Paul's contestation of Israel's memory of Abraham in Galatians 3

Paul's contestation of Israel's memory of Abraham in Galatians 3

Philip F. Esler
This essay proposes an explanation for the prominent role of Abraham in Galatians 3. While the view of existing scholarship that Paul is responding to a case being made by his opponents is accepted, there are difficulties with the current proposals. Paul's opponents are not likely to have invoked Abraham as part of a theological case, or because of his connection with circumcision or with blessings. An explanation is needed which focuses on the question of Abrahamic descent in the totality of its dimensions. By adopting aspects of theories of ethnicity, social identity and, above all, collective memory, it is argued, first, that Abraham was central to the ethnic identity and collective memory of first century Judeans and that Paul's opponents were offering his converts the exalted status of Abrahamic descent as a reward for becoming Judeans through circumcision. Second, Paul's argument in Galatians 3 represents a fundamental contestation of this memory. He formulates a counter-memory for installation in the hearts and minds of his audience. He does this by arguing that the "seed" or descendants of Abraham to whom God had made promises were not Judeans but rather Christ and those who were one with him in baptism. Thus he wrenches the prize that was Abraham from the Judeans and lodges it among his mixed congregations of non-Judean and Judean Christ-followers. The audacity of Paul's enterprise is evident in his leaving no room for Judeans who had not found faith in Christ to be Abraham's descendants, a radical position from which he would later withdraw in Romans 4.

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The function of Abraham in Paul's letter to the Galatians has received considerable attention from scholars, not least in G. W. Hansen's 1989 monograph and Jeffrey Siker's shorter treatment of the subject in 1991. Such attention is more than justified. Paul mentions Abraham nineteen times, but these instances are concentrated in two of his letters, with nine in Galatians, mostly in Chapter 3 (3:6, 7, 8, 9, 14, 16, 18, and 29) and one later in the section on Sarah and Hagar (4:22), and nine more in Romans, mostly in Chapter 4 (4:1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 13, 16), with the two remaining examples coming later (9:7 and 11:1). The remaining instance occurs in 2 Corinthians 11:22. None of the deutero-Pauline letters mentions Abraham.

Prominent themes in the current discussion of Abraham in Galatians include the reason Paul introduces him (probably in response to the case being mounted by his opponents in Galatia), the character of, and rationale for, his picture of Abraham (especially the question over the identity of his true descendants), and differences between the presentation of the patriarch here and in Romans.

My aim in this article is to investigate the role of Abraham in Galatians 3 in relation to the emerging interest in collective memory, especially the extent to which such memory embraces great figures from the past and is contested between groups. The recent interest on the part of biblical scholars in the field of collective memory, an area now embracing sociology and anthropology that was pioneered by Maurice Halbwachs before the Second World War but has only in the last two decades come to the forefront of social-scientific reflection, reflects, as Andreas Huyssen has noted, the emergence of memory as a key concern of contemporary society. In addition to the two seminal works by Halbwachs (1980; 1992), in the last twenty years there have been a stream of significant texts, with notable contributions by Paul Connerton, James Fentress and Chris Wickham, Gary Fine, Jeffrey Olick, Nachmann Ben-Yehuda, Barry Schartz and Eviatar Zerubabel. Jeffrey Olick and Joyce Robbins usefully surveyed this field as it then stood in 1998. It is disappointing and surprising, therefore, to find historians writing about memory without reference to the vibrant sociological and anthropological literature--as a case in point, Halbwachs is not mentioned in the admittedly excellent 2003 collection of essays edited by Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone, Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory. For reasons that will shortly become apparent, I find it essential to integrate notions of collective memory within a broader investigative framework that includes perspectives on group identity and ethnicity.

There are five major sections to this article. In the first I survey the relevant data in Galatians 3 and briefly consider some current scholarly approaches to it. In the second I consider how Abraham and Abrahamic descent were closely connected with the ethnic identity of first century Judeans, including those in Galatia putting pressure on Paul's converts. In the third section I explain how Abraham featured in the collective memory of first century Judeans. In the fourth section I offer an interpretation of Galatians 3:6-29, arguing that here Paul is concerned to contest the memory of Abraham and to attach his descent to the Christ-movement, detaching it from Israel in the process. I offer some concluding observations in the fifth and final section.

I have previously considered the role of Abraham in Galatians from a different aspect of social identity theory than that I will utilize here (1998: 173-74, 191-94), while I have recently examined the role of Abraham in Romans 4 from perspectives similar to those in this article (2003:171-94).

Abraham in Galatians 3 in Current Discussion

Abraham first appears in Galatians at 3:6. In the preceding verse Paul (rhetorically) asks whether the one who supplies the Spirit to them and works miracles among them does so by works of the law or heating with faith. Here, as Hansen has shown (110-13), the faith in question is that of the Christ-follower and certainly not the "faithfulness of Jesus"--as argued by Richard B. Hays (1983: 147) as part of his larger and unpersuasive project to cobble together a Pauline narrative concerning the faithfulness of Jesus, a narrative that Paul himself never happened to express. Then in 3:6 Paul states, quoting Genesis 15:6 in the Septuagint, "Thus Abraham put his faith in God and it was reckoned to him as righteousness." After this he continues, "For (ara) you know that it is those of faith--these are the sons of Abraham" (3:7). Here the particle ara marks an inference made on the basis of the preceding verse (Danker: 127). As Paul develops his argument, however, it becomes clear that this is also a thesis that he is seeking to prove.

