Jacob P. B. Mortensen - Paul Among the Gentiles - A Radical Reading of Romans

The stereotypic way of thinking is very elaborate and abundantly evident in ancient physiognomic (and medical) literature, because physiognomic knowledge is stereotypical knowledge. The physiognomic (and medical) literature worked with the premise that character was determined by form. Physiognomists studied the human character based on how people looked and acted, because a person’s physiognomic constitution was considered a replication of ascribed identity.13 Thus, you could tell a person’s character from the way he looked, because there was nothing inside which did not register on the outside. Ps. Aristotle (unknown Peripatetic author in the 1 stcentury BCE) explains the connection between inner and outer person:

It is especially in the creations of nature that one can see how body and soul interact with each other, so that each is mainly responsible for the other’s affections. For no animal has ever existed such that it has the form of one animal and the disposition of another, but the body and soul of the same creature always [correspond] such that a given disposition must necessarily follow a given form.14

Thus, physiognomists observed the dispositions of a person in order to correlate these with specific forms and identities.

The ‘signs’ the physiognomists studied included a person’s movements, postures, colours, facial expressions, hair, type of skin, voice, flesh-tone, parts of the body, and overall physique.15 Consequently, after having outlined the principles of physiognomics, the ancient author Polemo (90–144 CE) claims, ‘as often as you judge any race or people of the world on the basis of these indices, you will judge them correctly’.16 The medical specialist, Galen (129–216 CE), makes some amazing deductions in the On Prognosis , where he diagnoses a woman – from the way she looks – as being in love with a dancer. He also diagnoses a slave – from the way he looks – as being worried about being found to have lost some of his master’s money.17 The same applies to Polemo’s spotting women who are about to elope, and the man who is only pretending to have lost his goods in a shipwreck.18 These physiognomic deductions, which may seem far-fetched, judgemental, and idiosyncratic to modern people, were considered true and scientific in antiquity. These deductions were considered a systematization of the physique as a collection of signs of the inner character. Both medicine and physiognomics established lists of signs or symptoms, from which they inferred the state of the mind or the body. Both often relied on common causes, such as the humours or the blood, and they sometimes sought the same phenomena in cases of madness, epilepsy, apoplexy, and deafness.19 Polemo also offers a striking description that applies to many:

A thick, flattened end of the nose indicates brutality.20

If this were true, a lot of people should – because of the shape of their nose – be carefully watched by the police. Nevertheless, these authors believed that you could correctly judge people’s character, if you judged their race, posture, or appearance according to certain indices, because their inside registered on the outside.

Polemo presents different types that work through their ‘othering’ or oppositional, strategic definitions; the typical woman is defined by her deviation from the male norm.21 The ‘beast’, the ‘alien’, or the ‘ethnic other’ is not directly defined in contrast to someone else, but may be anyone not belonging to a certain and well-defined geographical area – that is, the ones ‘outside’. Ethnic types are created and fixed by the nature of the place from which they originate. Therefore, differences among people derive from the ethnic characteristics, which are rooted in the water, soil, and air in which the ethnic group lives.

In his section ‘On the Shape of Southern Peoples’, Polemo explains that the Southern peoples are black, have curly hair, narrow ankles, metallic-coloured eyes, black hair, and thin flesh. This generalized description is thought to match all Southern peoples, and there is no room for individual features or deviations. Hence, there is no depth to the description, merely surface, because there is no internal state that is not knowable by some external feature. The features that correspond to this description are as follows: The Southern peoples are kind, ready of wit and memory, they take pleasure in learning, but they are always thinking up lies, they are greedy, and inclined to theft.22 These are harsh features to ascribe to all peoples from the south, based on their looks. Nevertheless, according to the erudite and highly educated Polemo, they were considered true and valid.

As a minor curio, it may be interesting to observe what Polemo thought of ‘the Northern Peoples’, since that description was supposed to apply to Germans, Danes, and other Scandinavians. In his section ‘On the Shape of Northern Peoples’, Polemo writes that the Northern peoples are tall, white-complexioned, with red hair, and gray-blue eyes. They are rough to the touch, they have thick legs, dense and plump bodies, soft flesh, and huge stomachs. Their corresponding character is as follows: They are quick to anger, quick in debate, they are rash, honest, and find it hard to learn.23 As a red-haired, blue-eyed, white-complexioned, and tall hyperborean, I find the physical description rather precise (despite my thin legs and flat stomach), but I definitely do not appreciate the corresponding character. Nevertheless, concerning Polemo’s conclusions or deductions on both the ‘Southern’ and the ‘Northern’ peoples, we would be justified in claiming that such generalizations and idiosyncratic opinions are wildly inaccurate and morally deplorable. However, that is not the point here. The point is that from ‘within’ a certain cultural-religious-ethnic-political perspective, such propositions may be deemed self-evident and scientifically true, even by philosophers and doctors such as Polemo and Galen.24 These doctors and philosophers actually tried to detect the character, disposition, or destiny of a person from external features. However, such descriptions may simply testify to the process whereby a certain type is reduced to a few, simplified, reductive, and essentialized features that are easy to identify, copy, and pass on. Thus, from a certain ethnocentric and in-group perspective, such propositions are valid. Now, if Paul shows the slightest evidence of such idiosyncratic and stereotypical generalizations in Romans, we should be cautious about regarding these as universal or anthropological descriptions. Instead, we should consider whether Paul was merely passing along cultural, ethnic, and religious stereotypes of Gentiles from a Jewish perspective.

The significant consequence of this way of perceiving people in antiquity was the belief that behaviour and character were fixed and unchanging. People were born into a fully pre-arranged world where everything significant was equally pre-controlled by nature. Therefore, in light of the physiognomic literature, we may reasonably expect first-century Greeks, Romans, and Jews to have attributed certain behaviours to peoples based on their appearance, background, nationality, place of origin, or kin group. Those belonging to a particular geographical location or a certain race would have been expected to behave in a certain way, because the features one exhibited were regarded as corresponding to a certain behaviour – that is, you are the way you look, and physiognomics replicate your identity. Cicero bears witness to such an understanding, when he describes Jews and Syrians as ‘races born to slavery’.25 Aristotle, too, works from the assumption that certain races are only suited to, and destined to slavery, because of their collective characteristics.26 In effect, those who came from servile origins would have been expected to act like slaves – just as a Gentile would have been expected to act like a Gentile from a stereotypic and ethnocentric Jewish point of view. And since behaviour was viewed as unchangeable, so also the essential servility or ‘Gentile-ness’ was viewed as unchangeable. Consequently, when we read the descriptions of certain races or nationalities in Paul ( i.e. Jews and Gentiles), we should analyse these descriptions as examples of stereotypical ethnic presentations of ‘us’ and ‘them’.