players and not as background to the letter, the letter must be cited for this. But it is not.

Instead, Professor Kahl argues that, the a scholarly focus on the north-south location issue has lead to a “dominant concern,” already present in Luke-Acts, to reconcile Paul’s career with Luke’s travel narrative and a Lucan interest in confining Paul to the role of a model missionary and an orthodox, doctrinal pioneer. 

But Pauline scholarship does not uniformly point in this constrictive direction.  We cannot know where lived the Galatians of the letter, but this does not mean or imply that Luke rightly portrays Paul’s chronology or his mission.

Pauline and Lucan investigations are entirely separate, from a scholarly point of view. Not for Kahl, who has it that “Paul has been turned into an entirely agreeable and politically correct model Roman citizen.”

Before sweeping all modern Pauline scholarship into a murmuring devotional circle, willing to see Paul disengaged from “the social and political realities of conquest,” Professor Kahl might engage Ernst Käsemann, with whom she has much in common as a tenacious and thoughtful Pauline investigator from within the Lutheran tradition.

Käsemann is the most searching Pauline scholar we have. Perhaps his fundamental gift is his thoughtful dissent from the notion that ecclesiology is the determinant for theology.

“Contemporary theology has forgotten,” Käsemann asserted, “that its true opponent is not unbelief , which is in any case probably more or less a fiction . . . unbelief is a manifestation of superstition, whether religious or secularized . . . superstition [may have] contributed more to the continuity of church history, theology and Christian institutions than faith.” (“The Spirit and the Letter,” Perspectives on Paul (Fortress Press, 1971, p. 153, translator: Margaret Kohl)

Käsemann once described Paul as “a possessed man in pursuit of a feverish dream” and also asserted, “Historical research has perhaps its final and deepest value in the fact that it disillusions.”  (Both statements may be found in “Paul and Nascent Catholicism,” Distinctive Protestant and Catholic Themes Reconsidered (Harper Torchbooks, 1967, pp. 19, 17, translated by Wilfred F. Bunge).

A gift from J. Louis Martyn to this shy M. Div. student at Union Seminary in the ‘60’s was Martyn’s drumbeat for Ernst Käsemann. Even if you decide that a Käsemann nugget (rarely an entire sentence) is fool’s gold, you have had to turn it over in your hand three or four times, and it is so pretty!

Through the centuries, many official, i.e., self-declared, orthodox interpretations of Paul, have dutifully domesticated him as the Cosmic Apostle, bravely fighting to preserve space for the development of a magisterium, which would then invoke Paul for its own secular ends, while pretending never to avert its gaze from the heavens.

But this is not the Paul of the letters, when the letters, including Galatians, are read as the ingenious but flawed theological inventions they in fact are.

One best not try to re-imagine Paul as a resistance operative against Roman occupation, who sent a cryptic message to sleeper cells somewhere in Galatia.

This seems to be where Kahl is headed.

But the exercise is not likely to be true to the Paul of Galatians any more than are the long standing efforts to reshape Paul’s statements, in the interests of some other imposed agenda.     

Thus far, to the sub-head Beyond East and West, page 37.

    

  

    

  

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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

In my previous post, I mentioned that Brigitte Kahl recommends Mark Nanos’ book, The Irony of Galatians (Augsburg Fortress 2002), especially at pp. 257-71.

Nanos write that the Apostle Paul’s addressees in Galatia were not Jews, although adherents of Messiah Jesus (“Paul’s Gentiles”). As non-Jews, they were compromising the security of the synagogue(s) by claiming the privilege – as Jews – to no longer be required to show honor to the Emperor by way of mandated participation in the imperial cult. Nanos then argues that the Jewish community (communities?) responded to this threat by pressuring Paul’s Messiah Jesus converts to become proselytes and submit to circumcision.

Paul’s Galatians letter is ambiguous as to the identities of both the community (communities) addressed and the opponents Paul is confronting. This ambiguity explains the existence of both Nanos’ book and Kahl’s, to say nothing of most other commentaries: biblical scholars want to have their say and also want to say something fresh, if not novel. (The faddish nature of New Testament scholarship is a subject for another day.)

About the identities of the parties mentioned in the Galatians letter, decisions have to be made by those who write commentaries. Nanos has made his calls, and Kahl’s introductory remarks indicate she has adopted a similar position in her book. (You will recall, I am reviewing her book as I work through it.)

I leave it to the readers of Mark Nanos to decide if he is persuasive that synagogue representatives (Nanos, unfortunately, calls them “control agents”) would demand circumcision of non-Jews, whose adherence was not to Judaism per se, but to a Jewish itinerant preacher, executed under Roman authority in Roman-occupied Jerusalem. 

