Galatians, Epistle to The

1. Place and Time Interdependent:

The question of the people to whom, is bound up with that of the time at which, the Epistle to the Galatians was written. Each goes to determine the other. The expression "the first time" (to proteron) of Ga 4:13 presumes Paul to have been twice with the readers previously--for the first occasion, see Ga 4:13-15; for the second, Ga 1:9; 5:3. The explanation of Round (Date of the Epistle to Galatians, 1906), that the apostle intended to distinguish his first arrival at the several (South) Galatian cities from his return in the course of the same journey (Ac 14:21-23), cannot be accepted: Derbe, the limit of the expedition, received Paul and Barnabas but once on that round, and in retracing their steps the missionaries were completing an interrupted work, whereas Ga 4:13 implies a second, distinct visitation of the churches concerned as a whole; in Ac 15:36 Paul looks back to the journey of Ac 13:14:Ac 26:1-32 as one event.

Now the apostle revisited the South Galatian churches in starting on the 2nd missionary tour (Ac 16:1-5). Consequently, if his "Galatians" were Christians of Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe (the South Galatian hypothesis), the letter was written in the further course of the 2nd tour--from Macedonia or Corinth about the time of 1 and 2 Thess (so Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, I, English translation), or from Antioch in the interval between the 2nd and 3rd journeys (so Ramsay); for on this latter journey (Ac 18:23) Paul (ex hyp.) traversed `the (South) Galatian country' a third time. On the other hand, if they were people of Galatia proper, i.e. of North (Old) Galatia, the epistle cannot be earlier than the occasion of Ac 18:23, when Paul touched a second time "the Galatian country," which, on this supposition, he had evangelized in traveling from South Galatia to Troas during the previous tour (Ac 16:6-8). On the North Galatian hypothesis, the letter was dispatched from Ephesus during Paul's long residence there (Ac 19:1-41; so most interpreters, ancient and modern), in which case it heads the 2nd group of the epistles; or later, from Macedonia or Corinth, and shortly before the writing of the Epistle to the Romans (thus Lightfoot, Salmon, A. L. Williams and others).

Per contra, the earlier date, if proved independently, carries with it the South Galatian, the later date the North Galatian theory. The subscription of the Textus Receptus of the New Testament "written from Rome," rests on inferior manuscript authority and late Patristic tradition. Clemen, with no suggestion as to place of origin, assigns to the writing a date subsequent to the termination of the 3rd missionary tour (55 or 57 AD), inasmuch as the epistle reflects the controversy about the Law, which in Romans is comparatively mild, at an acute, and, therefore (he supposes), an advanced stage.

2. Internal Evidence:

Lightfoot (chapter iii of Introduction to Commentary) placed Galatians in the 2nd group of the epistles between 2 Corinthians and Romans, upon considerations drawn from "the style and character" of the epistle. His argument might be strengthened by a detailed linguistic analysis (see III , 1-3, above). The more minutely one compares Galatians with Romans and 1 and 2 Corinthians, the more these four are seen to form a continuous web, the product of the same experience in the writer's mind and the same situation in the church. This presumption, based on internal evidence, must be tested by examination of the topographical and chronological data.

3. External Data:

(1) Galatia and the Galatians.

The double sense of these terms obtaining in current use has been shown in the article on GALATIA; Steinmann sets out the evidence at large in his essay on Der Leserkreis des Galaterbriefes, 61-76 (1908); see also A. L. Williams' Introduction to Galatians in Cambr. Greek Test. (1910). Roman authors of the period in using these expressions commonly thought of provincial Galatia (NOTE: Schurer seems to be right, however, in maintaining that "Galatia" was only the abbreviated designation for the province, named a parte potiori, and that in more formal description it was styled "Galatia, Pisidia, Phrygia," etc.) which then embraced in addition to Galatia proper a large tract of Southern Phrygia and Lycaonia, reaching from Pisidian Antioch in the west to Derbe in the east; but writers of Asia Minor leaned to the older local and national usage, according to which "Galatia" signified the north-central highlands of the peninsula, on both sides of the river Halys, in which the invading Galatae had settled long before this time. (On their history see the previous article) It is asserted that Paul strictly followed the official, as against the popular, usus loquendi in these matters--a questionable dictum (see A. L. Williams, op. cit., xix, xx, or Steinmann's Leserkreis, 78-104), in view of Ga 1:21-22 (note the Greek double article), to go no farther. There was nothing in Paul's Roman citizenship to make him a precisian in a point like this. Ramsay has proved that all four cities of Ac 13:14:Ac 23:1-35 were by this time included in provincial Galatia. Their inhabitants might therefore, officially, be styled "Galatians" (Galatae); it does not follow that this was a fit or likely compilation for Paul to use. Julicher says this would have been a piece of "bad taste" on his part. The attachment of the southern districts (Phrygian, Pisidian, Lycaonian) to Galatia was recent--Derbe had been annexed so late as the year 41--and artificial. Supposing that their Roman "colonial" rank made the designation "Galatians" agreeable to citizens of Antioch or Lystra, there was little in it to appeal to Iconians or Derbeans (compare Schmiedel, inEB , col. 1604).

