took the other third, and agriculture and commerce with all the arts and crafts of peaceful life remained entirely in their hands. They were henceforth ranked as “Galatians” by the outside world equally with their overlords, and it was from their numbers that the “Galatian” slaves who figure in the markets of the ancient world were drawn. The conquerors, who were few in number, formed a small military aristocracy, living not in the towns, but in fortified villages, where the chiefs in their castles kept up a barbaric state, surrounded by their tribesmen. With the decline of their warlike vigour they began gradually to mix with the natives and to adopt at least their religion: the amalgamation was accelerated under Roman influence and ultimately became as complete as that of the Normans with the Saxons in England, but they gave to the mixed race a distinctive tone and spirit, and long retained their national characteristics and social customs, as well as their language (which continued in use, side by side with Greek, in the 4th century after Christ). In the 1st century, when St Paul made his missionary journeys, even the towns Ancyra, Pessinus and Tavium (where Gauls were few) were not Hellenized, though Greek, the language of government and trade, was spoken there; while the rural population was unaffected by Greek civilization. Hellenic ways and modes of thought begin to appear in the towns only in the later 2nd century. In the rustic parts a knowledge of Greek begins to spread in the 3rd century; but only in the 4th and 5th centuries, after the transference of the centre of government first to Nicomedia and then to Constantinople placed Galatia on the highway of imperial communication, was Hellenism in its Christian form gradually diffused over the country. (See also Ancyra; Pessinus; Gordium.)
II. The Roman province of Galatia, constituted 25 B.C., included the greater part of the country ruled by Amyntas, viz. Galatia Proper, part of Phrygia towards Pisidia (Apollonia, Antioch and Iconium), Pisidia, part of Lycaonia (including Lystra and Derbe) and Isauria. For nearly 100 years it was the frontier province, and the changes in its boundaries are an epitome of the stages of Roman advance to the Euphrates, one client-state after another being annexed: Paphlagonia in 6–5 B.C.; Sebastopolis, 3–2 B.C.; Amasia, A.D. 1–2; Comana, A.D. 34–35,—together forming Pontus Galaticus,—the Pontic kingdom of Polemon, A.D. 64, under the name Pontus Polemoniacus. In A.D. 70 Cappadocia (a procuratorial province since A.D. 17) with Armenia Minor became the centre of the forward movement and Galatia lost its importance, being merged with Cappadocia in a vast double governorship until A.D. 114 (probably), when Trajan separated the two parts, making Galatia an inferior province of diminished size, while Cappadocia with Armenia Minor and Pontus became a great consular military province, charged with the defence of the frontier. Under Diocletian’s reorganization Galatia was divided, about 295, into two parts and the name retained for the northern (now nearly identical with the Galatia of Deiotarus); and about 390 this province, amplified by the addition of a few towns in the west, was divided into Galatia Prima and Secunda or Salutaris, the division indicating the renewed importance of Galatia in the Byzantine empire. After suffering from Persian and Arabic raids, Galatia was conquered by the Seljuk Turks in the 11th century and passed to the Ottoman Turks in the middle of the 14th.
The question whether the “Churches of Galatia,” to which St Paul addressed his Epistle, were situated in the northern or southern part of the province has been much discussed, and in England Prof. Sir W. M. Ramsay has been the principal advocate of the adoption of the South-Galatian theory, which maintains that they were the churches planted in Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and Antioch (see Galatians). In the present writer’s opinion this is supported by the study of the historical and geographical facts.[1]
Authorities.—Van Gelder, De Gallis in Graecia et Asia (1888); Staehelin, Gesch. d. kleinasiat. Galater (1897); Perrot, De Galatia prov. Rom. (1867); Sir W. M. Ramsay, Histor. Geogr. (1890), St Paul (1898), and Introd. to Histor. Commentary on Galatians (1899). For antiquities generally, Perrot, Explor. archéol. de la Galatie (1862); K. Humann and O. Puchstein, Reisen in Kleinasien (1890); Koerte, Athen. Mitteilungen (1897); Anderson and Crowfoot, Journ. of Hellenic Studies (1899); and Anderson, Map of Asia Minor (London, Murray, 1903). (J. G. C. A.)
