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

Kahl, at p. 224 f.


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


Galatians:


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


the Apostle Paul:


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


MISSING DATA


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


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

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

ABSENCE OF PLAUSIBILITY


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

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

The sub-title of Chapter Four is emblematic of a double aspect in Kahl's approach to the historical events she is investigating.

That sub-title is, "The Imperial Resurrection of the Dying Gauls / Galatians (189 B.C.E. - 50 C.E.)"

This sub-title conveys two ideas:

(1) a segment of human history is under review;

(2) the writer applies to this review a conceptual matrix,  a template of interpretation, through which past events are to be understood.


Imperial, resurrection, dying, all are suggestive symbols; each can resonate emotionally, especially (may I suggest) the latter two.

In combination, it appears to me, these language symbols become code for a perspective on past events, which the writer presses. Nothing wrong with this, of course. But it is good to keep in mind the writer's dual focus, which she is of course straightforward about, beginning with the title of the book. We are to consider past events and re-imagine the import of these events.

Chapter Four has the flavor of a legal brief; it is an argument intended to persuade. The opened-ended title of the chapter, ROMAN GALATIA, indicates neutrality, while the sub-title provides an interpretation. There is room, always (isn't there?) for more than one interpretation.

The strength of Kahl's presentation is its delineation of the startlingly brutal and pervasive methods of the Roman imperium to control occupied peoples. These methods, developed over centuries, sought to create  a publicly displayed consensus for and by subjugated peoples, a consensus which affirmed the facts of defeat, occupation and the sustaining principles of world empire.

Prior to chapter four, Kahl grounded her interpretation of events in a detailed examination of visual representations, mostly statues and sculptures.

A literary interpretation of  works of art is a translation of visual symbols into an array of written symbols. Although written interpretations of art are commonplace, bear in mind that an explication of a visually perceived set of symbols into a learned set of written symbols does not lend itself to a single, incontestable conceptual result.

There is always going to be room for disagreement about what a visual presentation means, in written form.

An example is Kahl's conclusion that Galatians are represented as mythological giants. I do not think this case has been made, because representations of Gauls (Galatians) and giants appear together. (See post number twenty-three.)

Chapter Four, under discussion here, is not a delineation of visual representations but of literary remains. Nevertheless, in following Kahl's presentation and the argument it presses, the reader is intended to make the assumption that Galatians are represented as giants. Kahl's insistence upon this (see pp. 173, 178-9, 184, 205) is a distraction and does not appear to me to be required or to serve the larger argument, that Paul's Galatians entails a critique of the Roman imperium.

There is much that Kahl has established and that is likely to endure. She persuasively demonstrates (p. 182) that ethnically more uniform north Galatia (the modern day environs of Ankara) and the ethnically more diverse Roman province to the south (designated Galatia by the Romans), were governed according to similar principles. The details of Kahl's presentation helpfully illuminates the background in which Paul propagandized among these occupied populations.

But this reader must register a caveat at the suggestion that the Roman administrative designation of the south Galatia population as Galatian, therefore, came to be a self-identification, "inclusive of all inhabitants" of the southern province. (p. 187, see also 180.)

I think Kahl, if pressed, would retreat slightly from this conclusion, as it is based on the perspective of the occupier, who intended that subjugated peoples "ideally" (p. 187) would trade in their ethnic allegiances and become compliant and quiescent.

Kahl's frequent reference to Gal 3:1 ("You stupid Celts!") suggests that the writer is pressing the all-inclusive Galatians designation so as to make Paul out in his Galatians letter, to be addressing an ethnically diverse audience, who would in their turn, have understood themselves addressed, even if they were not of Celtic origin.

What happened in 189 B.C.E.?

Kahl begins this chapter with a reminder that Manlius Vulso had conducted a punitive campaign of slaughter of Celtic tribes in Anatolia (see p. 66 f.) , which marked the end to Celtic brigandage (if Celtic occupation had been that) and influence in the region.

But Kahl moves from 189 B.C.E. to discuss events of a century later, (89 B.C.E) when Mithridates (Mithradates VI of Pontus and Armenia Minor), a competitor of Rome, then residing in Pergamon, invited prominent locals to a feast, where he slaughtered most the guests. The victims included leading Celtic figures, whom Mithradates believed would side against him and with Rome.