(2) Prima Facie Sense of Acts 16:6.

The "Galatian country" (Galatike chora) is mentioned by Luke, with careful repetition, in Ac 16:6 and Ac 18:23. Luke at any rate was not tied to imperial usage; he distinguishes "Phrygia" from "Asia" in Ac 2:9-10, although Phrygia was administratively parceled out between Asia and Galatia. When therefore "Asia" is opposed in Ac 16:6 to "the Phrygian and Galatian country" (or "Phrygia and Galatian country," Zahn), we presume that the three terms of locality bear alike a non-official sense, so that the "Galatian country" means Old Galatia (or some part of it) lying to the Northeast, as "Asia" means the narrower Asia west of "Phrygia." On this presumption we understand that Paul and Silas, after completing their visitation of "the cities" of the former tour (Ac 16:4-5; compare Ac 15:36, in conjunction with Ac 13:14 through Ac 14:23), since they were forbidden to proceed westward and "speak the word in Asia," turned their faces to the region--first Phrygian, then Galatian--that stretched northward into new territory, through which they traveled toward "Mysia" and "Bithynia" (Ac 16:7). Thus Ac 16:6 fills in the space between the South Galatia covered by Ac 16:4 and Ac 5:1-42, and the Mysian-Bithynian border where we find the travelers in Ac 16:7. Upon this, the ordinary construction of Luke's somewhat involved sentence, North Galatia was entered by Paul on his 2nd tour; he retraversed, more completely, "the Galatian region" at the commencement of the 3rd tour, when he found "disciples" there (Ac 18:23) whom he had gathered on the previous visit.

(3) The Grammar of Acts 16:6.

In the interpretation of the Lukan passages proposed by Ramsay, Ac 16:1Ac 6:1-15a, detached from Ac 16:1-40b, is read as the completion of Ac 16:1-5 (`And they went through the Phrygian .... region. They were forbidden by the Holy Ghost .... in Asia, and came over against Mysia,' etc.); and "the Phrygian and Galatian region" means the southwestern division of Provincia Galatia, a district at once Phrygian (ethnically) and Galatian (politically). The combination of two local adjectives., under a common article, to denote the same country in different respects, if exceptional in Greek idiom (Ac 15:41 and Ac 27:5 illustrate the usual force of this collocation), is clearly possible--the one strictly parallel geographical expression, "the Iturean and Trachonite country" in Lu 3:1, unfortunately, is also ambiguous. But the other difficulty of grammar involved in the new rendering of Ac 16:6 is insuperable: the severance of the participle, "having been forbidden" (koluthentes), from the introductory verb, "they went through" (diel-thon), wrenches the sentence to dislocation; the aorist participle in such connection "must contain, if not something antecedent to `they went,' at least something synchronous with it, in no case a thing subsequent to it, if all the rules of grammar and all sure understanding of language are not to be given up" (Schmiedel, EB, col. 1599; endorsed in Moulton's Prolegomena to the Grammar of New Testament Greek, 134; see also Chase in The Expositor,IV , viii, 404-11, and ix, 339-42). Ac 10:29 ("I came .... when I was sent for") affords a grammatical parallel to Ac 16:6 (`They went through .... since they were hindered').

