THE

WESTMINSTER NEW TESTAMENT

INTRODUCTION.

THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS.

AUTHENTICITY.

THIS is one of the four epistles which are accepted with practically universal consent as written by the Apostle Paul, The grounds for this are to be found both in the external testimony of authors in the early Church and in the nature of the epistle itself. The internal evidence is peculiarly powerful and decisive. Nothing more characteristic can be found in literature than this book. Impetuous and passionate, vivid and personal, it evidently deals with a definite situation and not with one imagined or invented in after times. All feel the extreme difficulty of supposing that any later writer could invent a work written in this style, which in certain characteristics differs so much from the other epistles of St. Paul. It is practically impossible to conceive of a man, even one generation later, when

the spread of Christianity into Europe and the fall of Jerusalem had changed the spirit and consciousness of the Church so profoundly, framing the particular problem which is here discussed in its peculiar phases. We have here the atmosphere of a definite and agonising situation, which is brought home to us with language of singular poignancy. Even the difficulty which we shall later consider, of relating this work with the Acts of the Apostles, indicates that it was written at a time previous to that work, or else by some one who lived so far apart from the history described in the Acts that he could not be conscious of the difficulties of interpretation in which his invented work would immediately be involved.

Moreover, if what we shall later discuss as the South Galatian hypothesis is accepted, the authenticity of this epistle is made surer than ever. For in that case it reflects, as Sir William Ramsay has abundantly shown, circumstances in the life of the Galatian churches peculiar to a period which no author of a later date could have known, and which have only been recovered by modern methods of historical investigation. The history of Asia Minor passed through so many and such important changes in the latter half of the first century after Christ, that a later writer, according to the standards of historical method in those days, would have betrayed his ignorance over and over again regarding the period in which he professed to place this letter.

THE CHURCHES OF GALATIA.

The epistle is addressed "to the churches of Galatia" (i. 2), and the personal references contained

in it prove that the Apostle Paul had been the founder of these churches, had entered into relations of very deep affection and intimacy with them. He had begun work among them at a time when he was suffering from some physical affliction, but they had come under the power of the gospel as he preached it in spite of such a serious limitation. The membership of these churches included both Jews and Gentiles who had all, as the Apostle supposed, finally forsaken their past modes of worship and had accepted in its very essence the gospel of faith in Christ which he had preached to them. Since he had been with them, certain persons had appeared in their midst who sought with the utmost ingenuity and energy to destroy their confidence in him, and to win them away from the faith into whose liberty they had entered, by inducing them to become circumcised and undertake some form of responsibility to the law of Moses.

1. Where was Galatia?-There has been much controversy in recent days regarding the question as to the exact region in which the churches were situated to whom the Apostle sent this epistle. A slight sketch of the history of Galatia is necessary to understand this controversy.

Galatia was at first the name given to a district in the northern part of Asia Minor which had become occupied from the middle of the third century before Christ by a small group of Gallic tribes belonging to the great Celtic race, for Galatæ and Keltai (or Celts) are one and the same word. They occupied the region in north central Asia Minor, which is watered by the rivers Sangarion and Halys. As this region is more sparsely populated than those further west and

south, they settled down as victorious invaders. Like the Normans who conquered the Saxons in England, they became the dominant power in the country, retaining for many generations not only their original characteristics and even their language, but imposing some of their customs of government and social life upon the masses of the people. Gradually and necessarily they melted into the general population, and the whole of that region became known as "Galatia." In B.C. 189 the Roman Empire, having now entered that part of the world, overcame the Galatians and captured the city of Ancyra. But the natural energies of such a race as the Galatians are hard to restrain. Movement and expansion persisted, so that about the year B.C. 160 the territory known as Galatia had not only extended westward and north-eastward, but also southward, and large portions of the country of Phrygia and Lycaonia were wrested from their original owners. Thus they obtained control, not without Roman sanction, of Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe from Lycaonia, as well as Antioch "in Pisidia" from Phrygia. In the beginning of the first century before Christ the Galatians came completely under the Roman imperial system, and were at last delivered from the continuous warfare which had been carried on by their Asiatic enemies. Under the imperial rule, from about B.C. 44 onwards, one king ruled over what had now become a vast realm. Thereafter, and until the year A.D. 72, an extraordinary number of changes in the boundaries of Galatia took place. It was made a Roman province by Augustus in A.D. 25. Throughout that long period it continued to be a centre of power in the development of

Roman authority and policy as the empire spread eastwards, not only conquering but Romanizing the territories which it conquered. "The great work," says Lightfoot, "of the Roman conquest was the fusion of the dominant with the conquered races, result chiefly, it would appear, of that natural process by which all minor distinctions are levelled in the presence of a superior power."

a

2. Two Rival Theories.-For long the majority of scholars took it for granted that the Epistle to the Galatians was addressed to churches supposed to have been founded by the Apostle Paul in the cities of Pessinum, Ancyra, and Tavium, etc., in the Northern Galatia, or Galatia proper. This opinion had always been felt to carry much difficulty with it, and hence some prominent scholars have always been found to urge that the epistle must have been addressed to the churches which Paul established in what has come to be called "South Galatia," according to the story told in Acts xiii. and xiv. In that case Paul called them churches of Galatia, because they were in the Roman province of that name. The dispute has in our day become crystallized under the two phrases "The Northern Galatian Theory" and "The South Galatian Theory."

It is best to recount briefly the reasons advanced by those who support the former. (a) It would be natural for those who had travelled through those regions, as perhaps Luke, the author of the Acts, and certainly Paul had done, to use the popular rather than the official names for the districts which they visited. Especially would it seem on the surface to be appropriate that a letter should be directed to churches under the name