Challenge, Riposte and Upside-Down Honour in Galatians

This paper highlights some interesting interpretive possibilities made available if Galatians 2 is considered using Pierre Bourdieu’s model of challenge and riposte in an honour society. Recent scholarly attention on the issue of ‘honour models’ has been criticised for its inherent anachronism as, all too regularly, the models used are borrowed from cultural anthropologists working in modern day contexts. We should not, however, ignore that status concerns dominated the ancient world, particularly the clubs and associations of which the early house-churches would have resembled. Therefore abandoning these approaches due to anachronistic fears would seem premature, as it appears that the models have heuristic potential. It is proposed that applying Bourdieu’s model shows that Paul himself is critical of the issue of honour. Rejecting status concerns, for ‘God shows no partiality’ (2:6), the suggested challenge and riposte structure to Paul’s biographical data presents him as victorious by aligning himself with the upside-down honour of Christ’s crucifixion. The task of this paper is to suggest that Bourdieu’s model highlights an important issue for interpreting Galatians, particularly in relation to the structure and moral formation of the ‘churches of Galatia’, thereby presenting an argument for the continued use of honour models in social- context readings of the New Testament.