Zahn's position is peculiar (Intro to New Testament, I, 164-202). Rejecting Ramsay's explanation of Ac 16:6, and of Ac 18:23 (where Ramsay sees Paul a third time crossing South Galatia), and maintaining that Luke credits the apostle with successful work in North Galatia, he holds, notwithstanding, the South Galatian view of the epistle. This involves the paradox that Paul in writing to "the churches of Galatia" ignored those of North Galatia to whom the title properly belonged--an incongruence which Ramsay escapes by denying that Paul had set foot in Old Galatia. In the 1st edition of the Einleitung Zahn had supposed North and South Galatia together included in the address; this supposition is contrary to the fact that the readers form a homogeneous body, the fruit of a single mission (4:13), and are affected simultaneously by the same disturbance (1:6; 5:7-9). Associating the letter in 2nd edition with South Galatians alone, Zahn suggests that while Paul had labored in North Galatia and found "disciples" there on his return, these were too few and scattered to form "churches"--an estimate scarcely in keeping with Luke's phrase Ac 5:7-9 "all the disciples" (Ac 18:23), and raising a distinction between "disciples" and "churches" foreign to the historian's usage (see Ac 6:2; 9:19; 14:20). We must choose between North and South Galatia; and if churches existed among the people of the north at the time of writing, then the northerners claim this title by right of use and wont--and the epistle with it. The reversal of "Galatian and Phrygia(n)" in Ac 18:23, as compared with Ac 16:6, implies that the apostle on the Ac 3:1-26rd tour struck "the Galatian country" first, traveling this time directly North from Syrian Antioch, and turned westward toward Phrygia when he had reached Old Galatia; whereas his previous route had brought him westward along the highroad traversing South Galatia, until he turned northward at a point not far distant from Pisidian Antioch, to reach North Galatia through Phrygia from the southwest. See the Map of Asia Minor.

(4) Notes of Time in the Epistle.

The "3 years" of Ga 1:18 and the "14 years" of Ga 2:1 are both seemingly counted from Paul's conversion. (a) The synchronism of the conversion with the murder of Stephen and the free action of the high priest against the Nazarenes (Ac 9:2, etc.), and of Saul's visit to Jerusalem in the 3rd year thereafter with Aretas' rule in Damascus (2Co 11:32-33), forbid our placing these two events further back than 36 and 38--at furthest, 35 and 37 AD (see Turner on "Chronology of theNT " inHDB , as against the earlier dating). (b) This calculation brings us to 48-49 as the year of the conference of Ga 2:1-10--a date precluding the association of that meeting with the errand to Jerusalem related in Ac 11:30 and Ac 12:25, while it suits the identification of the former with the council of Ac 15:1-41. Other indications converge on this as the critical epoch of Paul's apostleship. The expedition to Cyprus and South Galatia (Ac 13:1-52; 14:1-28) had revealed in Paul `signs of the apostle' which the chiefs of the Judean church now recognized (Ga 2:7-9; compare Ac 15:12), and gave him the ascendancy which he exercised at this crisis; up to the time of Ac 13:1 "Saul" was known but as an old persecutor turned preacher (Ga 1:23), one of the band of "prophets and teachers" gathered round Barnabas at Antioch. The previous visit of Barnabas and Saul to Jerusalem (Ac 11:1-30; 12:1-25) had no ostensible object beyond that of famine-relief. From Ac 12:1-25 we learn that the mother church just then was suffering deadly persecution; Peter certainly was out of the way. There was no opportunity for the negotiation described in Ga 2:1-10, and it would have been premature for Paul to raise the question of his apostleship at this stage. In all likelihood, he saw few Judean Christians then beyond "the elders," who received the Antiochene charity (Ac 11:30). Nothing transpired in connection with this remittance, important as it was from Luke's standpoint, to affect the question of Ga 1:1-24; 2:1-21; it would have been idle for Paul to refer to it. On the other hand, no real contradiction exists between Ac 15:1-41 and Ga 2:1-21 "The two accounts admirably complete each other" (Pfleiderer; compare Cambr. Greek Test., 145, 146; Steinmann, Die Abfassungszeit d. Gal.-Briefes, section 7); in matters of complicated dispute involving personal considerations, attempts at a private understanding naturally precede the public settlement. It would be strange indeed if the same question of the circumcision of Gentilebelievers had twice within a few years been raised at Antioch, to be twice carried to Jerusalem and twice over decided there by the same parties--Barnabas and Paul, Peter and James--and with no reference made in the second discussion (that of Acts, ex hyp.) to the previous compact (Ga 2:1-21). Granting the epistle written after the council, as both Ramsay and Zahn suppose, we infer that Paul has given his more intimate account of the crisis, about which the readers were already informed in the sense of Ac 15:1-41, with a view to bring out its essential bearing on the situation.

