In my time away from serving a local church, I have been catching up on reading and writing alternative worship services. I usually read several books at one time because I found that I get bored easily and this was a compensation skill I learned early in my life. If I get bored with one, I can turn to another. And vice-versa. So then I end up taking much longer but moving to completion on several books at one time. For good or for ill, I then end up making connections and reading every book intertextually. Speaking of intertextually . . .
I read Brigitte Kahl's book, Galatians Re-Imagined, in a cursory way some time ago to get myself ready to preach Galatians. So I had her conclusions but did not have the incredible back story she provides for seeing Galatians with new eyes and therefore reinterpreting Paul as strongly anti-imperial and his teaching as grounded in his Judaism and within the context of the Roman Empire. This book has profoundly moved me around the teaching of Paul. I say that even after having read Richard Horsley and John Dominic Crossan on Paul. Scholarship was moving this way.
I now have decided to teach New Testament by beginning with the first verse of the Gospel of Mark and then moving to Paul's letter to the Galatians. This letter, with its radical baptismal formula, helps set the tone for reading of the gospels.
'What scholars have to do, not unlike an attorney pouring over case law in a particular tradition, is sometimes do their best to ignore the long tradition in favor of a plain reading of the text in its matrix. Paul was a Jew. So believing that Paul is going to dismiss Jewish Law is really a stretch. Paul also lived in the matrix of the Roman Empire, a slave society. So when he goes on and on about freedom and slavery this is not him providing metaphors for a transcendent, spiritual life. No. On the contrary, Paul is citing what people know living under the boot of the Roman Empire. We are slaves. Life is hard. The Roman Empire is doing its best to remind you that you are somehow less than human. You are "other."
Kahl does a unique thing in this book. She reads the book of Galatians with an eye toward The Great Altar at Pergamon. The Attalid Empire constructed The Great Altar as a conveyor of culture, a statement about who was in and who was out, who was "human" and who was "perverse beast." The Great Altar was later appropriated by the Romans to continue the tradition of using incredible artistic scale to communicate life as the Romans saw it.
Rome and its gods were victorious bringing peace and justice over the barbarians, the outsiders, "the others." Those "others," spanning over empires in the ancient world, were the Gauls or the Galatians, Kahl showing how Gauls and Galatians were used interchangeably as this "other" enemy to Rome and its gods. Chiseled in to The Great Altar at Pergamon are muscular Gauls/Galatians with nappy hair and serpent's tails. The Roman gods come from above to bring about law and order amidst the intended chaos waged by the Gauls/Galatians.
In one frieze, Athena is separating Gaia (coming up from the ground) from her son, Alkyoneus. In effect, Athena is taking a son from his life source. Nike also arrives from above to beat back the Gauls/Galatians. These are strong cultural statements about how unseen, divine forces give validity and justification to who rules the world, who is human and who is not, and who is justified using violence to hold back the chaos.
Kahl wants us to interpret a frieze like this as we interpret the book of Galatians. She makes a strong case for Paul not being critical of Jewish Law or Torah but of Roman law. Jewish Law was and is a way, a path, a vibrant interpretation of God's will and want for the material freedom of God's people and that Law was particularly robust around being a vanguard for the most vulnerable. Roman law reminds people far and wide of their slave status (The Great Altar shows that the gods affirm that status quo.), who is in charge, and who is human.
As we read Galatians then, we are reminded that Paul sends this letter to a people who have been historically "othered" by empires. Not unlike our own country's racism, this "othering" has been communicated in such a strong cultural way that everybody knows it. It is the soup in which all of the Roman Empire swims. Once we read the letter to the Galatians as full of Roman language, we begin to see Paul repetitively flipping (maybe flipping off?) the culture in a resistance text. Rome assumes the violence it preaches. Paul seeks to dismantle it.
We read in Paul's letter the baptismal formula that pre-dates him and is the response to this "othering." There is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free . . . I've preached it several times but can we read just how radically counter-cultural that is even today. Let me back up with it. It is the antidote to othering. There is no ethnic, gender or sexual identity, social position or economic status in your baptism. Humans don't get othered.
I have also chosen to read two of Paul's key terms, sarx and pneuma, in a light that makes much more contextual sense. Unfortunately, they have become so loaded with the Christian tradition's preoccupation with sexuality that they have lost their power. Sarx is translated as sex when what Paul is saying is alluding to shallow or empty values. So I choose to translate sarx as is "skin-deep." Pneuma , translated as Spirit, is about something or values that have deep and enduring meaning. Paul is trying to locate sarx around our edges and locate pneuma deep in the heart or gut.
With President Trump sound the alarm for "law and order" amidst meaningful protests and statements from Jacob Blake's family, how powerful is this text that tells us, once again, what empire is trying to do. President Trump is signalling. We are the civilized to bring order to chaos. We are the humans. You are the barbarian animals. Therefore, our violence against you is justified. Any harm, however small, is magnified to show once again that you are the perverted beasts.
We watch that video of Jacob Blake and we know better. See what some have tried to do to Jacob Blake? They bring up a knife, recite crimes he may have done, all to suggest that he is "other", a barbarian that the State is justified in doing any kind of violence it chooses to him.
Paul, in Galatians, recognizes that "law and order" as counter to the will of God. Jacob's father repeated it over and over again in his first press conference. "He is a human being. He is a human being." For a good portion of our country, that truth has yet to become real in their lives. The Great Altar of Pergamon, reciting Roman victory over its enemies through violence, is still a text read well by the people of our own country. Roman military victories were pronounced as good news, as gospel by the ruling class. We need another gospel.
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