The People of Galatia

Paul, in his first missionary journey (Act 13-14) traveled to the people of Galatia. One of his first recorded letters was written to the people there.

North Galatia, South Galatia

Galatia appears to have been a general area in what is now central Turkey.  Tribes of Celts (Gauls) moved into the area around 278 BCE, after the death of Alexander the Great.  Later, a Roman administrative colony was named after the Gauls and was called Galatia by the Romans.  South of Galatia were the administrative districts of Phrygia, Cappadocia, Pisidia and Laycaonia.  (Here is a map from a Wikipedia article.  Another good article, from Wikipedia, of course, is on "Celtic Galatia", here.)

Apparently the entire region of central Turkey was sometimes loosely called "Galatia" and this leads us to a problem regarding the recipients of Paul's letter "to the Galatians".  In Luke's letter, the book of Acts, we are told of Paul's first missionary journey.  This account is in Acts 13 & 14 and is then followed (Acts 15) by a description of a meeting in Jerusalem to decide what it meant to be a Gentile Christian.

Paul's first missionary trip was an important time in the growth of the new Jewish sect of Jesus followers.  It led to an important dispute and decision in Acts 15, the Council of Jerusalem (about 49 CE.)

Paul's first missionary trip 

I'll summarize here chapters 13 &14 from the New Testament book of Acts. During a time of worship and fasting in Antioch, the Holy Spirit told the church there to set aside Saul (Paul) and Barnabas for a special work.  With that appointment, they were sent to Cyprus, and then to Perga in the region of Pamphylia (see the map above) and then on to Pisidian Antioch where they spoke in a Jewish synagogue, describing how Jewish history had culminated in the Messiah, Jesus, and had been demonstrated by Jesus's resurrection.  The two were generally well received, with many converts.

Acts 13:49-14:1 says,
"The word of the Lord spread through the whole region. But the Jewish leaders incited the God-fearing women of high standing and the leading men of the city. They stirred up persecution against Paul and Barnabas, and expelled them from their region. So they shook the dust off their feet as a warning to them and went to Iconium. At Iconium Paul and Barnabas went as usual into the Jewish synagogue. There they spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed." (NIV)

Iconium (now the city of Konya in Turkey) was in the Lycaonia province.  (Iconium was apparently the home of Tertius, a convert who would be Paul's scribe for his letter to the Romans.)

Note Paul's practice of always going to Jewish synagogues, reaching out to his fellow Jewish.  Occasionally there are Gentile converts (loosely called "Greeks") but most of the converts are Jews and all of the worship and speaking occurred in the synagogues established by Jews in this portion of the Roman empire.

In Iconium, some Jews resisted Paul's message.  Threatened by violence, Paul and Barnabas fled to Lycaonian cities of Lystra and Derbe and "to the surrounding country, where they continued to preach the gospel" (Acts 14:6-7.)  There in Lystra, after Paul is seen healing a man, there is an attempt to proclaim Paul and Barnabas as Hermes and Zeus, an act of idolatry that was frightening to devout Jews like these two apostles.

Eventually Jews opposed to Paul's message arrive in Lystra.  Paul and Barnabas were attacked and so left Lystra, retracing their travels back through the churches they had started, returning eventually to Antioch.

This trip is usually called "Paul's first missionary journey" and concludes (Acts 14:27-28) with the arrival back in Antioch.  There Paul and Barnabas report on God's work in Cyprus and Asia Minor and mention, especially, God's work among the Gentiles.

Because of this trip, the church in Jerusalem is faced with the question, "How Jewish is a Gentile (Greek) convert?"  This is resolved in Acts 15, at least for the time being, with the general decision that Gentile converts need not become Jews but should be sensitive to Jewish beliefs.  (I've greatly summarized the decision of Acts 15.)

Who were the recipients of Paul's letter to the Galatians?

Who were the recipients of Paul's letter to the Galatians?  One view is that Paul's letter easily fits into the seam between Acts 14 and Acts 15.  At the end of Acts 14 the churches in Asia Minor are growing and everyone is excited about Paul's trip; at the beginning of Acts 15 we see "Judaizers" going to churches and telling converts, "You must become full Jews and practice all of the Jewish Law".  Paul's letter could have been written as a response to those visits, in prelude to the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.

The one problem with this view is that we don't have a record of Paul visiting the Roman province of Galatia.  He visits the provinces just south of Galatia.  There are several ways to reconcile this issue.

The "Southern Galatia" hypothesis says, "Well, at times this area was loosely called Galatia" and we need not require that Paul use the term "Galatian" in the Roman technical sense.  The term "Galatian" (or "Galatia") could refer to the general region of central Turkey (Anatolia).  People also point out that in a number of places the Acts account says that Paul and Barnabas went into "nearby regions" and so they may have, in fact, also visited (administrative) Galatia in those travels.

The "Northern Galatia" hypothesis assumes that Paul is using the term "Galatian" in the Roman technical sense (else he might have also listed the other regions) and that Paul's visit to (administrative) Galatia probably occurred during a later missionary trip.

We may debate these two viewpoints (I've grossly simplified them!) but the assumptions as to the audience also tend to lead to different dates of the epistle.  In the first case, if Paul is writing this letter enroute to Jerusalem in Acts 15, then the letter was probably written around 48 CE.  In the second case, it was written later, maybe around 52 CE?

Regardless, the letter to the Galatians is clearly one of Paul's earliest letters. We will read through that book next week, after we are finished with the book of Acts.