(c) The encounter of Paul and Cephas at Antioch (Ga 2:11-21) is undated. The time of its occurrence bears on the date of the epistle. As hitherto, the order of narration presumably follows the order of events, the "but" of Ga 2:11 appears to contrast Cephas' present attitude with his action in Jerusalem just described. Two possible opportunities present themselves for a meeting of Paul and Cephas in Antioch subsequently to the council--the time of Paul's and Barnabas' sojourn there on their return from Jerusalem (Ac 15:35-36), or the occasion of Paul's later visit, occupying "some time," between the 2nd and 3rd tours (Ac 18:22-23), when for aught we know Barnabas and Peter may both have been in the Syrian capital.

The former dating assumes that Peter yielded to the Judaizers on the morrow of the council, that "Barnabas too was carried away" while still in colleagueship with Paul and when the cause of Gentilefreedom, which he had championed, was in the flush of victory. It assumes that the legalists had no sooner been defeated than they opened a new attack on the same ground, and presented themselves as "from James" when James only the other day had repudiated their agitation (Ac 15:19,24). All this is very unlikely. We must allow the legalists time to recover from their discomfiture and to lay new plans (see II 2, (2), (3), (4). Moreover, Luke's detailed narrative in Ac 15:30-36, which makes much of the visit of Judas and Silas, gives no hint of any coming of Peter to Antioch at that time, and leaves little room for this; he gives an impression of settled peace and satisfaction following on the Jerusalem concordat, with which the strife of Ga 2:11 ff would ill accord. Through the course of the 2nd missionary tour, so far as the Thessalonian epistles indicate, Paul's mind remained undisturbed by legalistic troubles. "The apostle had quitted Jerusalem (after his understanding with the pillars) and proceeded to his 2nd missionary journey full of satisfaction at the victory he had gained and free from anxiety for the future .... The decisive moment of the crisis necessarily falls between the Thessalonian and Galatian epistles .... A new situation suddenly presents itself to him on his return" to Antioch (A. Sabatier, The Apostle Paul, English translation, 10, 11, also 124-36).

(5) Paul's Renewed Struggle with Legalism.

The new situation arose through the vacillation of Peter; and the "certain from James" who made mischief at Antioch, were the forerunners of "troublers" who agitated the churches far and wide, appearing simultaneously in Corinth and North Galatia. The attempt to set up a separate church-table for the circumcised at Antioch was the first movement in a crafty and persistent campaign against Gentileliberties engineered from Jerusalem. The Epistle to the Romans signalized Paul's conclusive victory in this struggle, which covered the period of the 3rd missionary tour. On his revisitation of the Galatians (1:9; 5:3 parallel Ac 18:23), fresh from the contention with Cephas and aware of the wide conspiracy on foot, Paul gave warning of the coming of "another gospel"; it had arrived, fulfilling his worst fears. Upon this view of the course of affairs (see Neander, Planting and Training of the Christian Church,III , vii; Godet's Introduction to the New Testament, Epistles of Paul, 200-201; Sabatier, as above), the mistake of Peter at Antioch was the proximate antecedent of the trouble in Galatia; hence, Ga 2:11-21 leads up to Ga 3:1 and the main argument. Now, if the Antiochene collision befell so late as this, then the epistle is subsequent to the date of Ac 18:22-23; from which it follows, once more, that Gal belongs to the Ac 3:1-26rd missionary tour and the Corinthians-Romans group of letters.

(6) Ephesus or Corinth?

Chiefly because of the words, "you are removing so quickly," in Ga 1:6, the epistle is by many referred to the earlier part of the above period, the time of Paul's protracted sojourn in Ephesus (Ac 19:8,10:Ac 28:31 AD); "so quickly," however, signifies not "so soon after my leaving you," but "so suddenly" and "with such slight persuasion" (Ga 5:7-8). From Ephesus, had the apostle been there when the trouble arose, he might as easily have visited Galatia as he did Corinth under like circumstances (so much is implied in 2Co 13:1): he is longing to go to Galatia, but cannot (Ga 4:19-20). A more distant situation, such as Macedonia or Corinth (Ac 20:1-3), where Paul found himself in the last months of this tour (56-57 AD), and where, in churches of some standing, he was surrounded by a body of sympathetic "brethren" (Ga 1:1) whose support gave weight to his remonstrance with the Galatians, suits the epistle better on every account.