GALATIANS, EPISTLE TO THE, one of the books of the New
Testament. This early Christian scripture is one of the books
militant in the world’s literature. Its usefulness to Luther in his
propaganda was no accident in its history; it originated in a
controversy, and the varying views of the momentous struggle
depicted in Gal. ii. and Acts xv. have naturally determined, from
time to time, the conception of the epistle’s aim and date.
Details of the long critical discussion of this problem cannot be
given here. (See Paul.) It must suffice to say that to the present
writer the identification of Gal. ii. 1-10 with Acts xi. 28 f. and not
with Acts xv. appears quite untenable, while a fair exegesis of
Acts xvi. 1-6 implies a distinction between such towns as Lystra,
Derbe and Iconium on the one hand and the Galatian χώρα with
Phrygia upon the other.[2] A further visit to the latter country is
mentioned, upon this view, in Acts xviii. 23. The Christians to
whom the epistle was addressed were thus inhabitants, for the
most part (iv. 8) of pagan birth, belonging to the northern
section of the province, perhaps mainly in its south-western
district adjoining Bithynia and the province of Asia. The scanty
allusions to this mission in Acts cannot be taken as any objection
to the theory. Nor is there any valid geographical difficulty.
The country was quite accessible from Antioch. Least of all does
the historical evidence at our disposal justify the inference that
the civilization of north Galatia, during the 1st century A.D.,
was Romano-Gallic rather than Hellenic; for, as the coins and
inscriptions indicate, the Anatolian culture which predominated
throughout the province did not exclude the infusion either of
Greek religious conceptions or of the Greek language. The degree
of elementary Greek culture needful for the understanding of
Galatians cannot be shown to have been foreign to the inhabitants
of north Galatia. So far as any trustworthy evidence
is available, such Hellenic notions as are presupposed in this
epistle might well have been intelligible to the Galatians of the
northern provinces. Still less does the acquaintance with Roman
jurisprudence in iii. 15–iv. 2 imply, as Halmel contends (Über
röm. Recht im Galaterbrief, 1895), not merely that Paul must have
acquired such knowledge in Italy but that he wrote the epistle
there. A popular acquaintance with the outstanding features of
Roman law was widely diffused by this time in Asia Minor.
The epistle can hardly have been written therefore until after the period described in Acts xviii. 22, but the terminus ad quem is more difficult to fix.[3] The composition may be placed (cf. the present writer’s Historical New Testament, pp. 124 f. for details) either during the earlier part of Paul’s residence at Ephesus (Acts xix. 1, 10, so most editors and scholars), or on his way from Ephesus to Corinth, or at Corinth itself (so Lightfoot, Bleek, Salmon).
The epistle was not written until Paul had visited Thessalonica,
- ↑ In the unsettled state of this controversy, weight naturally attaches to the opinion of experts on either side; and the above statement, while opposed to the view taken in the following article on the epistle, must be taken on its merits.—Ed. E.B.
- ↑ The historical and geographical facts concerning Galatia, which lead other writers to support the south Galatian theory, are stated in the preceding article on Galatia; and the question is still a matter of controversy, the division of opinion being to some extent dependent on whether it is approached from the point of view of the archaeologist or the Biblical critic. The ablest re-statements of the north Galatian theory, in the light of recent pleas for south Galatia as the destination of this epistle, may be found by the English reader in P. W. Schmiedel’s exhaustive article in Encycl. Biblica (1592–1616) and Prof. G. H. Gilbert’s Student’s Life of Paul (1902), pp. 260-272. Schmiedel’s arguments are mainly directed against Sir W. M. Ramsay, but a recent Roman Catholic scholar, Dr A. Steinmann, takes a wider survey in a pamphlet on the north Galatian side of the controversy (Die Abfassungszeit des Galaterbriefes, Münster, i. W., 1906), carrying forward the points already urged by Sieffert and Zöckler amongst others, and especially refuting his fellow-churchman, Prof. Valentine Weber.
- ↑ The tendency among adherents of the south Galatian theory is to put the epistle as early as possible, making it contemporaneous with, if not prior to, 1 Thessalonians. So Douglass Round in The Date of St Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians (1906).
