A “NoN-ETHNIC” PEoPlE? 107 are well aware, there is nothing new to the observation that ethnic terminology is used within the early Jesus movement to claim a shared identity for people who did not regard themselves to be physically related. The question is how this observation should be interpreted. An alternative interpretation to the one suggested by Buell and Hodge is that Paul’s argument presupposes that his audience was capable of recognizing that he sometimes used ethnic terminology in a metaphorical way 20. This interpretation also explains the fact in ques- tion, namely that terms related to kinship and peoplehood are used by Paul to construct a sense of identity. In order to sustain their own interpretation, Buell and Hodge thus have to refute a metaphorical interpretation of the ancient texts which they draw attention to. The possibility that ethnic language is used in a metaphorical way by Paul, or in other texts stemming from the early Jesus movement, is not discussed at any great length in either Buell’s or Hodge’s works, but it is still rejected by both. Buell claims that taking the ethnic terms in question as being metaphors would be inadequate, since it does not take seriously the fact that the texts in question claim membership in a real people for their audiences. Buell recognizes that Justin, among others, emphasizes that there is a fundamental distinction between his notion of a kinship that is mediated through faith and one that is physically mediated (Dial. 135.5-6) 21. But she still maintains that “these differences cannot be neatly mapped in terms of literal to metaphorical since what is at stake is the real Israel” 22. Buell also fears that a metaphorical interpretation of Paul would lead us to overlook or downplay the fact that Paul forged notions of identity that were socio-politically embedded and ritually enacted. She points to interpretive grids that see Christianity as a religion rather than as an ethnicity, and claims that this way of conceptualizing things implies that “Christian self-definition as a genos, ethnos or laos is more likely to be ignored or explained as ‘mere’ metaphor, rather than in terms of sociopolitical embeddedness” 23. 20 HoDGE (If Sons, 17) does discuss the power of kinship metaphors, but, as we will see, she rejects the possibility that Paul’s use of kinship terminology should be classified as metaphorical. 21 S. SToWERS argues that Buell, in lumping these two notions of kinship together, “denies Justin distinctions that he makes and that most people in his time would have understood” (review of D.K. BuEll, Why This New Race? Ethnic Reasoning in Early Christianity. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75 [2007] 729). 22 BuEll, Why this New Race?, 102. 23 BuEll, Why this New Race?, 62.