(7) Paul's First Coming to Galatia.

In Ga 4:13-15 the apostle recalls, in words surcharged with emotion, his introduction to the readers. His "preaching the good news" to them was due to "weakness of the flesh"--to some sickness, it seems, which arrested his steps and led him to minister in a locality that otherwise he would have "passed over," as he did Mysia a little later (Ac 16:8). So we understand the obscure language of Ga 4:13. The South Galatian theorists, in default of any reference to illness as affecting the apostle's movements in Ac 13:13-14, favor Ramsay's conjecture that Paul fell a victim to malaria on the Pamphylian coast, and that he and Barnabas made for Pisidian Antioch by way of seeking the cooler uplands. The former explanation lies nearer to the apostle's language: he says "I preached to you," not "I came to you, because of illness." The journey of a hundred miles from Perga to Antioch was one of the least likely to be undertaken by a fever-stricken patient (see the description in Conybeare and Howson's Life of Paul, or in Ramsay's Paul the Traveler). Besides, if this motive had brought Paul to Antioch, quite different reasons are stated by Luke for his proceeding to the other South Galatian towns (see Ac 13:50-51; 14:6,19-20). Reading Ga 4:13-15, one imagines the missionary hastening forward to some further goal (perhaps the important cities of Bithynia, Ac 16:7), when he is prostrated by a malady the physical effects of which were such as to excite extreme aversion. As strength returns, he begins to offer his gospel in the neighborhood where the unwilling halt has been made. There was much to prejudice the hearers against a preacher addressing them under these conditions; but the Galatians welcomed him as a heaven-sent messenger. Their faith was prompt and eager, their gratitude boundless.

The deification of Barnabas and Paul by the Lycaonians (Ac 14:11-18) is the one incident of Luke's narrative of which the apostle's description reminds us. To this the latter is thought to be alluding when he writes, "You received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus!" But could he speak thus of his reception--hateful at the time--in the character of a heathen god, and of a reception that ended in his stoning? The "welcome" of the messenger implies faith in his message (compare Ga 4:14; 2Co 6:1; 1Th 1:6; Mt 10:40-41, where the same Greek verb is used).

Paul's mishandling at Lystra (Ac 14:19-20) has suggested a correspondence in the opposite sense between the epistle and the story of the South Galatian mission. The Lystran stones left their print on Paul's body; in these disfiguring scars one might see "the marks of Jesus" to which he points in Ga 6:17, were it not for the note of time, "from henceforth," which distinguishes these stigmata as a fresh infliction, identifying the servant now more than ever with his Master. The true parallel to Ga 6:17 is 2Co 4:10 (see the context in 2Co 4:7 through 2Co 5:4, also 18), which we quoted above (III, 2). When he wrote 2 Cor, the apostle was emerging from an experience of crucial anguish, which gave him an aspect imaging the dying Saviour whom he preached; to this new consecration the appeal of our epistle seems to refer.

(8) Barnabas and the Galatians.

The references to Barnabas in Ga 2:1,9,13, at first sight suggest the South Galatian destination of the letter. For Barnabas and Paul were companions on the first only of the three tours, and Barnabas is named thrice here and but twice in the rest of the epistles. Yet these very references awaken misgiving. Barnabas was Paul's full partner in the South Galatian mission; he was senior in service, and had introduced Saul to the apostles at Jerusalem; he was the leader at the outset of this journey (Ac 9:27; 11:22-26; 13:1-3; 15:25)--Barnabas was taken for "Zeus" by the heathen of Lystra, while the eloquent Paul was identified with "Hermes" (Ac 14:12). The churches of South Galatia had two founders, and owed allegiance to Barnabas along with Paul. Yet Paul deals with the readers as though he alone were their father in Christ. Referring to Barnabas conspicuously in the letter and as differing from himself on a point affecting the question at issue (Ga 2:13), Paul was the more bound to give his old comrade his due and to justify his assumption of sole authority, if he were in truth addressing communities which owed their Christianity to the two men in conjunction. On the South Galatian hypothesis, the apostle appears ungenerously to have elbowed his colleague out of the partnership. The apostle Paul, it is to be noted, was particularly sensitive on matters of this kind (see 1Co 4:15; 2Co 10:13-16). The name of Barnabas was known through the whole church (see 1Co 9:6; Col 4:10); there is no more difficulty in supposing the North Galatians to be familiar with it than with the names of James and John (Ga 2:9). Possibly Paul, as his responsibilities extended, had left the care of South Galatia to Barnabas, who could readily superintend this district from Antioch in Syria; Paul refers to him in 1Co 9:6, long after the separation of Ac 15:39, as a fellow-worker. This would account for his making direct for North Galatia on the 3rd tour; see IV , 3 (3).

