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234 Journal of Biblical Literature through whom deliverance was given to Israel” (5:55–62). One of the goals of 1 Maccabees, this evidence suggests, was to solidify the link between Antiochus’s disruption of Jewish tradition and the Maccabees, to render them the sole agent of its restoration, and to draw a seamless connection between that event and their dynasty. The forming of this narrative probably did not begin with 1 Maccabees. Cited in 14:27–45 is a document that may preserve a snapshot of an earlier stage of Maccabean propaganda: a public decree that pays tribute to Simon and his brothers for fighting the enemies of the nation “that their sanctuary and the law might be preserved.” 59 If authentic, this document, said to have been inscribed on bronze tablets posted in the precincts of the temple, shows that some elements of the narrative in 1 Maccabees predate its composition, but it makes only general reference to the threat posed by Antiochus and does not mention any of the many sacrileges imputed to the king by 1 Maccabees itself. Also early, the book of Daniel refers to some of those sacrileges but not all and without giving the Maccabees a role in the story. The differences between this work and the other accounts of the persecution show that the memory of what happened continued to fluctuate for many decades. What we have seen may illumine why these elements were drawn together as they are in 1 Maccabees. It was not simply the actual course of events that determined how this book plots its story, but the structuring effect of literary convention and the need of an untraditional regime to render itself traditional. What we have seen here does not solve the enigma of Antiochus’s persecution if by that we mean an anomalous event in the real past. If we approach it as a literary enigma, however, even the impression of anomalousness falls into place. The sacrilegious king who robs temples and interferes in tradition—the opposite of what a good king was supposed to do—was a stereotypical role imposed literarily on kings by those who would supplant them. The real Antiochus almost certainly acted in ways that justified his reputation, and to the extent that he did so, he made it easier for his memory to be framed within this plot line. But that Antiochus remains inaccessible, his behavior impossible to understand within the political and cultural norms of the Hellenistic world. Far less inexplicable than the real king’s sacrileges is the recounting of those sacrileges in texts such as 1 Maccabees, an act of emplotment with many precedents in earlier literary history and with clear political benefits for those framed in the story as the restorers of tradition. 59 For analysis of this document, see Joseph Sievers, “The High Priesthood of Simon Maccabeus: An Analysis of 1 Macc 14:25–49,” SBLSP (1981): 309–18.
JBL 123/2 (2004) 235–251 THE POLITICS OF INTERPRETATION: THE RHETORIC OF RACE AND ETHNICITY IN PAUL DENISE KIMBER BUELL dbuell@williams.edu Williams College, Williamstown, MA 01267 CAROLINE JOHNSON HODGE cejh@comcast.net College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, MA 0l610 In most modern interpretations of Paul’s writings and early Christian history, ethnicity is implicitly or explicitly defined as natural, inherent, immutable, or otherwise “given.” Paul’s letters are often read to support the view that the identities of Christ-believers, in contrast to other Jews, transcend fixed, bodily characteristics we associate with ethnicity and race. After all, Paul’s writings include such powerful passages as Gal 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, male and female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” This verse is frequently invoked to support reconstructions of an inclusive and egalitarian impulse in the Jesus movement. For example, Rosemary Radford Ruether echoes Gal 3:28 when she writes that “class, ethnicity, and gender are . . . specifically singled out as the divisions overcome by redemption in Christ.” 1 Our goal is to challenge the conceptualizations of race and ethnicity in such interpretations of Paul and early Christianity. This task arises out of our own interest in the politics and ethics of interpretation, specifically from the view that all reading is ideological. 2 As scholars culturally marked as white and An earlier draft of this article was presented at the Paul and Politics Section of the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in Toronto, November 25, 2002. 1 Rosemary Radford Ruether, “Sexism and God-Language,” in Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (ed. Judith Plaskow and Carol P. Christ; San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 156. 2 See Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, Rhetoric and Ethic: The Politics of Biblical Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999), esp. 17–30, 195–98; Fernando F. Segovia, Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 167. 235
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