The Colonizers’ Idols: Paul, Galatia, and Empire in New Testament Studies

Abstract

Christina Harker researches the Roman conquest of the Galatian people, gathers missionary documents from the British Colonial era, and sees a common ideological pattern in these sources related to Paul’s letter to the Galatians—a privileged, dominating, and controlling attitude toward subordinated people groups. Harker also analyzes select wording from modern anti-imperial scholars and calls them out for not addressing Paul’s oppressiveness, superiority, and his binary, reductionistic rhetoric. The heart of this book is ideological, a critique to “unseat Western intellectual hegemony taught by post-imperial scholars who make Paul a central figure to a new type of empire” (p. 196). Harker calls for an interrogation of Paul and his ideological context.In ch. 1, Harker anchors her work on a sentence in Galatians: “You observe days, months, seasons, and years” (Gal 4:10), and states her premise that Paul speaks to Galatians who participate in local Roman festivals and calendar observances rather than Jewish ones (p. 10). She positions her work as “vital” in providing new avenues for reading Paul’s letter to the Galatians, particularly in exposing lingering discourses that promote imperialist ideology (pp. 19–24).In chs. 2–4, Harker reviews historical accounts relating to Galatia and its acculturation under Roman power. In ch. 2, she reviews the historical literature concerning the Celts in Asia Minor and the effects of Roman control, drawing from a variety of primary sources, but mostly from Mitchell’s work, Anatolia. In chs. 3 and 4, Harker discusses imperial authority as it resulted in social changes in Galatia, focusing particularly on cultural issues surrounding the imperial cult.In chs. 5–7, Harker proposes an ideological pattern between ancient Romans, Paul, and modern British imperialist missionaries. In ch. 5, the author seeks to show how Paul, a “soft” cultural colonialist, models Roman dominance and how this attitude of conquest over subordinate people groups is integrated in modern British missionary work. In ch. 6, Harker examines discourses of 19th-century British scholars—Ramsey and Lightfoot—and three representative contemporary anti-imperial scholars—Richard Horsley, N. T. Wright, and Brigitte Kahl—and admonishes these scholars for refusing to countenance any negative appraisal of Paul (pp. 152–56, 159–71). In ch. 7, Harker describes Paul as an “utter failure” for attacking Roman cultural practices that he did not understand and for being unaware of a culture “teeming with religious choice mixed with political obligation” (p. 211). Thus, Paul’s anti-Judaizing message against Galatian observance of days, months, seasons, and years “may have struck the Galatians as simply a choice they could make,” and for Paul, “choice represented error” (p. 211).The strengths of this work include: presenting a non-Jewish context for Gal 4:10, narrating a history of Roman conquest that provides contextual information in understanding Paul’s audience, and calling to account an inappropriate mixing of political attitudes of superiority with reaching people with the gospel. The weakness is that Harker’s interrogation of Paul and his context lacks persuasiveness. Gentile inclusion makes more sense as the immediate context of 4:10, and the non-Jewish context that Harker supports indicates Paul’s understanding of the Galatians’ mindset as he draws a conceptual parallel to something they would relate to before conversion—a prideful legalistic attitude. Furthermore, Paul’s opposition to the message of the Judaizers—their sense of ethnic superiority and controlling, legalistic practices—typifies an anti-colonial attitude against hierarchies and binaries (and warrants a confrontation of peers against divisive thinking that separates groups into hierarchical classes and limits freedom; Gal 2:14–15). Finally, acknowledging positive elements of Paul’s content in the letter—forgiveness, unity, love, or humble confrontation—would seem appropriate in contrast to a predominantly ad hominem approach (that is, a “privileged,” “self-arrogating” person who “pushes himself closer to the divine than to the human,” presenting himself as “the Galatian’s creator” seeking “to reform the Galatians in his image,” “comfortably authorizing himself to suit his own ends,” and one “superior and self-sufficient compared to other apostles”; pp. 5, 36–37, 41–43, 192, 199, 208–9). Those who enjoy reading history through a particular anticolonial ideological lens will appreciate Colonizers’ Idols.