Professor Kahl interprets (p. 172) this event as evidence that the local Celtic tribes, during the past century had "undergone a miraculous metamorphosis" and were no longer viewed as lawless outsiders.

Kahl also suggests (p. 174) that Mithradates' "decapitation" of local Celtic leadership served Roman interests after his defeat by Pompey in 63 B.C.E, by facilitating Roman selection of a single Celt, Deiotarus, as ruler and enforcer of Roman hegemony.

The coercive principles of Roman provincial governance are chillingly arrayed in this book.

Kahl is undoubtedly correct in stating (p. 181) that the pervasive presence of Roman roads "spells out what it means for a region to become a province."

Inscriptions on milestones (p. 181) placed upon the newly established Roman roads, praised the emperor as "holy" (in Latin: augustus = august; in Greek: Sebastos = august). The road along which the milestone was uncovered was proclaimed on the milestone as a holy gift from the emperor, designated Via Sebastos. This suggests similar designations were given to other (all?) Roman roads in this region.

Oddly missing from the book are maps, which certainly would aid the reader to measure distances and appreciate the value of a system of roads to be employed not only for the rapid movement of soldiers but also for the benefit of commerce and communication, generally.

Kahl believes that surviving rosters of military units, unfortunately not reproduced in this book, suggest (p. 185) that impressment into military service entailed the loss of ethnic identity.

But one wonders if too much is being made, by Professor Kahl, about what an individual soldier's enrollment on a clerk's roster might say about that man's status vis a vis the emperor. Kahl thinks the paperwork appears to indicate that the legionnaire is referred to as "f" - and takes this notation to mean "son" of the unit commander.

Kahl believes this designation is a "tangible" indication that the Roman imperium was declaring it had ". . . officially 'fathered' and newly created these men 'out of nothing' shaping them uniformly in the image of empire . . ."

But ". . . documentation was probably not intended to be read outside the unit and many features (such as the marks annotating rosters) remain unclear." (See Roman Military Service: Ideologies of Discipline in the Late Republic and Early Principate, by Sara Elise Phang, Cambridge University Press, 2008 p. 208.)

Kahl is very good in describing the koinon, the provincial council (assembly) composed of wealthy representatives of the occupied population, whose civic duty required the expensive sponsorship of local religious activities and public games.

The koinion functioned as n echo and therefore a cooptation of the ancient Celtic assembly, the drunemeton. The koinon built temples, paid for public feasts and staged blood-soaked events in the arena(s) in the province - all of which were associated with observances of the imperial cult. Kahl states (p. 187) that, at the time of the apostle Paul, at least ten cities in north and south Galatia sponsored events associated with the imperial cult.

Does the plethora of arenas and the ubiquitous staging of bloody entertainments demonstrate that the cult of the emperor was critiqued or countered in Paul's Galatians? Kahl believes so.

"It is important to understand," Kahl writes (p. 188), "the clash with imperial religion and its koinon that was provoked by Paul when his model of worship and koinonia/community turned out to be based on a quite different concept of the one God and the oneness of humanity."

If the Galatians letter reflects a "clash with imperial religion" then one needs to see citations of the letter which establish this association. Kahl does cite the letter, more frequently in this chapter than earlier one. (A subsequent post will visit each of these citations.)

"Rome needed cities" (p. 189).

Kahl helpfully calls attention (pp. 188-191) to the Roman preference for urban centers. This empire was city-based, even to the extent of impoverishing the countryside and starving the rural population, so as to bring food (and force people?) into the cities.

The convening of a koinon is suggestive of the benefits to the occupier of centralization, to say nothing of the military impressment of large numbers of young men, the building of temples and the staging of entertainments and games. All of this indicates that the Roman imperium, through centuries, saw benefits in collecting subjugated peoples into cities, the better to supervise their behavior and keep everything under control.

Not the least of the benefits to the empire was the subsequent redistribution, to military commanders and others, of tracts of land as a reward for services rendered.

Kahl demonstrates the Roman preference for urban life, by drawing on her well honed power of interpretation of visual imagery. Harkening once again to works of art found at the Great Altar at Pergamon, Kahl reminds that Guia, goddess of the earth, presents her cornucopia to the city goddess, Athena. One wants to add, however, as Kahl noted earlier on, that the Great Altar was designed and constructed by Greek sensibilities and workmanship, later taken over by Rome.

