Corpus-Paul

[Ray Pickett <rpickett AT lsps.edu>]

Mark,

I have been following the exchange between you and Moon with great interest. 
For past
few months I have been engrossed in writing a chapter on the Gospel of Mark, 
but the
pasage from your post quoted below inspired me to dig out the brief section I 
wrote
on Galatians last summer.

"Mark D. Nanos" wrote:

> I responded to an earlier discussion of 4:8-10 by bringing up the
> "why" as I understand it, at least in part. If these gentiles are
> being denied the privileges of righteous life, such as withdrawal
> from pagan practices like the Imperial cult, since they are not
> signed up to become proselytes, but are actually only guests, and
> thus present a threatening proposition to both the Jewish and pagan
> communities. For a longstanding program had been arranged for
> avoiding these practices for Jewish people (and proselytes, former
> pagans!) that does not threaten the fabric of pagan communal concerns
> for retribution (human and divine). (This involved the twice daily
> burnt offering on behalf of Caesar, so Jewish people did not need to
> engage in the usual pagan world attributions). But what if these
> gentiles to whom Paul writes present themselves as righteous ones (on
> a par with proselytes) who are thus no longer obliged to participate
> in such pagan rites, to both the Jewish and pagan communal social
> control agents? Will the leaders of the Jewish community think it
> appropriate to put the entire community in danger to protect this
> "assertion" of protection from obligation to the pagan communal
> leaders? Or will they rather propose the traditional solution,
> proselyte conversion, to gain that which they seek, on grounds that
> will not be disputed by either community? Paul describes this in
> 6:12, by saying that the influencers seek the addressees circumcision
> in order to avoid persecution for the cross of Christ (I take this to
> mean, since they do not share the belief in what Christ's death
> means, they do not wish to suffer for legitimating the addressees'
> appeal to this meaning when called to account to the local pagan
> civic leaders for this breach of behavioral norms on the part of
> these "pagans").

It seems that this paragraph provides an explanation of the reasons for the 
situation
Paul responds to in Galatia similar to my own, and I don't recall seeing 
anything
like this in any of of your previous posts.

The question which guided my analysis of Galatians is why would Jews in 
Galatia press
so hard for circumcision in this instance? There were several ways gentiles 
could
relate to Judaism (Cohen lists no less than 7), and it was uncharacteristic 
for Jews
to pressure gentiles to "convert', i.e. become proselytes through 
circumcision. Hence
I have come to think that there is a political aspect to this confrontation.

To be succinct, my guess is that the special legal status of Jewish 
communities in
the Diaspora which permitted them to practice their own rituals and customs 
instead
of worshipping the deities of the Roman state may lie behind the push for
circumcision. If gentile believers converted to Judaism by submitting to
circumcision, they could have benefited from this legal status and officially 
severed
their ties with pagan practices and the imperial cult. This would have made 
the Jews
happy because it would have relieved their anxiety about table-fellowship and 
the
potential threat of idolatry with believers who still had ties with, or at 
least
lacked exemption from, paganism. It would also have mitigated any grounds for
"persecuting" (by other Jews) those Jewish belivers with whom they lived in 
close
relationship. It would have been appealing to gentiles because they would have
experienced some kind of social rejection or distancing from pagans, and 
circumcision
would have provided them with a bolstered, even "physical", sense of 
belonging and
indentity they didn't have in their liminal state as followers of Christ - 
living
somewhere between paganism and Judaism.

I am sorry to be so brief about this, but I am wondering how the conicides 
with your
understanding of why the push for circumcision. I would very much like to see 
you
elaborate on this matter, and/or tell me what you think is wrong with my on 
take on
situation in Galatia.

Regards,
Ray Pickett

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