Bible Dictionaries
Galatia

　　(φρούριο [Strabo, xii. v. 2]), where they kept up a barbaric state, surrounded by retainers who shared with them the vast wealth they had acquired by their many conquests. For siding with Antiochus the Great in his war with Rome, and frequently breaking their promise to refrain from raiding the lands of their neighbours, the Galatians ultimately brought on themselves a severe castigation at the hands of Cn. Manlius Vulso in 189 b.c. (Livy, xxxviii, 12-27, Polyb. xxii. 16-22). About 160 b.c. they obtained a large accession of territory in Lycaonia, including the towns of Iconium and Lystra. Thereafter they came under the influence of the kings of Pontus, but Mithridates the Great (120-63 b.c.), doubting their loyalty, ordered a massacre of all their chiefs, and this savage and stupid act at once drove the whole nation over to the Roman side. Their new alliance proved greatly to their advantage, and at the settlement of the affairs of Asia Minor by Pompey in 64 b.c., Galatia was made a Roman client-State. Three chiefs (tetrarchs) were appointed, one for each tribe, of whom the ablest and most ambitious, Deiotarus, the friend of Cicero (ad Fam. viii. 10, ix. 12, xv. 1, 2, 4), contrived to seize the territories of the others, and, in spite of the hostility of Julius Caesar, ultimately got himself recognized as king of all Galatia. He died in 40 b.c., and four years later his dominions were bestowed by Mark Antony on Amyntas, the Roman client-king of Pisidia, who had formerly been the secretary of Deiotarus. This brave mid sagacious Gaul, ‘whose career was in many points parallel to that of Herod in Palestine’ (H. von Soden, Hist. of Early Christian Lit., Eng. translation Γαλατικὴ ἐπαρχεία, or ‘Galatic province’. Pliny frequently uses ‘Galatia’ as designating the province (Historia Naturalis (Pliny) τὴν Φρυγίαν καὶ Γαλατικὴν χώραν), having been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia’ (Acts 16:6), and in the third tour ‘they went through, the region of Galatia and Phrygia (κωλυθέντες) … to speak the word in Asia’ is to a district east of Asia and north of Iconium and Antioch, South Galatia being now left behind. Ramsay, however, contends that ἀσπασάμενοι in Acts 25:13 would be the most striking parallel, but here Hort thinks that some primitive error has crept into the text. And at the best the proposed exegesis, admittedly unusual, is very precarious, while the South Galatian theory is really independent of it. Many advocates of this theory prefer the alternative offered by Gifford, who holds (loc. cit. p. 19) that in the present contest ‘the region of Phrygia and Galatia’ can only mean ‘the borderland of Phrygia and Galatia northward of Antioch, through which the travellers passed after “having been forbidden to speak the word in Asia.” ’ This is substantially the view of Zahn (op. cit. i. 176; cf. 189f.), who is willing to make a further concession. ‘It could be taken for granted, therefore, in spite of the silence of Acts, which in 16:6 mentions merely a journey of the missionaries through these regions, that Paul and Silas on this occasion preached in Phrygia arid a portion of North Galatia; and that the disciples … whom Paul met on the third missionary journey to several places of the same regions (Acts 18:23) had been converted by the preaching of Paul and Silas on the second journey.’ Only, as Zahn himself is the first to admit, ‘everyone feels the ‘uncertainty of those combinations.’

　　The present tendency of the North Galatian theorists is greatly to restrict the field of the Apostle’s activity in Galatia proper. Lightfoot’s assumption that he carried his mission through the whole of North Galatia is felt to be ‘as gratuitous as it is embarrassing’ (Schmiedel, Encyclopaedia Biblica has ‘Gaul’ as a marginal alternative to ‘Galatia.’ Γαλατία, and, besides, the latter word was often applied by Greek writers to European Gaul. If it could be assumed that St. Paul was able to carry out his purpose of going westward to evangelize Spain, he might be supposed to have visited Southern Gaul en route, and Crescens might afterwards have gone to this region. Eusebius (HE iii. 4), Epiphanius (Haer. li. 11), and Theodoret (in loco) certainly understand that Gaul is meant; and the early Christian inhabitants of that country naturally liked to believe that their Church had been founded by an apostolic emissary, if not by an apostle. But they had nothing better to base their belief upon than conjecture, and it is much more likely that the reference is here to Asiatic Galatia, since the other places named in the context-Thessalonica and Dalmatia-are both east, not west, of Rome.

　　The meaning of 162 b.c.) ‘heard of the fame of the Romans, that they are valiant men.… And they told him of their wars and exploits which they do among the Gauls,’ etc. A reference to Spain in the next verse might suggest European Gauls, but on the whole it is much more likely that reports of Manlius’s victories over the Celtic invaders of Asia Minor had come to the ear of the Jewish leader.

　　Literature.-J. Weiss, article ‘Galatia’ in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) . The chief contributions to both sides of the Galatian controversy are given by J. Moffatt, Introd. to Literature of the New Testament (Moffatt)., 1911, pp. 90-92. The important monographs of V. Weber-Die Abfassung des Galaterbriefs vor dem Apostelkonzil (1900) and Der heilige Paulus vom Apostelübereinkommen bis zum Apostelkonzil (1901)-are South Galatian, while those of A. Steinmann-Die Abfassungszeit des Galaterbriefes (1906), and Der Leserkreis des Galaterbriefes (1908)-are North Galatian.

　　James Strahan.