110 olE JAKoB FIlTvEDT suggestion that Paul could have solved the problem in Galatia by drawing attention to how his non-Jewish audience could acquire a new ethnic identity through a ritual of conversion. Yet, there are also some problems with this view. If this is really what Paul wanted to argue, one wonders why he so vehemently reject- ed the possibility that the Galatians should undergo circumcision (5,1- 12; 6,11-18). After all, circumcision would probably have been recog- nized as the way of including non-Jewish males into the Jewish people. The solution Buell and Hodge attribute to Paul, i.e., that it is possible for non-Jews to come in under a Judean umbrella via conversion, thus seems to be curiously similar to the solution Paul in Galatians attributes to his opponents. Moreover, had Paul wanted to argue for the solution Buell and Hodge attribute to him, we would have expected baptism to be a ritual that was only relevant for non-Jews. If the division between Jews and non-Jews is overcome by non-Jews acquiring a new ethnic identity, thereby coming in under a Judean umbrella, then the solution to the problem would not have affected the standing of Jews 30. There are, in fact, some Pauline scholars who have suggested that Paul wrote only for non-Jews, and that this shaped his message 31. Hodge explicitly endorses this view 32. However, the key question for our purposes now is not whether or not Jews are addressed in Paul’s letters, but whether Paul’s message has implications also for Jewish identity. For the present purposes, the question may focus on whether Paul seems to hold that also Jews need to be baptized. Good reasons suggest that he did 33. The claim that because of baptism there is “nei- 30 Cf. HoDGE (If Sons, 67): “By presenting baptism as new kinship, Paul crafts a myth of collective identity for gentiles; they can trace their beginnings not only to their baptism into Christ but also to their ancestor, Abraham, in whose seed they were blessed. Baptism into Christ creates an aggregative connection between gentiles and Jews”. 31 J.G. GAGER, The Origins of Anti-Semitism. Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (New York 1983); l. GASToN, Paul and the Torah (vancouver 1987); P. EISENBAuM, Paul was not a Christian. The original Mes- sage of the Misunderstood Apostle (New York 2009). S. SToWERS, (A Rereading of Romans. Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven, Conn, 1994] 21-33), distin- guishes between the empirical reader and the encoded reader, and argues that the encoded readers are non-Jews. 32 HoDGE, If Sons, 9-11. 33 Evidence from Acts, if it counts for anything, suggests that also Jews were baptized within the early Jesus movement (cf. 2,36-41). Indeed, Paul himself is also said to have been baptized directly after his encounter with Jesus on the road to Damascus (9,18).