Galatians, THE EPISTLE TO THE, an epistle directed by the apostle Paul 'to the churches of Galatia.' According to Lightfoot it was written from Macedonia or Achaia in the winter or spring of the years 57-58 A.D. Others place it at the end of 55 or the beginning of 56, on the apostle's journey to Ephesus or in the early part of his sojourn there. It is one of the most important of the four epistles which are undoubtedly from the hand of Paul, and was written to counteract the influence of the Judaisers who had appeared among the Gentile Christians of the churches of Galatia. Those churches had been founded by Paul during the second, and revisited by him during the third, of his missionary journeys (cf. Acts, xvi. 6, and xviii. 23). At his first visit the people received him as 'an angel of God,' and he was detained among them by sickness for a considerable time. It is disputed whether the passages i. 9, iv. 16-20, and v. 7, 12 show traces of the Judaising leaven even at the time of his second visit, or whether i. 6, iii. 1, and v. 7, 8 are sufficient to prove that they did not appear till after his departure. As the Roman province of Galatia formed in 25 B.C. included also Isauria, Lycaonia, and parts of Pisidia and Phrygia, some think that the 'churches of Galatia' may have extended to those regions, but it is more probable that the Galatia of Paul was confined to the upper basins of the Halys and Sangarius. Barbarian hordes of Galati or Gallograci had settled there in the 3d century B.C., and in the larger towns, like Tavium, Pessinus, and Ancyra, adopted Greek speech and manners, while the country people, down to the time of Jerome, spoke a language 'almost identical with that of the Treveri.' Lightfoot concludes from his elaborate investigations that the Galatian settlers belonged to the Cynric branch of the Celtic race. Though the population included also aboriginal Phrygians, as well as Greek, Roman, and Jewish immigrants, the characteristic vitality of the Celts maintained the predominance of that race, whose proverbial impressibility and fickleness are so clearly illustrated in the epistle to the Galatians. The 'troublers' maintained that every one who entered into God's Covenant must be circumcised, and keep the whole law, whose discipline was a moral necessity for all men, and on whose observance the promises of the Old Testament were dependent. Galatians is the only epistle of Paul which has no word of praise for its recipients. It at once plunges passionately into the immediate practical question—why they are 'so soon removed . . . unto another gospel,' and from beginning to end has no tidings, messages, or greetings. The body of the epistle is commonly divided into two parts—(1) theoretical (i. 6-v. 12) and (2) practical (v. 13-vi. 10). Holsten and others prefer the following division of the argument: (1) the divine origin of Paul's gospel proved by a historical demonstration of the impossibility of its opposite (i. 6-ii. 21); (2) the full right of the believing Gentile to the blessing of the Messianic promise proved by a confutation of the assertion that the Messianic salvation is in any way dependent on circumcision and legal observances (iii. 1-iv. 11); (3) the believer's righteousness of life proved to be the fruit or outward expression of the Spirit bestowed upon him—in contradiction of the supposed necessity of a righteousness of life which should be brought about by subjection to circumcision and law (iv. 12-vi. 10).
The chief commentaries on Galatians are those of Luther (1519; Eng. trans. Lond. 1810); Winer (1821; 4th ed. 1859), Rückert (1833), Schott (1834), De Wette (1841; 3d ed. by W. Möller, 1864); Windischman (Catholic, 1843), Hilgenfeld (1852), Ellicott (1854; 4th ed. 1867), Jowett (1856), Wieselr (1859), Hofmann (1863; 2d ed. 1872), Lightfoot (1865; 5th ed. 1880), Eadie (1869), Brandes (1869), O. Schmoller (1875), Meyer (6th ed. by F. Sieffert, 1880), Holsten in the Protestantenbibel (3d ed. 1879; Eng. trans. by F. H. Jones, 1883) and in Das Evangelium des Paulus (vol. i. 1880), Schaff (1881), Wörner (1882), Philippi (1884), Köhler (1884), Beet (1885), and Findlay (1888).