My own take on these identity questions is that Paul, in Galatians, is having to defend himself from allegations that he is a man of extreme violence and therefore, lacking in credibility as a reliable counselor in religious matters. This bitter criticism of Paul was made, I believe, in Galatia by survivors of his earlier persecution of Diaspora Christian Jews, whom he had run out of Jerusalem and who had returned to their homes in Galatia, there to denounce Paul to their co-communicants, some of whom were Gentile. 

(See my article, “Paul and the Victims of His Persecution: The Opponents in Galatia” 32 Biblical Theology Bulletin No 4 (Winter 2002) pages 182-191.)

Kahl’s first reference to Nanos, appearing here in the Introduction, may yet be qualified in her more detailed explication in the book.          

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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is helpful to hear.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

Kahl mentions a “68 C.E.” rebellion in the Roman Province of Galatia, conducted by the Roman-appointed governor, Gaius Julius Vindex. Kahl states (p 1) that this episode is “directly relevant to interpretation” because the Roman-occupied areas, Gaul and Galatia “were more closely linked in the first century, C.E. mind, than we realize.”

The Apostle Paul was dead (according to well accepted tradition) by the time of the Gaius Julius Vindex rebellion.

The likelihood of Paul’s death has to mean that whatever association is to be made between the rebellion and the Apostle, is made without reference to any comment or thought Paul might have had about the rebellion, because Paul could have had none.

Similarly, there is no mention by Kahl that the rebel governor, Gaius Julius Vindex had known Paul, known of Paul or had been influenced by Paul in any way.

These discontinuities are not issues for Kahl. Why not?

Note that Kahl has stated that her purpose in mentioning the 68 C.E. rebellion is to draw the readers attention to the “mind” of the first century, C.E.  

The “mind” of an era is a large item. I am hoping that Professor Kahl will clarify what might be the specific features of this “mind” and how it can inform the reader’s understanding.

It appears that the introductory mention of the rebellion in Galatia is an occasion for Kahl to emphasize that the two Roman-governed regions (Gall and Galatia) ought to be seen as more closely linked “than we realize.”

I don’t know why Kahl thinks her readers do not already link Gaul and Galatia. Both areas were populated by clans of “Gauls” prior to their defeat in war by Roman legions, centuries before. Both retained similar if not identical languages, which Jerome noted and which many Galatians commentaries have pointed out.  Today, one area, Gaul, is France. The other, Galatia, is a portion of southern Turkey. 

Intending to link the two areas quite closely for her readers, Kahl adds, surprisingly, “From a strictly lexical perspective, the whole letter that Paul addresses to the “assemblies of Galatia” [. . .] could as well have been directed to the Roman province(s) of Gallia, contemporary France [. . .].” (pp 1-2)

From a “strictly lexical perspective” Lincoln’s Gettysburg address could have been addressed to British subjects deported to Australia, or to English-speaking Canadians or to the British Parliament. But none of these were the intended audience of the Address – and for vastly more important reasons than that dissimilar audiences spoke/speak the same language.

This hyperbole is a bit discouraging in an Introduction. You hate to see a writer, at the outset, overreach to this degree.

Patience. We are only to page two. Top of.     

Everyone has a strong reaction to the Apostle Paul.


My triple great grandfather Joshua Flood (1772-1850) admired him. Grandfather Joshua also admired Andrew Jackson. Josh Flood, who worked slaves and would be counted by anyone as among the truest and simplest backwoods Baptists, believed everything came down to this: each wretch must come to Jesus.

How does Saint Paul fit into Joshua Flood’s view of this world, a world that included the embrace of human slavery, the rejection of indoor cooking, and the categorical refusal to allow mules on his farm in Shelby County, Kentucky in the first five decades of the nineteenth century?

It would not be difficult to conclude, at the present moment, that Joshua Flood simply misread his favorite Apostle. But I doubt if you could get away with that in a conversation with old Joshua, or with his Huguenot wife Mary (Marie) Bondurant (1782-1863). I doubt if you could set the parameters of that conversation in a way that would require old Joshua to see what you see, in Paul.

Context makes a difference, no?

Who is the Apostle Paul?  Well, that depends. Are we talking about yesterday or today? And which yesterday and which today do we have in mind?

Brigitte Kahl, professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary, New York, has published her take on the Apostle, in a book entitled Galatians Re-Imagined: Reading with the Eyes of the Vanquished (Fortress 2010).

What follows here (and in subsequent posts) is going to be my take on Kahl’s take on Paul’s letter, found in the New testament and there entitled, Galatians.

I have not read Kahl’s book. I am reading it. I will post my reactions and comments as I work through her book.

Comments are welcome.