The image of empire as an iconic city was embraced by the imperium. As Kahl expresses it (p. 191): ". . . Roma, the worldwide mother city, the unsatiable divine metropolis . . . [was] worshipped alongside the deified Caesar at Ancyra and elsewhere."

In addition to a discovered Roman military roster and the register of donations by members of a Koinon, Kahl calls attention to two other writings, which highlight the nature of the cult of the Emperor.

Portions of an inscription in Ancyra of the Res Gestae Divi Augusti - Acts of the Divine Augustus - have been found. These publicly displayed stone tables, carved in both Latin and Greek suggest the importance placed upon the giving by the divine emperor of good gifts to subjugated peoples - even in faraway Galatia.

For Kahl, the (enforced) generosity of the koinon is intended by occupier and occupied alike as a reflection of the 'good works' of the emperor. The generosity of the emperor, whether implicitly or explicitly, require a reciprocal gift from the koinon. Such gifts, in the expensive form of temple construction, public feasts or elaborate games in the local arena, preserve and enhance the honor of the individual patron. In turn, these sponsored activities invite (require?) reciprocity from the urban masses, which takes the form of gratitude, obedience and praise to the emperor who has made it all possible.

At this point a template of interpretation is proposed by Kahl, whereby the emperor's largesse is characterized as "works of the law" (p. 196), which is suggestive, in turn, to Kahl, of Paul's arguments in his Galatians letter.

The emperor's gifts are entitled, "benefactor/benefaction" which Kahl states, literally means, "doing of good works" (Kahl, p. 196).

Does the association of the emperor's 'good works' make inevitable, or even more plausible the notion pressed by Kahl, that Paul in his Galatians letter (2:16, 3:2-5) is critiquing the generosity of Caesar as "works righteousness" (p. 199)?

Kahl suggests (p. 199) that Paul is advocating and practicing a "faith righteousness" in opposition to "law righteousness." Paul's messianic allegiance, Kahl argues, does not mirror the "honor, benefaction, and patronage of the divine Caesar but the counter-hegemony of a crucified one."

Kahl also suggests that the prevalence of celebratory meals and public spectacles "resonate" in Paul's references in his letter to table fellowship ("community") and "public death spectacles, that is, crucifixion" (p. 199).

Kahl also argues that the title which has come down through church history of Paul as Apostle to "the Gentiles" needs to be re-examined, in light of the reference to Galatian tribes as ethne. This term, Kahl argues, ought not be assumed to mean Gentile - as opposed to Jew. 


There is much here that is persuasive in a general sense and much that provokes a re-consideration of established ideas, as to the background against which was dictated Paul's Galatians letter.

But questions persist:

By way of the mechanisms of Roman subjugation, have the Galatian tribes undergone (p. 204) a "stunning metamorphosis . . . from barbarian outlaws to imperial subjects and soldiers . . . "?

Does the imagery examined indicate that "Dying Gauls had become resurrected . . ." (p. 204)?

Kahl herself raises (p. 204) a question which is central to her investigation: Can we say that Paul "aims much more at the normative imperial master images than at perceptions of Jewish Torah?"

It seems plausible to this reader to agree with Kahl (p. 206) that Paul proposes a "dangerous messianic countervision." But this vision, diverging from the imperial imposition of emperor worship, expressed through public display, does not require that the Galatians letter be seen as an explicit counter to the cult of the emperor.

The messianic faith that Paul helped to found and propagate, did reach a kind of counter-position to Rome, but not until the rule of Constantine, and then, more as a cooptation of empire rather than as a counter to empire.

The continuing weakness of Kahl's presentation is a failure to document persuasively what is repeatedly inferred and increasingly asserted as fact, that the coercive, consensus-building methods of the imperium directed at an occupied population, are the subject matter of Paul's Galatians letter. This, the central thesis of Kahl's book, remains unproven.

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

These comments are addressed to Chapter Two, sub-head: "The Lawlessness of the Dying Trumpeter - and of Paul" (pp. 78-82).