(9) The Two Antiochs.

In Ga 2:11 Paul refers to "Antioch,". the famous city on the Orontes. To South Galatians "Antioch" meant, as in 2Ti 3:11, the Pisidian city of that name. Had Paul been addressing South Galatians, and Antiochenes imprimis, he could not without singular inadvertence have failed to make the distinction. The gaucherie would have been as marked as if, in writing to a circle of West-of-England towns including Bradford-on-Avon, one should mention "Bradford" without qualification, meaning the Yorkshire Bradford.

The arguments drawn from local difference in legal usage--in the matters of adoption, testament, etc.--in favor of the South Galatian destination (see Schmiedel's examination of Ramsay's views inEB , coll. 1608-9), and from the temperament of Paul's "Galatians" in favor of North Galatia (Lightfoot), are too precarious to build upon.

(10) Wider Bearings of the Problem.

On a broad view of the scope of Paul's missionary work and of the relation of his letters to Acts, there is much to commend the South Galatian theory. It simplifies the situation by connecting this cardinal writing of Paul with churches of cardinal importance in Luke's narrative. The South Galatian cities lay along the main route of the apostle's travels, and in the mid-stream of the church's life. The epistle, when associated with the Christian communities of this region, gains a definite setting and a firm point of attachment in New Testament history; whereas the founding of North Galatian Christianity is indicated by Luke, if at all, in the most cursory fashion, and it held an obscure place in the early church. How, it is asked, could Paul's intimate friend have been (on the North Galatian theory) so uninterested in churches by which Paul himself set such store? And how can Paul have ignored, apart from the allusion of 2Ti 3:11, the South Galatians who formed the first-fruits of his wider labors and supplied a vital link in his chain of churches? In reply, we must point out: (1) that for anything we know Paul wrote many letters to South Galatia; we possess but a selection from his correspondence; the choice of the canonical epistles was not governed by the importance of the parties addressed in them--witness Colossians and Philemon; nor were Paul's concern for his churches, and the empressement with which he wrote, determined by their magnitude and position, but by their needs and their hold on his affections (see Ga 1:6, etc.; Ga 4:12-20). (2) The North Galatian mission lay off the central line of Paul's journeyings and of the advance of GentileChristianity; this is probably the reason why Luke, who was compelled to a strict economy of space, just ignores this field, though he shows himself aware of its existence. The apostle's confession that he preached to the readers, in the first instance, not from choice but necessity (Ga 4:13), accords with the neglect of North Galatia in Acts; the evangelizing of the North Galatians was an aside in Paul's work--an incident beyond the scope of his plans, from which at this period he was compelled again and again to deviate (Ac 16:6-10).

After all, though less important during the 1st century than South Galatia North Galatia was not an unimportant or inaccessible region. It was traversed by the ancient "Royal Road" from the East to the Hellespont, which the apostle probably followed as far as Phrygia in the journey of Ac 18:22-23. Planted by Paul in Old Galatia, the gospel would spread to Bithynia and Pontus farther north, as it certainly had done by the time Peter wrote to the churches of Asia Minor (1Pe 1:1). It is observable that "Galatia" stands between "Pontus and Cappadocia" in Peter's enumeration of the provinces--an order indicating that Christians of North Galatia were particularly in the writer's mind. Had Paul never set foot in North Galatia, had he not worked along the Royal Road and put his message in the Way of reaching the northern provinces of Asia Minor, the claim of Ro 15:19 is difficult to sustain, that "from Jerusalem, and in a circle as far as Illyricum, he had fulfilled the gospel of Christ." On the whole, we find the external evidence in accord with the testimony given by the internal character and affinities of the epistle: we judge that this epistle was written circa the autumn or winter of 56-57 AD, from Macedonia or Corinth, toward the end of Paul's third missionary tour; that it was addressed to a circle of churches situated in Galatia proper or North Galatia, probably in the western part of this country contiguous to (or overlapping) Phrygia (Ac 16:6); and that its place lies between the two Corinthian and the Roman letters among the epistles of the second group.