He will conclude the argument at 3:29 with a statement very similar to that at 3:7. The entirety of the passage from 3:6 to 3:29 serves to demonstrate that those who have faith in Christ are really the sons or seed of Abraham. The act of Abraham in putting his faith in God is paralleled by the act of Paul's converts putting their faith "in Christ Jesus"--3:26). This illustrates how, as Richard Bauckham has pointed out in rightly arguing for an early high Christology in the Pauline corpus (1998; 2002), what was predicated of God in the Old Testament comes in Paul to be predicated of Christ.

Why does Paul spend 23 verses of this letter (out of 149, or some one seventh of the whole) on this topic? The obvious answer is that he is answering the case being made in relation to Abraham by those active in the congregations of the Christ-movement in Galatia who oppose his gospel. There is a long line of scholars who support this general view, with Hansen (262) mentioning Barrett, Betz, Bruce, Mussner, Brinsmead, Beker, Richard Longenecker, Daube, Bligh, Ridderbos, Guthrie, Burton, and Duncan, and even this list is hardly exhaustive. But what kind of case was it? Here I will merely sample a handful of the available views.

For C. K. Barrett it was a theological case. Speaking of the opponents, he says,

 At the heart of their theology was the concept of the people of God with its origin in Abraham, and the divine promise which constituted it. They probably took the view ... that the Abrahamic covenant had been re-defined by the Sinaitic. The

promise was made to Abraham and his seed; and the obligations of the seed were revealed in the law, fulfillment of which was made the necessary condition for receipt of the promised blessing

[15; emphasis added]. 

J. Christiaan Beker has proposed that the Judaizers were arguing that because both Abraham and Christ--as the heir to Abraham's blessing--were circumcised, "only sons of Abraham through circumcision belong to the domain of blessing. Gentiles cannot be full Christians without living within the domain of salvation, that is, without adopting circumcision and the Torah" (48).

In a detailed argument, Hansen suggests that the opponents of Paul's gospel were running a circumcision campaign. This is a reasonable start, for if we know anything about Paul's problem in Galatia it is that certain persons were seeking to persuade non-Judean members to be circumcised and, therefore, become Judeans themselves (Galatians 5:2; 5:12; 6:12). Yet Hansen then goes further and suggests that this circumcision campaign "was probably supported by a reference to God's original command to Abraham to receive circumcision with all his household as a sign of the covenant in the flesh (Gen. 17)" (113). He also urges that there is a strong connection drawn between circumcision and the Abrahamic covenant in Israelite literature (170-74; 175-99). Since circumcision was the means presented in such literature by which Abraham gained perfection, circumcision was the necessary means whereby one shared in the Abrahamic blessings of life and righteousness (172).

There is, however, a major problem with these first three explanations, namely, that they do not focus on the very issue at stake here--being a son or descendant of Abraham. Paul's argument is plainly predicated on the view that descent from Abraham is a very desirable thing. It is highly probable that this view was shared by his opponents in Galatia. To draw this conclusion is not to leap into what are sometimes presented as the dangerous quicksands of "mirror-reading" (Barclay), but merely to insist that, like anyone used to argument in a public forum in the ancient period or today, it was necessary for Paul to anticipate and meet the specific features of his opponents' case. On the basis of ancient rhetorical advice to anticipate an opponent's case, I have elsewhere (1998: 64-68) argued against George Lyons' attempt to deny to Paul this inevitable feature of effecfive argumentation.

Paul's aim is to redefine the character of Abrahamic descent and the means by which it is achieved--"You regard descent from Abraham as a desirable thing? ... Then let me tell you what it means and how to get it!"

None of these three scholars--Barrett, Beker or Hansen--sees anything valuable in descent from Abraham per se. Barrett sees such descent merely as one integer in a much larger theological case, one of a number of concepts, being advocated by the opposition. Beker considers that this was a means to obtain blessings. As for Hansen, thirdly, in a revealing section of his book entitled "The Opponents' Use of the Abraham Tradition," (167-74), he does not mention Abrahamic descent as a desirable good; indeed he never mentions it at all! He regards Abraham as entering the picture because of his established connection with circumcision in Genesis 17:110-1 4 and elsewhere. This is part of "Jewish" "literary tradition." His vision is of Paul's opponents relying on such literature to prove their point. Like Beker, he also sees circumcision (note, not Abrahamic descent) as a way to obtain blessings.

More recently J. Louis Martyn has provided a detailed account of the case that Paul's opponents were probably making in relation to Abraham (302-06). He refers to these opponents as the "Teachers," which is an unfortunate and unwarranted euphemism given the fierceness with which interpersonal competition was undertaken in ancient Judean and Greco-Roman colture (Esler 1998: 65-66). Based on an erudite understanding of the various facets of the Judean portrait of Abraham in the first century CE, Martyn focuses on the extent to which the "Teachers" were offering Paul's converts Abrahamic descent as a way to win divine blessings. To get these blessings one had to be incorporated into Israel through circumcision.

Bruce Longenecker, finally, has suggested that evidently "the promotion of circumcision and works of the law was being carried out in Galatia with reference to this notion of the identity of Abraham's descendants." He further adds that "Abrahamic descent was the issue that gave rise to the promotion of circumcision and other practices of the law." He explains this in terms of "the high regard in which Abraham was held in Early Judaism," especially because he turned from paganism to worship the one true God. The "agitators" (Paul's opponents) were establishing a connection with the "Galatians" (sc. Paul's non-Judean converts to Christ) through Abraham--by saying that both they (sc. the agitators) and the Galatian converts had turned away from idolatry to serve the true God (129). In addition, he suggests that Genesis 17 entails that offspring of Abraham had to be circumcised and that by that means they became entitled to share in the covenant blessings. Probably they also linked the Abrahamic covenant with the delivery of the Mosaic law on Sinai (130).

