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  • From: "Mark D. Nanos" <nanos AT gvi.net>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: RE: Galatian situation
  • Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 16:27:52 -0500


Moon wrote, concerning 4:8-10 as a reference to Jewish rather than pagan practice:

Paul wanted to make what getting circumcised
would really mean, by linking to to the thing that Galatians believe is
clearly wrong, which is returning to paganism. This interpretation fits to
the whole
context of Galatians better.

But getting circumcised, while it may mean several things, does not "really mean" returning to paganism. How do you explain this?

Yet I agree that the Galatian addressees would believe a return to paganism is wrong, and are not contemplating turning away from their identity in Christ to readopt identity as pagans. Rather, they are considering a way to escape compliance with a return to pagan practices they have left off, while at the same time beginning to comply with public pagan practices because of pressure from the pagan communities, and mediated as well by those Jewish influencers with whom they now interact.

My argument is that context of Galatians provides the basis for this reading. The addressees are being urged to return to practices of pagan social life if they are claiming to be children of Abraham/ righteous ones of God, apart from becoming proselytes. They are thus still pagans on the membership and reference group norms of identity of all groups but their own, and thus their failure to live accordingly represents a threat. It threatens their fellow pagans, family and neighbors, who fear reprisals from the gods as well as in political and commercial terms for compromising important communal expressions of solidarity that take place around idolatrous events, e.g., the imperial cult festivities. (A relevant example in the US might be someone's resistance of public expressions of patriotism, such as draft dodging, by the child of someone who is proud of service in the armed forces; "who do you think you are? This might be OK for Mennonites perhaps, but not "my" child! What if everyone..." A relevant example from Nazi Germany is the fear of reprisals for hiding a Jewish person, and thus the many who turned in family and neighbors in order to escape punishment by association, which they feared extending perhaps to their whole family or neighborhood if they failed to do so and the "guilty" parties were caught). Because the pagan communities have a vested interest in the compliance of these rogue pagans who claim the right to defy such public expressions of pagan life on the basis of their association with the Jewish communities' exclusion from such expressions, the addressees non-compliance represent a threat to the Jewish communities as well, for they must answer for this exclusion to the pagan communal leaders when they come calling. Fear of this obvious result would be sufficient cause to confront the errant notions of these pagans, offering them what they seek if they will but conform with the prevailing norms and either become Jewish proselytes, or return to the habits of pagan guests, namely, in the later case, observance of pagan practices to which they remain obliged as long as they remain pagans. I suggest that this is the persecution that these Jewish communal leaders fear if they accept the claim of these pagans on the basis of their appeal to the "cross of Christ," the meaning of which they do not share (cf. 6:12). Their own special privilege of abstaining from such public expressions of idolatry as the imperial cult is threatened by the claims of these pagans, who are not even yet seeking classification as candidates for proselyte conversion.

Regards,
Mark Nanos





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