Cutting Too Close for Comfort: Paul's Letter to the Galatians in Its Anatolian Cultic Context.

Cutting Too Close for Comfort: Paul's Letter to the Galatians in Its Anatolian Cultic Context. By Susan Elliott. London: T & T Clark, 2003. xv and 392 pages. Cloth. $170.00.

Elliott, a long-time colleague in New Testament studies, has expanded her Loyola University (Chicago) dissertation and subsequent articles into a substantial book regarding the audience of Paul's letter to the Galatians.

She maintains that scholars have failed to read the letter in terms of its Anatolian context. When identifying the recipients as Jews or Jewish converts, readers are unable to deal satisfactorily with Paul's discussion of the law (3:15-4:11), circumcision (5:1-12) and the complex allegory of Hagar and Sarah (4:21-31). Following a succinct introduction to the academic issues, Elliott describes known Anatolian religious practices. She first describes the divine function of Anatolian Law and concomitant juridical power. Then she moves to the major data for her thesis: the mother goddess Cybele and her consort/slave Attis. Of particular importance is her description of the galli, following Attis, who castrate themselves in servitude to the Mother of the Gods.

Up to this point Elliott has documented her work very well from both primary and secondary resources. For the rest of her study such documentation begins to disappear. She wishes to read Galatians in light of the Anatolian context she has just described. As she indicates in her introduction, this is new territory for a NT scholar, so her thesis will need to stand on its own merit. She believes Paul's problem with the law refers not to Jewish Law but to the commands and power of the mother goddess (Hagar in the allegory of 4:21-31). Addressing the cult of the mother goddess and using his background as a Jew, Paul explains to the recipients the power of the gospel. Elliott speaks of this as the Triple Analogy (pp. 262,274-75). The life of the letter's recipients may be directed by the juridical power of the mother goddess just as the life of the Jews was directed by the law. But in the new faith that Paul proclaims, life is given by the Spirit, not the law. A Triple Analogy. Or the self-centered life of the flesh will be controlled by castration in the goddess cult, by circumcision in Judaism, but by the sacrifice of Jesus in the gospel. A Triple Analogy (p. 279). So Paul's opposition to circumcision in Galatians is actually an attack on the castration cult, not Judaism as usually assumed by scholars (see 5:12).

Elliott's description of the mother goddess culture is fascinating. I suspect that few NT scholars will accept her reading of Galatians, however. Not many believe Paul was writing to the north Galatians. Those who do would assume that the historical context is Celtic (the term Galatians references Celts, as in Paul's scorn in 3:1), not the mother goddess. Nevertheless, the mother goddess cult did exist in north Galatia. Elliott is surely correct that the north Galatians would have known the mother goddess. So Paul could use references to the mother goddess and castration to combat any kind of life directed by law and any kind of mutilation used to control self-centeredness (the flesh).

Graydon F. Snyder

Chicago, Illinois