Both Martyn and Longenecker do at least see a role for Abrahamic descent itself. Yet they do not portray such descent as a valuable end in itself, but as a means whereby the agitators can relate themselves to Paul's converts via Abraham's eschewal of idolatry and, most critically, as the vehicle for transmission of the blessings that God promised to his descendants. While it is clear that the blessings that flow to the true descendants of Abraham are an important part of the picture, I submit that even Martyn and Longenecker have failed to access the full significance of Abrahamic descent.

In the balance of this article I will set out an alternative approach to the views of these five scholars in relation to Abraham in Galatians 3. But before doing so I must briefly note the theoretical resources I consider desirable for this exercise, which will enable me to interrogate the textual data in a new way. The core of my approach will be to interpret Abrahamic descent as central to the ethnic identity of Judeans--an identity they highly valued--with the figure of Abraham being central to this identity and, furthermore, accessed and maintained by Judeans through the processes of collective memory and contested by Paul in an effort to re-direct that collective memory to serve the needs of the congregations of Christ-followers in Galatia.

Abraham, Judean Ethnic Identity, and Galatians

I take it as highly probable that Paul's fundamental concern in Chapter 3 and the rest of Galatians is with preserving the unique identity of the various congregations of the Christ movement in Galatia as he had founded them. His problem is that his version of the movement, characterized by Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers who engaged in the intimate table-fellowship of the Lord's Supper with one another, is imperiled by pressures upon the non-Judeans to be circumcised and hence become Judeans. He is determined to maintain the boundaries that separate the Galatian groups of Christ-followers from Judeans--in other words, to preserve his version of the gospel against rival versions (Esler 1998).

How do we categorize Paul's opponents? Usually they are called "Judaizers" and regarded as "Jews" who are members of the congregations, possibly under pressure from other "Jews" to do something about these goyim with whom they are associated. It is easy to view this as a religious identity. But if we eschew the anachronism of translating Ioudaios as "Jew" and adopt "Judean" instead, for reasons I have set out at length elsewhere (2003: 40-76) , we are dealing with an identity best described as "ethnic." The Judeans then become one of a large number of ethnic groups in the first century Mediterranean world, like the Romans, the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Gauls and so on, all nominated in relation to the territory from which they were known to have come, even those of their number who lived a diaspora existence abroad. Many of these groups are mentioned in the Contra Apionem of Josephus, a text whose practice of treating the Ioudaioi as (superior) members of a class best described as "ethnic" that also includes Romans, Greeks and Egyptians and so on, represents a powerful argument against the exceptionalism (and, let us be blunt, intellectual inertia) involved in treating Ioudaioi as "Jews" belonging to a religion known as "Judaism."

Ethnicity has recently been the focus of lively discussion in the social sciences (Vermeulen & Govers; Banks; Jenkins; Baumann; Spickard & Burroughs). Fredrik Barth's construal of ethnicity as representing a sense of group identity that at various times selects different indicia as expressive of that identity (as opposed to ethnicity being determined by a set of primordial cultural features) has been widely influential. In Barth's perspective, the boundaries of ethnic groups operate as processes, permitting some interactions across them and prohibiting others. A number of recent works have demonstrated how comfortably this modern notion of ethnicity can be related to groups in the ancient Mediterranean world (Bilde et al.; Hall; Konstan; Malkin). There is also a burgeoning literature that applies the theory of ethnicity to biblical studies (Brett; Cohen; Duling 2003 and 2005/2006; Esler 2003).

Although Barth recognizes that the indicia which typify a particular ethnic group can change over time, certain features do commonly recur in groups we would wish to label as ethnic. John Hutchinson and Anthony Smith have helpfully listed a number of features that tend to be associated with ethnic groups (3-14). These are (a) a common proper name to identify the group; (b) a myth of common ancestry (note "myth," since the genealogical accuracy of the claimed descent is irrelevant); (c) a shared history or shared memories of a common past, including heroes, events and their commemoration; (d) a common culture, embracing such things as customs, language and religion; (e) a link with a homeland, either through actual occupation or by symbolic attachment to the ancestral land, as with diaspora peoples; and (f) a sense of communal solidarity. I stress that these features should be seen as operating in the processual and self-ascriptive approach favored by Fredrik Barth.

It is worth dwelling on the second of these features, a myth of common ancestry or descent. Max Weber, writing in 1922, proposed that ethnic groups were characterized by the belief that they shared common descent "because of similarities of physical type or of customs or both, or because of memories of colonization and migration." It did not matter whether an objective blood relationship existed or not. Ethnic membership differed from a kinship group precisely in that it was a presumed identity, rather than the concrete social action of the latter (389). Even Fredrik Barth, who opposed defining ethnicity in terms of cultural features, stated that an ascription of someone to a particular social category was an ethnic ascription "when it classities a person in terms of his basic, most general identity, presumptively determined by his origin and background" (13; emphasis added).

The Judeans of the first century CE, whether living in Palestine or in the diaspora, were an ethnic group like other peoples of their kind. In his Contra Apionem Josephus does present them as having distinctive and desirable features, but he clearly sees them as belonging to the same broad category of group-belonging as the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians and so on. When we run through the various features that Hutchinson and Smith have highlighted as typical indicia of ethnicity, it is notable that Abraham seems to bear on all of them.