Kahl asserts, that the image of the Dying Trumpeter / Dying Gaul was ubiquitous across the Greek and Roman worlds ("omnipresent images" page 79) and in the first century was understood by means of "a common sigh system of otherness" (p. 78) which "Paul and the Galatians of his letter would "have no difficulty reading" (p. 79).

These assertions lead Kahl to further argue that this sculpture informs not simply the context of Paul's Galatians letter, but the argument(s) contained in the letter. This is so, Kahl states, because of two features of the sculpture: (1) the presentation of  an uncircumcised penis and (2) the assailant who has delivered the lethal blow is not pictured. 

Conflating the centuries older sculpture with the contemporaneous Galatians of Paul's letter, Kahl allows the imagery of the art to represent the circumstance of Galatians, per se, whose ancestors had been defeated in war. The analogy seems to run in the opposite chronological direction as well: "Is there any relation between his [the statue's] foreskin and the mortal would on his side? And who inflicted the wound? [. . .] Is it Jewish law that has cruelly punished the dying man for not complying with the 'works' of circumcision?" 

Kahl expects her reader to see such questions as "bizarre" because, in her view, the tension about circumcision has little or nothing to do with Torah and much to do with the imperious law of the Roman occupiers.

As mentioned in an earlier post, the photographic image below is taken from William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London: John Murry, 1875) see pp. 574-77.

This sculpture, taken as representing Paul's Galatian converts, means to Kahl (p. 80), "it is not Jewish particularism or ethnocentrism that has struck him [i.e. the Dying Gaul] down but Cesar's imperial universalism." 

Are we to impute imperial Roman pretensions to Greek sculpture of an earlier date simply because Rome took possession of these objects?

Even if this question is answered affirmatively, where is there an association between the sculpture and the letter dictated by the Apostle Paul?  

One of the problems Kahl faces is that of assigning significance to a work of art, on behalf of an absent set of supposed viewers. 


Art engages with individual sensibilities and perceptions which inform each viewer's understanding. Is there a 'correct' way to understand a work of art? Can a particular understanding of a sculpture be assigned with confidence to observers in another time and place? 

A specific historical problem is that much art from the Greek and later Roman eras display an uncircumcised penis. On what grounds is one entitled to announce that any one of these works of art is part of an argument about circumcision?

As mentioned in an earlier post, the surviving marble sculpture of the Dying Gaul / Dying Trumpeter appears, to me, to have been modeled on an even older, strikingly similar bronze figure from the sanctuary of Aphaia, at Aegina, a depiction of Trojan King Laomedon, killed by an arrow from Herakles (Heracles), during the first campaign against Troy. (This image may be found in A History of Ancient Sculpture, Vol 2, by Lucy Mitchell (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1883) p. 244.)

This image also displays a penis. Are we to speculate then that this image, too. is a critique of circumcision? On what grounds, whether historical, esthetic or literary, can this association be made?


In this image, as with the Dying Gaul, the attacker is absent. Dos this mean we are entitled to declare that the attacker is Roman, since imperial Rome later came into possession of Greek art?  


Professor Kahl concludes (p. 81) this section by citing an ambiguous comment from Paul (Gal 6:11-13) wherein Paul seems to be saying that those who insist the Galatians must be circumcised, do so  "that they may not be persecuted." 


Kahl implies that Paul is here referring to "a third party" which Kahl, herself writing ambiguously, takes as "something or someone," of whom Paul's circumcision-insisting adversaries "are genuinely afraid."  


Whether a single one of Paul's Galatians ever viewed this sculpture on a single occasion is simply asserted to be true; they all must have seen this statue because it was "omnipresent."


This assertion permits Kahl to speculate that Paul's adversaries might be afraid of the same "invisible hand that struck the deadly blow against the Trumpeter."


This further assertion muddies what is known of the provenance of the sculpture of the Dying Gaul, representing as it does, an adversary defeated in a Greek or Pergamene victory, not a Roman one. 


For a new interpretative key to be accepted, displacing a former understanding, the new idea cannot be merely plausible. The new approach must be more plausible than the older approaches. We are not at this point, so far in Kahl's presentation.

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

KAHL’S INTRODUCTION

Galatians and the Occidental Semiotics of Combat is the title of the next section of Professor Kahl’s introduction.

