104 olE JAKoB FIlTvEDT could be constructed with reference to many different aspects of identity. The fixity may or may not have anything to do with claims to kinship and descent, according to Buell. Also other things could be used to assert the fixity of ethnicity. Thus, even on the rhetorical level, claims to peoplehood need not have anything to do with shared kinship, whether physical or spiritual, according to Buell. If kinship is asserted by an author, the author does not need to claim that the kinship in question is physical in order for it to construct an identity that is properly called “ethnic”. It follows that both “Jew”, “Gentile” and “descendant of Abraham”, as these terms appear in Gal 3,26-29, fit Buell’s wide definition of ethnicity. Hodge cites Buell’s definition of ethnicity with approval, and writes as follows: “In contrast to more traditional models in which kinship and ethnicity are fixed, immutable aspects of identity, my view is that these constructs are dynamic dis- courses which incorporate both fixed and fluid components, even when there is tension among these”. Moreover, Hodge also rejects the view that putative physical kinship is default to ethnic identity 10. one implication of this redefinition of ethnicity is that the distinc- tion between “ethnicity” and “religion” is blurred: “we see ethnicity and religion as intertwined and mutually constituting” 11. More specif- ically, Buell and Hodge argue that Paul thought that religious practice could change one’s ethnic identity. Kinship ties that are created through faith, baptism and reception of the Holy Spirit must be taken as seriously as kinship ties based on putative shared blood lines. The kind of identity which results from baptism is not ethnically neutral, but specifically Jewish, in that non-Jews are brought in under a Judean umbrella. This does not imply, however, that non-Jews lose their former ethnic identities, for we can imagine different ethnic identities for one and the same person, organized in a hierarchy which deter- mines which identity is to be prioritized 12. To be “in Christ” is thus a freshly imagined, Judeo-ethnic identity, which is able to incorporate non-Jews too. It is not a non-ethnic identity which transcends all ethnic boundaries. This demonstrates that notions of ethnicity could be used for the purpose of developing “universalizing arguments”. 10 HoDGE, If Sons, 16, see in particular n. 89. 11 For reference to all the claims attributed to Buell and Hodge in the ensuing paragraph, see BuEll – HoDGE, “Politics of Interpretation”, 243-250. 12 This is quite similar to P. Esler’s model of nested identities: P. ESlER, Con- flict and Identity in Romans. The Social Setting of Paul’s letter (Minneapolis, MN 2003) 49-50.