First, they had a common proper name in relation to outsiders, Ioudaioi or Judaei. This name referred to their homeland, Ioudaia or Judaea, just as Romans were called after Rome, Greeks after Greece (Hellenes after Hellas) and Egyptians after Egypt. To translate Ioudaios as "Jew" deletes the territorial connection attached to ethnic names in the ancient Mediterranean. An essential feature of Judean tradition was that they had acquired the claim to their land through God's gift to Abraham. They also had an ingroup name for themselves, Israelitai or "sons of Israel," a name which also linked them to Abraham in as much as he was Israel's grandfather.

Secondly, they had a myth of common ancestry, which began with Abraham and continued on through his son Isaac through his wife Sarah, who inherited rather than Ishmael (Abraham's son through his servant Hagar), and thence to Isaac's son Jacob, subsequently named Israel (Gen 32:28).

They had a shared history, thirdly, that began with Abraham and moved onwards, through the period in Egypt, the Exodus and settlement of Canaan, the time of the judges, the monarch, exile and return, Seleucid and Roman occupation. Aspects of this history were regularly commemorated, as with the Feast of Passover, for example.

Fourthly, they had a common culture, including distinctive religious and ethical beliefs and practices, which included an aversion to idolatry originating with Abraham. The Greek word Ioudaismos (see Gal 1:14) refers to the ethical, legal, religious and cultural practices associated with being a Judean. It thus quite nicely designates this fourth indicator of ethnicity. For modern scholars to speak of a religion called "Judaism" as the decisive aspect of the identity of this people misses the fact that this cultural (including religious) dimension is only one of a larger number that together produce an identity best interpreted as ethnic. In the ancient world, moreover, "religion" was not separable from kinship and the economic and political realms. Thus, to focus on "Jews" as representative of a religion "Judaism" is both anachronistic and grossly reductionist and does little justice to the identity of first century Judeans.

Fifthly, they had their own land, which they believed God had given to them through Abraham. Even when they lived in the diaspora they were oriented to the land, as seen in their payment of the annual Temple tax and pilgrimages to Jerusalem for the great festivals (see Binder: 48-89; Esler 2003: 64-65).

Sixthly, they had a strong sense of communal solidarity, which rested ultimately on the belief in their descent from a common ancestor, Abraham.

It is evident from this just how prominent Abraham was in the ethnic identity of the Judeans, in telling themselves who they were as a people. For Judeans to say they were descendants of Abraham presumed or invoked all these various dimensions of their group identity. Yet there is more to be said than this. Henri Tajfel, the founder of social identity theory, rightly maintained that a sense of belonging to a group extended beyond the cognitive dimension--the understanding of the nature of the group to embrace emotional and evaluative dimensions--that is, how members felt about belonging to the group and how they rated themselves with respect to the members of other groups. It is quite clear that first-century Judeans were immensely proud of being the descendants of Abraham and regarded themselves as superior to other groups by virtue of this lineage.

There are many signs of this. Two will suffice. At one point in his preaching, John the Baptist said to those coming out to him, "Bear fruit that is worthy of repentance and do not presume to say to yourselves, 'We have Abraham as our father'; for I tell you God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham" (Matt 3:8-9; cf. Luke 3:8). Here John is presuming in his Judean audience an ethnic pride focused on Abraham that highlights the ethical superiority of Judeans over other peoples--a pride reflected in the view that they do not need to repent. At John 8:33, secondly, the Judeans who had believed Jesus respond to his suggestion that the truth will set them free by saying, "We are the seed of Abraham and we have never been in slavery to anyone." Thus they appeal to their descent from Abraham as connected with their freedom as a people. Although this is a somewhat exaggerated claim in view of their long history of domination by foreign powers, it certainly underlines the extent to which they associated their ancestor Abraham with their honorable status as a free people.

These examples reveal that appeal or reference to Abraham is made as a way of asserting their ethnic identity. To be of such stock both tells them who they are and makes them feel privileged and superior to the members of other groups. It has cognitive, emotional and evaluative connotations. Abrahamic descent is thus a way of describing the glorious status of being a Judean. It is a status acquired through circumcision, and here apparently the Judeans were prepared to overlook that proselytes could not actually be physically descended from Abraham even though they were actually circumcised. Perhaps they acknowledged that among the people initially circumcised by Abraham were purchased servants, people not physically his kin (Gen 18: 22-27). Such a status goes far beyond the notion of Abrahamic descent as being a mode of delivery of divine blessings.

This analysis allows us to sharpen our critique of the five scholars discussed above. In Galatia Paul was responding to the fact that his opponents were categorizing the appeal of becoming a Judean in terms of Abrahamic descent. To be of the seed of Abraham meant acquiring a distinctive and glorious identity. Barrett, Beker and Hansen, each in their separate ways, have missed this factor entirely. Martyn and Longenecker, while seeing the importance of Abrahamic descent, opt for reasons that are too narrow fully to explain it. Paul's opponents are proffering Abrahamic descent to Paul's converts not because Abraham's people were anti-idolatrous (although they were), nor because such people obtained covenant blessings (which they did), but because descent from Abraham summed up the totality of the ethnic identity and hence elevated status, in all their various manifestations, that came from being a Judean. This identity included the blessings and the monotheistic worship of the one, true God but went far beyond them, to embrace all the components of Judean ethnic identity just rehearsed.