LITERATURE.

The South Galatian destination was proposed by the Danish Mynster (Einltg. in d. Brief an d. Gal, 1825; M. however included North Galatia), and adopted by the French Perrot (De Galatia Provincia Romana, 1867) and Renan (S. Paul); by the German Clemen (Chronologie d. paulin. Briefe, 1893; Die Adressaten d. Gal.-Briefes; Paulus: sein Leben u. Wirken, 1904), Hausrath (NT Zeitgeschichte, 1873, English Translation), Pfleiderer (Paulinismus, 1873, English translation; Paulinismus2, much altered; Urchristenthum, 1902), Steck (as above), Weizsacker (Das apost. Zeitalter3, 1902, English Translation); after Ramsay (see under GALATIA), by Belser (Beitrage z. Erklarung d. AG, etc.), O. Holtzmann (Zeitschrift f. KG, 1894), von Soden (Hist of Early Christian Lit., ET; he includes South with North Galatia), Weber (Die Adressaten d. Gal.-Briefes), J. Weiss (RE3, article "Kleinasien"), in Germany; by Askwith (Ep. to Gal: An Essay on Its Destination and Date), Bacon (Expos, V, vii, 123-36; x, 351-67), Bartlet (Expos, V, x, 263-80), Gifford (Expos, IV, x, 1-20), Maclean (1-vol HDB), Rendall (Expos, IV, ix, 254-64; EGT, Introduction to "Galatians"), Round (as above), Sanday (with hesitation, The Expositor, IV, vii, 491-95), Woodhouse (EB, article "Galatia"). The N. Galatian destination, held by earlier scholars up to Lightfoot and Salmon (DB2, an illuminating discussion), is reasserted, in view of Ramsay's findings, by Chase (Expos, IV, viii, 401-19; ix, 331-42), Cheetham (Class. Review, 1894), Dods (HDB, article "Galatians"), Williams (Cambr. Greek Testament., 1910), in this country; by Sabatier (L'Apotre Paul2, English translation, 1891); by Gheorghiu (Adressatii epistle c. Galateni, Cernauti, 1904, praised by Steinmann); and by the German critics Blass (Acta Apost.), yon Dobschutz (Die urchr. Gemeinden, 1902, and Probleme d. apost. Zeitalters), Harnack (Apostelgeschichte, 1908, 87-90), H. Holtzmann (Handcomm. z. New Testament, "AG"), Julicher (NT Intro, English Translation), Lipsius (Handcomm. z. New Testament, "Galater") Lietzmann (doubtfully, Handbuch z. N T, III, i, "Galaterbrief"), Mommsen (ZNTW, 1901, 81-96), Schmiedel (Encyclopedia Biblica), Schurer (Jahrbuch f. prot. Theologie, XVIII, 460- 74), Sieffert (Meyer's Kommentar), Steinmann (as above), Zockler (a full and masterly discussion: Studien u. Kritiken, 1895, 51-102). Mommsen's verdict is thus expressed: "To apprehend `the Galatians' of Paul otherwise than in the strict and narrower sense of the term, is unallowable. The Provinces associated with Galatia under the rule of a single legate, as e.g. Lycaonia certainly was as early as the time of Claudius, were in no way incorporated in that region; the official inscriptions simply set Galatia at the head of the combined regions. Still less could the inhabitants of Iconium and Lystra be named `Galatians' in common speech."

Apart from the aforesaid controversy, besides the standard Commentary on Paul's Epistles, Luther's Ad Galatas is of unique historical interest; the interpretations of Usteri (1833), Hilgenfeld (1852), Winer (18594), Holsten (Das Evangel. d. Paulus, 1880), Philippi (1884), in German; Baljon (1889), in Dutch; and of B. Jowett, Ellicott, Beet, are specially serviceable, from different points of view; see also CGT andEB .

George G. Findlay


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