108 olE JAKoB FIlTvEDT Hodge expresses similar views, claiming that “for Paul, kinship and ethnicity cannot be merely metaphorical, for lineage, paternity and peoplehood are the salient categories for describing one’s status before the God of Israel”. on the next page, she claims that “notions of peoplehood and paternity are by no means rejected, downplayed, or even metaphorized by Paul; instead they are central to his gospel and crucial to his argument” 24. The implication of the dichotomy Hodge here creates seems to be that metaphorical language cannot have been central to Paul’s gospel or crucial to his argument. In their co-authored study, Buell and Hodge thus argue that the kind of kinship that flows from belief, baptism, and the work of the Spirit is portrayed as being “even more real” than kinship constituted on the basis of shared blood. They then go on to claim, in the same sentence, that “it is a mistake to interpret Paul’s rhetoric in terms of a mere metaphor” 25. This argument against a metaphorical interpretation of the terms in question seems confused, in that it is based on false dichotomies. It is evident that Paul depicts the Galatians as standing in a real rela- tionship with God, Christ and Abraham. However, this observation does nothing to clarify whether Paul used metaphors to articulate the reality of these relationships. The opposition Buell and Hodge construct between metaphorical and real seems to be a reaction against the habit of speaking of Jesus’ followers as members of “fictive” kin- ship groups 26. Although I share their critique of the phrase “fictive kinship”, there is no reason to let that problematic phrase determine how metaphors are conceptualized. There is also no reason to claim that an identity which is socio-politically embedded and ritually en- acted cannot be expressed by means of a metaphor. use of metaphor- ical language does not suggest a departure from reality; it is rather a way of using language to describe, interpret and discover the nature of reality, as this reality is experienced by specific people. The di- chotomies which determine Buell’s and Hodge’s rejection of a metaphorical interpretation of Paul seem to surface in the use of the phrase “mere metaphor”, which suggests that metaphorical statements are something less than real and important claims which have a genuine impact on, and are genuinely shaped by, social realities 27. 24 HoDGE, If Sons, 4-5. 25 BuEll – HoDGE, “Politics of Interpretation”, 245. 26 Thus, for instance, BARClAY, “Anomaly or Apostate”, 104. 27 Similar devaluating statements are also made by other authors who share some of Buell’s views. Stowers writes, in appraisal of Buell, that to read early