Abraham and the Collective Memory of Israel

How did Abraham continue to have such an appeal to and impact upon Judeans? We must first shed the idea that it was based upon their personally reading scrolls or codices containing scripture or other Judean writings. As Werner Kelber, Paul Achtemeier, and others have been reminding us for a long time now, this was a largely illiterate (or "residually oral") society. That only a tiny percentage of people could read has been demonstrated in works by William Harris and Catherine Hezser. Judeans did have access to their traditions, but by listening to texts read in synagogues on the sabbath, as described by Philo in the fragment of a lost work (cited by Esler 2003: 91) and by remembering what they heard and by discussions at other times. Israel was a speaking and listening community, not a "reading community" as Richard Hays suggests, in a remarkable example of anachronism that undermines his "intertextuality" project (Hays 1989:20-21), now unwisely supported by Francis Watson (17-24). For Hays and Watson there is no essential difference between the way Paul accessed scripture and the way we do, post-Reformation and post-Gutenberg. In fact, Abraham lived in the memories of Israelites and it is to memory that we must turn in seeking to understand this phenomenon. Direct references to Judean scripture in Galatians (including by Paul in Galatians 3) and other references that can reasonably be implied are very significant but must be understood as appropriated in this way.

Unfortunately, as Werner Kelber points out in a long essay in a forthcoming Semeia volume on social memory, the principal representatives of the recent upsurge in orality/literacy studies (such as Albert Lord, Eric Havelock, Walter Ong, Jack Goody and John Foley) have not yet seriously connected with the massive recent work in memory studies. Much work remains to be done in this area, although I have recently attempted an integration of collective memory and orality in relation to Hebrews 11 in the same volume of Semeia.

Maurice Halbwachs (1877-1945), under the influence of his teacher in sociology, the great Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), regarded memory as the production of human beings living together in society. "It is in society," he wrote, "that people normally acquire their memories. It is also in society that they recall, recognize and localize their memories" (1992: 38). Although this is a strikingly Durkheimian formulation, Halbwachs had previously been influenced by Henri Bergson and so was able to resist the pull of extreme social determinism. Probably for this reason Halbwachs interested himself in groups within society, rather than just in the larger reality of society itself (Coser: 33). "Let us remark in passing," Lewis Coser observes, "that almost everywhere that Durkheim speaks of 'Society' with a capital S, Halbwachs speaks of 'groups'--a more cautious usage" (22). Collective memory as explained by Halbwachs relates to groups rather than to society at large.

Halbwachs was much preoccupied with the ways in which a group reconstructed its memories in the present. Some theorists, such as Barry Schwartz, have argued that he traveled too far along this road, thus imperiling the continuity within which a group stands in relation to its past (1982: 25-27). Nevertheless, he was correct in affirming the capacity of groups to reconstruct the past, typically by the invention of tradition or the capture of traditions generated by other groups. More problematic, as Paul Connerton has shown, was Halbwachs' neglect of the manner in which collective memories are passed on, communicated, from one generation to another. Connerton is right to insist that "to study the social formation of memory is to study those acts of transfer that make remembering in common possible" (39).

"When we remember," James Fentress and Chris Wickham persuasively affirm, "we represent ourselves to ourselves and to those around us. To the extent that our 'nature'--that which we truly are--can be revealed in articulation, we are what we remember." They deduce from this that "a study of the way we remember--the way we present ourselves in our memories, the way we define our personal and collective identifies through our memories, the way we order and structure our ideas in our memories, and the way we transmit these memories to others--is a study of the way we are" (7). E. Zerubavel expresses a similar view: "Being social presupposes the ability to experience things that happened to the groups to which we belong long before we even joined them as if they were part of our own personal past" (3). Zerubavel also correctly notes that much of what we "remember" did not happen to us personally. We only remember some things as members of what he usefully calls "mnemonic communities," such as particular families, organizations, ethnic groups and so on (90). It is clear that the Judeans of the first century were a mnemonic community in this sense, with an unusually large body of historical tradition, read out every sabbath in their synagogues, to sustain and enrich their communal memoria.

Jan Assmann has developed Halbwachs' theory in the direction of identity formation by writing of the way in which "cultural memory" is an active force that seizes upon figures and subjects from the past, modifying and contextualizing them, to feed the needs and aspirations of a group in the present. This is opposed to unconvincing static approaches to memory that see it merely as a receptacle that preserves the past unchanged in something akin to a form of "cold storage," a useful notion of Kelber's (2005).

When memory is our focus, we are less concerned with whether certain figures from the past actually existed or with what they did than with how they are remembered, with the extent to which they become what Jan Assmann has called "figures of memory" (11). Assmann points out that no one doubts that Ahenotaken lived; yet his attempt to introduce a monotheistic religion in Egypt was overturned after his death and the memory of his innovation extirpated. Whether Moses ever lived, on the other hand, is largely irrelevant, given the abiding role he has played in the memories of Israelites and other groups. The same can be said of Abraham, who was a most important figure in the collective memories of ancient Judeans, whether he ever existed or not.

This theory provides a good foundation for comprehending how Abraham featured in the collective memory of the Judeans. We should not, like most critics commenting on Abraham in Galatians, see the issue as a battle over how best to interpret Israelite scripture in which he happens to be mentioned in important passages. The real issue is the question of Abrahamic descent itself, and the elevated status and ethnic identity that such descent entails, with scripture (accessed in oral performance and retained anamnetically) forming part of the stock of data that supports the collective memory of Abraham. By remembering Abraham, the Judeans told themselves who they were. To obtain some notion of how this process operates we might consider the current function of the memory of Abraham Lincoln to citizens of the United States or the memory of William of Orange ('Good King Willie") to the Unionist community of Northern Ireland. Using data such as the number of statues erected in his honor per year, Barry Schwartz (2000) has usefully demonstrated how the memory of Abraham Lincoln in the USA changed (and in a positive direction) during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. But to that type of memory must be added the circumstance that Judeans believed they were physically descended from Abraham. Common descent from the same ancestor is one of the major sources of communality on which traditional forms of social solidarity rest. Normally it is seen in relation to kinship in families (Zerubavel: 63-64). But with the Judeans we have a whole ethnic group claiming such connectedness. We must now consider how all this bears on what had happened in Galatia.

