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  • From: "Elli Elliott" <ellielliott AT email.msn.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Susan Elliott's JBL article on Galatians
  • Date: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 18:19:10 -0700


Mark,
Thanks for your response. Sorry to be late in replying. Here's a stab.

You wrote:
> the dissertation was enormous,
Yes.. and gangling... not-fully-formed.. etc. Your assessment is correct,
but another year at the dissertation phase was not manageable. The rewrite
is a substantial undertaking, but it's becoming a lot more focused as I pay
attention to a lot of very fine recent work.

You wrote,
>You take the issue to be a contrast of Law and freedom, of Law versus
>not-Law, so to speak.

This is not my contention, and I'm guessing that our positions may not be
very far apart on this.

In Galatians, Paul portays the Law as a figure identified with the Mountain
Mother of the Gods. The contrast is also a figure, at times Christ and at
times the Father-God. "Freedom" is probably better understood as the
relationship of sonship to the divine paterfamilias through some form of
incorporation into Christ.

"Not-Law" is not the issue. Neither is "Torah-observance." Circumcision
is. Because of its potential ritual association with castration,
circumcision threatens to take Paul's gentile Anatolian converts out of the
sphere of influence of Christ and into the sphere of influence of the Law, a
sphere of influence like the one represented by the Mountain Mothers and the
territories they survey and rule.

You wrote:
>Consider not only that this is not mentioned in the allegory, but it
>is not what he emerges from this narrative discourse to challenge.
>They are to resist completing the ritual process of proselyte
>conversion, not Torah observance. It is not Torah-observance versus
>freedom from Torah that is set out, but the disagreement, where
>gentile identity is concerned, between two Judaisms (if you will; two
>different Jewish groups' understandings of how gentiles are
>incorporated into the people of God in the present age).

My own work has not emphasized the intra-Jewish issues as yours has. I do
not discount the presence of these issues somewhere in the background, but I
see the core issue in Galatians as the problem and threat that circumcision
poses from Paul's point of view for his gentile converts in their gentile
context. As far as Paul is concerned, his Galatian audience has already
been "incorporated into the people of God." That's not the issue that
provokes the letter. The problem is that the ritual of circumcision
threatens to "unincorporate" them.

You wrote:
>As gentiles they are not in a position to be concerned with
>Torah-observance per se anyway, and to this matter Paul turns
>directly in 5:3, warning them that pursuit of proselyte identity will
>involve them eventually, once completed, in something that they have
>failed to consider!: observance of "the whole Law."

This point is well taken, and I'm inclined to agree with you that Paul is
pointing out that if they become circumcised, they will take on an
obligation they have not considered before. I suspect that this is also
what is going on in the curse language in 3:10-13. Read in a context where
curses protect all sorts of tombs and buildings, and where written curses
appear to have a power of their own to call forth divine retribution, the
spectre of the Law as an enormous written document full of opportunities to
misstep and invite the action of the divine eye would be powerful indeed.
It's something I continue to puzzle over.

You wrote:
> Leaving aside
>many issues that arise from this statement, the point is simply that
>this rhetorical approach indicates that it is not Law per se, that
>is, Torah-observant life, that is what the Galatians are thought by
>Paul to "want" in 4:21 (they are not yet even imagining the
>consequences, he implies), and thus it is not that which the allegory
>is about (note not Law, but "two covenants" at start of allegory.
>What would this mean in Anatolian context? i.e., not later Christian
>one where old and new is assumed; rather, two ways of being
>identified, I suggest. Note that the contrast in the allegory is not
>sequential, old and new, but between two groups at the same time, us
>and them).


In the chapter I'm currently working on, I argue that Paul is using a Two
Ways form in ch. 5-6 (and that this is not an exclusively Jewish-Christian
and hardly an distinctively apocalyptic form), and that the allegory
provides the first element of the form, the "way metaphor," in this case the
two mothers and their respective sons. As you suggest, this is a contrast
in the present time, but it is complicated by the notion of time and
development as well. The sequential aspect is due to the contrast of
slavery/childhood and sonship/freedom/adulthood. This is both a present
option and an option which incorporates notions of time. The choice is for
progression or regression.

You wrote:
>What the non-Jewish addressees want is indisputable status as the
>righteous ones of God, as children of Abraham/ of God, which is
>conferred according to the traditional interpretation of the fathers
>for the present age to mean that they must be circumcised,in a Jewish
>communal context, whatever faith in Jesus Christ may or may not mean.
>At least that is what the rhetorical context of Paul's response
>implies; for that is what the author wants the addressees to resist.


I would not dispute this, although I don't think that I would reduce "what
the Galatian audience wants" to this alone.

You wrote:
>And that is just what the allegory undermines, in support of Paul's
>argument throughout the letter. They already have the identity they
>have been recently led to believe they can gain only by completion of
>proselyte conversion; and now taking this other path necessarily
>undermines that identity that they "already" have by way of Christ.
>For the traditional path was available in the present age apart from
>the meaning of Christ's death for themselves; rendering it
>gratuitous/ vain (2:21; 3:4). It is the way for a gentile to become
>"known by God," but they are already "known" apart from it (4:8-10).
>It is thus not for themselves.
>
>There is nothing wrong with proselyte conversion per se, but for
>these gentiles there is, for it turns upside-down the meaning of the
>good news of Christ for themselves, representing defection (1:6-7).
>In other words, the point of the allegory is, like the letter
>overall, to convince them that they do not need to become proselytes,
>in fact, that they must not, because it delegitimates the claim that
>their faith and experience of the Spirit are predicated upon (3:1-5).
>For the age to come has dawned in the present age with the death and
>resurrection of Jesus Christ (1:3-4), which makes themselves
>righteous ones, as gentiles, apart from proselyte conversion; which
>would seem, in the present age, to be impossible, even if it is
>anticipated for the age to come. Unless you are part of the
>Christ-believing coalition, that is.


I concur inasmuch as you suggest that the issue is not "how gentiles can
become part of the people of God" but how to protect them from removing
themselves from Christ's domain (the people of God) by being circumcised.

As for your question of how this works in the allegory, I start from the
"triple analogy" I have diagnosed. Paul presents the Law as a Mountain
Mother to whom they would enslave themselves by circumcision. They are
already free sons in Christ and they would be giving up their status if they
were circumcised. There is also a ritual component that deserves greater
attention in the notion of birth by spirit vs. birth by flesh. Going into
all of this would be too much to add right now to this already lengthy
message.

Thanks again for your response. There are many issues left to discuss here!

Elli

Elli Elliott (ellielliott AT msn.com)
Pastor, Zion United Church of Christ, Sterling, Colorado
PhD, New Testament & Early Christianity, Loyola University Chicago








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