Kahl argue that the traditional understanding of Paul in Galatians by the Western church, is grounded in the imperial Roman world view.

The official, Roman world view, had in its turn, adopted the Greek perspective, which viewed all of creation as a pattern of opposites. Greek though first identified the fundamental components of creation – air, earth, fire and water – to which other opposites were added – superior, inferior; right left; good, evil, male, female; rest, motion, etc.  

The imperial view, naturally, allied “self” with elements associated with power and orthodoxy and identified its defeated adversaries, as “other” and allied with elements associated with weakness and heresy.  

Kahl states that she will demonstrate her thesis by way of a close examination of the Great Alter of Pergamon, described by Kahl as “the visual focus and anchor of this investigation.”

Kahl intends to demonstrate that the traditional understanding of Paul in Galatians is a continuance of the Greek and then Roman notion of the ordering of the cosmos into oppositional elements. 


This may be why Kahl does not address herself to any other than Protestant and specifically Lutheran prospective readers. 


All the rest, i.e., Roman Catholic interpretations of Galatians, merely perpetuate, in Kahl’s view, a theology of polarities and dominance, and have done so for two thousand years.

Kahl acknowledges that some commentators are in the role of precursors, having already reached the same conclusion regarding Paul’s declaration that the polarities built into the created order have been smashed by the “subversion” of the old, binary order by “a non-binary ‘new creation’. ”

Kahl acknowledges J. Louis Martyn’s Galatians commentary  (Doubleday, Anchor Bible, 1997) at this point, stating that Martyn had made “a groundbreaking insight” (Kahl, p. 20.) into Paul seeing the crucified Messiah in opposition to all negative, cosmic polarities. 

The new insight Kahl expects to establish beyond Martyn, is  a delineation of the actual motives of Paul’s opponents in Galatia.

Kahl intends to show that Paul’s perspective, properly understood and free from distortions engineered by a philosophy of dominance, threatened the security of the occupied populations in Galatia.

Kahl will maintain that the occupied of Galatia, including some among those who would follow the crucified Jewish Messiah, had concluded that Paul’s announcement of the “invasion” of the old order would likely be deemed a form of treason by the Romans.

For Kahl, Paul’s theology necessarily threatened the “compromise” which had been made with the Roman forces of occupation. Kahl (p. 21): “As we shall see, the Paul-opposing circumcision party in Galatia was driven much more by concrete sociopolitical concerns than by purely religious anxieties.”

Establishing the true motives of Paul’s opponents in Galatia, Kahl hopes then to show that Paul and his Messiah-believing adherents and recruits “were still part of Judaism” (p. 20).

This point, which can be established already on first century (CE) historical evidence, appears to be important for Kahl, who is at pains to separate the correctly understood Paul from the anti-Semitism which has pervaded Western Christian theology.

Kahl has already alluded to her personal connections to this dark and unsavory theme by reference to her mother’s reconciliation with a childhood classmate. It is therefore not beside the point to observe, as Kahl has done, that Western anti-Semitism culminated in the Holocaust, engineered by the government of Kahl’s native Germany and from within the natal ground of her Lutheranism. I suspect this book is, in part, about self-identify, whatever else it might be about. But come to think of it, this can be said about many books, can’t it?   

I expect it will not be difficult to show that features observed at the Great Alter of Pergamon express elements of the traditional Greco-Roman world view of an ordered universe composed of oppositional elements.

However, I retain my doubts that an awareness of oppositional cosmic elements can be seen reflected in the primary dynamics at play between Paul and his addressees in the Galatians letter.  

Surely it ought to be acknowledged that the Roman occupation adopted and co-opted an older philosophy of oppositional elements, with Rome itself in the positive role as embodiment of the positive and powerful elements. But this is background, part of the context of any and all, who lived under Roman occupation. The annual announcement of “the law” by Roman authorities would function in the same way and ought not to be taken as reflected in any particular debate or dispute among or between occupied peoples “on the ground” in some specific region of the Empire.

Can the Galatians letter itself be described as Paul’s answer to concerns about Paul subverting the Roman world view in a way that threatened the existence of his addressees or opponents in Galatia?

I expect only a close exegesis of the letter can answer this question.    

           

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.