Paul's Contestation of the Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3

When we enter any new group or social environment, we usually learn what we should remember and what we should forget. Zerubavel refers to this process as "mnemonic socialization" (87). Some at least of those who turned to Christ while Paul was present in Galatia came from a background of idolatry; as he says in Galatians 4:8, "But then not knowing God you were enslaved to beings that are by nature not gods." No doubt when these converts joined the movement, he would have begun this form of socialization, by downplaying their memories of idolatrous practice and pagan values and building new memories based on the Christ-event appropriate for those who now know God (Gal 4:9). His congregations formed a new and distinctive mnemonic community that offered a fresh understanding of the past as part of their social reality and identity that transcended the subjectivity of individual members and was shared by the whole group. After his departure, however-unfortunately for him and his gospel--other people sought to continue the mnemonic socialization of these ex-idolatrous converts, but in a new direction that perplexed him greatly. Paul's opponents had begun contextualizing and mobilizing the figure of Abraham through techniques of oral persuasion (see Gal 5:7-8) to convince his converts of the desirable identity that was theirs if they were circumcised and became Judeans. In short, his opponents were inviting the converts to join the mnemonic community that was Israel. They were appealing to what Zerubavel calls a "mnemonic tradition" (87), meaning a tradition that embraces not only what should be remembered (here Abraham) but also how we should remember it (here in the link between Abrahamic descent and Judean ethnicity). Not only is this a notable instance of the way in which, as Assmann claims, figures from the past can be actively seized and re-deployed to shape identity in the past, but it also reveals one means by which memories are passed on to others, an aspect of collective memory that Halbwachs himself neglected.

Faced with this threat, Paul had little choice but to contest the memory of Abraham. In the last few decades what it means to contest the past has become a question of great interest to some historians and social scientists. Katharine Hodgson and Susannah Radstone accurately summarize the thrust of much of this discussion as follows:

 But to contest the past is also ... to pose questions about the present, and what the past means in the present. Our understanding of the past has strategic, political, and ethical consequences. Contests over the meaning of the past are also contests over the meaning of the present and over ways of taking the past forward [2003b: 1]. 

In Galatians 3 Paul steps into such an arena--contesting the past as it is portrayed in Judean discourse in relation to Abraham so as to respond to the present threat (as he sees it) facing his converts. Given the dominance of the memory of Abraham among the millions of Judeans who lived around the Mediterranean in the first century CE and his centrality for their ethnic identity, this was an audacious enterprise. Yet this is not so unusual, for as Jeffrey Olick and Joyce Robbins note, "Memory contestation takes place from above and below, from both center and periphery" (21). Peripheral and minority groups, such as Paul's version of the Christ-movement, regularly confront the otherwise hegemonic memories of groups that are dominant.

The notion of "counter-memory" has been used by F. Bouchard in relation to a particular theory of Michel Foucault as to how written texts serve to challenge dominant discourses, including living memories. A form of counter-memory more relevant to residually orally cultures, however, is evident in Stephen Cornell's account of how members of an ethnic group that have experienced a rupture in the taken-for-granted reality of their identity develop new ways to construe their past and thus make sense of their present (45-46). Often they generate narratives that can be repeated (and revised) by word of mouth as well as in written form. Here we have a counter or contested memory of wider application than that which Bouchard has discerned in Foucault's writings.

Cornell's version of counter-memory is also applicable to Paul's reworking of the memory of Abraham for his congregations, even though, since they encompassed Judean and nonJudean members (the feature that was both characteristic of them and attracted Judean animosity), they were not ethnic but trans-ethnic (perhaps we should say "socio-religious") in character. Paul must have envisaged that once his (largely illiterate) addressees had heard his letter read to them they would remember its contents, discuss it among themselves and, above all, retain its re-presentation of Abrahamic descent in the collective memory of the movement.

In looking at how Paul struggles to prise the memory of Abraham and the meaning of Abrahamic descent from the Judeans and embed it instead in his groups of Christ-followers, it is worth noting with Hodgkin and Radstone that the focus of mnemonic contestation "is very often not conflicting accounts of what actually happened in the past so much as the question of who or what is entitled to speak for that past in the present." In other words, "the contest is often over how truth can best be conveyed, rather than what actually happened" (2003b: 1). There may be agreement as to the course of events, but not as to how the truth of those events should be most fully represented, or how best to explain and interpret a certain episode.

Basic information concerning Abraham was accessible to Paul and those in Galatia who opposed his version of the gospel from the Israelite scriptures, especially Genesis, which were read out aloud in Judean synagogues on the sabbath and possibly, at times, in meetings of the Christ-movement. Both sides no doubt accepted the important passages in what we call Genesis 15 and 17 as an account of what had actually happened to Abraham. They did not seek to dispute these facts. Their dispute lay in how best to interpret them. This meant not just appealing to different reaches of the memory of Abraham but also re-interpreting aspects that figured in the discourse of both Israel and the Christ-movement. Paul needed to create a new mnemonic tradition to defeat the claims of the one being advocated by his opponents. Yet we must always remember that we are not dealing with a theological argument, a battle of interpretative methods, but with the most persuasive way of interpreting scripture to serve the real end of group identity. Let us see how Paul proceeds.

Having cited Genesis 15:6, (Abraham "put his faith in God") and prior to any argument in support, he dares in Galatians 3:7 to assert that the "sons of Abraham" are "those of faith." To interpret: Christ-followers are the descendants of Abraham. He is establishing an ingroup identity that embraces Abraham and Christ-follower on the basis that they are both typified by faith. It is the extremely fortunate predication of faith to Abraham in Genesis 15:6 before he was circumcised that allowed Paul to wrest Abraham from the Judeans. Thus, at a stroke, he attaches Abrahamic descent and the high status identity that went with it, to Christ-followers. This categorical way of stating the position allows, quite remarkably, no room for anyone else to share such status and identity. Paul is not suggesting that there are various ways to manifest Abraham's lineage and that being a Christ-follower is one of them. No, faith in Christ is the only way he will allow. This sentiment, which is extraordinarily anti-Judean to the extent it denies them Abrahamic descent but nicely illustrates how far someone contesting a dominant memory may go, is confirmed in the way Paul proceeds to mount his defense of this proposition.

Paul continues by saying, "Scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the non-Judeans by faith, preached the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying 'All the non-Judeans will be blessed in you'" (3:8; a quotation from Genesis 12:3 in the Septuagint). In v 8 scripture (here in the form of Genesis 12:3) is said to have foreseen that God would justify the non-Judeans through faith and to have announced in advance that in Abraham all the non-Judeans would be blessed. This means--he insists in v 9--that those of faith are blessed with the faithful Abraham. This reinforces his point in w 6-7 about the faith connection: namely, that faith designates a beneficial ("blessed") ingroup identity embracing Christ-followers and Abraham. But it also indicates that Paul shares with his opponents a belief in the relevance of Israelite written tradition as providing material on which the debate should conducted. This was a common resource feeding into the collective memories of Judean and Christ-follower. While it is quite possible that Paul rather than his opponents brought Genesis 12:3 into the discussion, the issue is still not the basic facts concerning Abraham, but the question of how the truth of those events should be best interpreted.

The section after this (3:10-14) initially moves off in a new direction, by asserting that those who rely on the works of the law are under a curse. It is evident that no one is justified before God by the law since scripture says, "The person who is righteous by faith will live" (from the Septuagint of Habbakuk 2:4). Paul then redirects the discussion back to Abraham by asserting that Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law (3:13), "in order that the blessings of Abraham might come upon the non-Judeans in Christ Jesus, so that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith" (3:14).

Paul's attempt to win control of central Israelite memory continues with equal audacity in these verses. His abrupt charge (in v 10) that those who rely on works of the law are under a curse is made on the alleged basis of Deuteronomy 27:26. Hitherto, Israel had no doubt drawn the message from Deuteronomy (28:1-14 for example) that adherence to the law brought blessing and life and had installed that message in its collective memory. It was by not performing the requirements of the law that one attracted a curse (as, indeed, at Deuteronomy 27:26). Paul's argumentative gambit here is difficult to understand unless we assume that he is suggesting that no one actually did obey the law (Esler 1998: 187). He props up his case by interpreting Habbakuk 2:4 to mean that life comes from faith (and not, by necessary implication, from law). These arguments are predicated upon a strong form of ingroup/outgroup differentiation with the outgroup being stereotyped in an extreme way. His point in v 12 appears to be that law cannot be connected with faith, but those who adhere to the law will live by it, a position that seems to make sense only on the basis that Paul was of the view that no one would obey the law and hence obtain life. Only faith could bring life.

In Galatians 3:13 Paul asserts that Christ has solved the problem of the curse of the law by purchasing us from it, by coming under the curse in his crucifixion. The purpose and result of this (the "so that"--hina--of v 14 carries both meanings) was that the blessing of Abraham might occur in Christ Jesus, with the purpose and result ("so that" again) "we might take the promise of the Spirit through faith" (v 14b). However the Abrahamic blessing might have been interpreted in the interests of recommending Judean ethnicity, Paul now radically reworks this particular collective memory by interpreting it to refer to the wonderful gifts of the Spirit that he has mentioned just above in Galatians 3:2-4, where he presented the miracles (v 4)--prophecy, speaking in tongues etc.--as fundamental to the identity of his congregations of Christ-followers (Gal 3:1-6).

Once he has thus positively connected the Abrahamic promise to the Christ-movement, Paul then proceeds to disconnect it from the Judeans with a daring piece of exegesis. Thus in Galatians 3:15-16 we find him reinterpreting a section of Israelite tradition, the repeated promises God makes to Abraham in Genesis to give the land to him and his seed (Gen 12:7; 13:15; 17:7; 24:7). It is almost certain that Paul's opponents were pointing to this usage in connection with their overall depiction of Judean ethnic identity. They were most probably appealing to the straightforward and literal sense of this word, the peshat of later generations (Brewer 14), to interpret it as referring to the physical descendants of Abraham (including those who joined this lineage through circumcision). This must have formed an important component of the mnemonic tradition of Israel that they were propounding to Paul's converts in Galatia. Paul meets this claim by contesting how the truth from the remembered past can best be conveyed. Adopting a necessarily strained interpretation of "seed," he fixes upon its singular number to make a bold statement of identity: "The promises were spoken to Abraham and his seed. It does not say, 'And to your seeds,' referring to many, but to one, 'And to your seed,' which is Christ" (3:16). This, on its own, does not yield the conclusion that non-Judeans Christ-followers are Abraham's seed. He gets to that result only a little later--at 3:29, as we shall see below.

This prompts Paul to propose a very sharp antithesis, "For if the inheritance is by law, it is no longer by promise; but God gave it to Abraham through a promise" (3:19).

Following his novel interpretation of Abaham's "seed," in Galatians 3:17-20 Paul fends off Judean mnemonic socialization and reinforces the mnemonic tradition he is constructing by denying any continuing role for the Mosaic covenant. He begins by insisting that the law, which came 430 years after Abraham, cannot annul this covenant so as to make the promise void (3:17). In essence, the law given on Sinai was intended for the limited purpose of restraining transgressions. (I have elsewhere argued against the extraordinary proposition that God gave the law in order to provoke transgressions--1998: 195-97). The memory of Moses and the law he received on Sinai played a pivotal role in maintaining Judean identity, and for this reason Paul has been driven to contest its significance. But there are limits to which he will go, as is evident in Galatians 3:19-20. These are difficult verses, but in my view they are best interpreted along the lines that Paul is not saying anything particularly negative about the law. He cannot, after all, assert that it lacked all connection with the divine purpose. Rather, his point is that because there were angels involved in its delivery to Moses, it was not given to Israel in the direct way in which God made his promise to Abraham (Esler 1998: 198-200). The section comprising Galatians 3:21-25 further develops Paul's devaluation of the law of Moses, by showing its incapacity to bring righteousness and its limited role in the period up to the coming of Christ. The image of the paidagogos in vv 23-25 brings this out very dearly. The paidagogos was essentially a positive figure: he was meant to protect the boy in his charge and restrain him from inappropriate behavior (with harsh discipline if necessary), but only for a limited period, and then his powers ceased (Esler 1998:201-03).

This brings Paul to his magnificent conclusion to this section of the text dealing with Abraham (Galatians 3:26-29). Here he paints an exalted picture of identity-in-Christ. He begins with a statement of the current status and identity of his addressees: they are sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus (v 26). Then he moves to the mechanism and process by which they acquired this identity--by baptism: those who have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ (v 27). This leads, in turn, in v 28, to the great exultation of unity in Christ Jesus (a unity of Judean and Greek, slave and free, male and female), yet this is not some isolated statement, for all the while the argument is pushing on to its summative conclusion: "If you are of Christ, surely you are the seed of Abraham, heirs according to the promise" (3:29). This is the necessary conclusion to an argument that had earlier insisted that the seed to whom the promise referred was Christ. For Christ-followers to share in the promise, they must be one in and with that seed. With this statement in v 29, Paul announces the conclusion of an argument the thesis of which he set out at 3:7: it is those who have faith in Christ who are the sons or seed of Abraham. There is no suggestion here that Judeans outside the Christ-movement are also the sons of Abraham. This represents the fullest pitch of Paul's mnemonic socialization of his converts. He has contested the memory of Abraham to such a degree as to remove Abrahamic descent entirely as an element in Judean identity and lodge it firmly in among the ranks of the Christ-followers of Galatia.

It is worth noting that later, when he was composing Romans, he drew back from so extreme a position. There is no sign that there were people in Rome putting pressure on Greek Christ-followers to be circumcised and become Judeans, in which context Abraham and descent from him could have been held out as attractive features of Judean ethnic identity. This meant Paul could afford to be much more relaxed about Abraham. This is why we find him saying in Romans 4:1: "What, therefore, shall we say Abraham our forefather in the flesh to have found [sc. to be the case]?" Here "in the flesh" includes a Judean connected to Abraham both "by natural descent" and "through circumcision"--that is, a native-born Judean and a proselyte. Since Paul is addressing a mixed group of Judean and non-Judean Christ-followers in Rome, when he refers to Abraham as "our forefather in the flesh" he is invoking a physical connection, a kinship, with Abraham (either from birth or by proselyte circumcision) which embraces him and the Judean Christ-followers he is addressing, but also extends to Judeans outside the Christ-movement. There is no implication here, therefore, as there was in Galatians, that the postulation of Abrahamic descent for Christ-followers meant its loss for Judeans who were not followers of Christ. Paul will go on in Romans 4 to work Abraham into the collective memory of the Christ-followers, but without the sharp antithetical shape to his argument in Galatians.

Conclusions

Many explanations have been offered for the role of Abraham in the argument Paul mounts in Galatians 3. But all of them hitherto have missed the centrality of ethnicity and collective memory in understanding what Paul says and how he says it. Abraham was central to the ethnic identity of the Judeans of his time, as Paul was only too aware. He knew that in Galatia his opponents were using this glorious figure from the collective memory and mnemonic tradition of Israel in their attempt to persuade Paul's non-Judean converts to become Judeans through circumcision. To counter this threat he had to detach Abraham from Israel and its collective memory and attach it to the Christ-movement and its collective memory. Central to his argument is the claim that Christ is the seed referred to in the scriptural promises made "to Abraham and his seed" and that Christ-followers receive these promises because through baptism they are all one in Christ Jesus. In addition, Paul reinterprets these promises to connect them with the dramatic gifts of the Holy Spirit that were characteristic of his congregations. Paul's entire argument represents a daring essay in the contestation and re-application of the collective memory of Abraham, away from the ethnic group where it arose to his socio-religious Christ-movement groups in Galatia.

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Philip F. Esler (D. Phil., Oxford) is Chief Executive of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (a post he is holding while on extended leave from his position as Professor of Biblical Criticism in the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, UK). He joined the St. Andrews faculty in 1992, having previously been a barrister in Sydney, Australia. Professor Esler is the author of Galatians (London, UK/New York, NY: Routledge, 1998), Conflict and Identity in Romans (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), and New Testament Theology: Communion and Community (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2005), and the editor of Modelling Early Christianity (London, UK/New York, NY: Roudedge, 199.5) and The Early Christian World (two volumes, London, UK/New York, NY: Routledge, 2000). His e-mail address is p.esler@ahrc.ac.uk.

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