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As announced in the title of the first post on this subject, my aim is to understand where the Galatians originated and how / why they migrated to where they were when Apostle Paul wrote his epistle to them.  Since I was apparently insufficiently clear about both of those purposes in part 1, in this follow-up post I will provide additional scholarly material.  Inasmuch as the identification of the Gauls / Celts and the languages they spoke will be important for several posts about them that I will write in the coming weeks, today's post will necessarily be long and detailed. 

Here I will quote from Ben Witherington III, Grace in Galatia: A Commentary on St. Paul’s Letter to the Galatians (Grand Rapids, MI:  Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998), pp. 1-7.

N.B.:  Illustration for art historians below.

The term Γαλάται was used interchangeably with Κέλται or Κέλτοι by Greek writers, as were the terms Galatae, Galli, and Celtae by Latin writers. These terms were used to refer to a group of people originating in central Europe in the Danube river basin but who migrated into Switzerland, southern Germany, northern Italy, France (hence the Roman name Gaul for this region), Britain (the Celts) and then finally into the Balkans, and Asia Minor. The region which these peoples inhabited and took control of in Asia Minor came to be called Galatia or even Gallogrecia (the land of Greek-speaking Gauls).

It was in about 278 b.c. that this migratory people made their way into Asia Minor, originally on the invitation of Nicomedes the king of Bithynia who sought to use them as mercenaries. Basically these people settled around Ancyra, and after a series of battles with their neighbors were confined to an area in north central Asia Minor bordered by Phrygia to the west, Cappadocia and Lycaonia to the south, Pontus to the east, and Bithynia and Paphlagonia to the north. By 189 b.c. Galatia had suffered the same fate as the rest of Asia Minor by coming under the control of Rome.

It is fair to say that the Galatian people, who had originally migrated to Asia Minor, and their descendants, retained a great deal of their original culture well beyond the NT era. They spoke a Celtic dialect which continued to survive into the fourth century a.d., at least in rural areas of ethnic Galatia. They had a distinctive form of Celtic religious and political organization and were widely revered and feared as great warriors and mercenaries. They were considered barbarians due to their strange dialect, considerable physical stature, and wild appearance, though by Paul’s time most of them seem to have been capable of speaking Greek.

…

The province of Galatia continued to have territory added to it by the Roman authorities up to and beyond the time when Paul visited and wrote to people in this region. For example, in 5 b.c. portions of Paphlagonia in the north was  [recte were] added to Galatia, and then perhaps about a.d. 4 a part of Pontus was added to the region (this portion being called Pontus Galaticus). Sometime just before or during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (a.d. 41–54) a part of the northern Taurus region was added to the province of Galatia as well.

In short, in Paul’s day the province of Galatia was an enormous province, usually governed by a legate rather than a consul from the Senate, until at least the time of Nero. This is what made it a praetorian province. It bordered on the Black Sea in the north and the Mediterranean Sea in the south, and in theory when Paul addressed persons as Galatians, if he used Roman provincial designations, he could be addressing people anywhere in this region. Strabo in his discussion of Galatia confirms that the province included old Galatia, Pisidia, Lycaonia, parts of Pamphylia, and Cilicia Trachea (12.5.1). At least thirteen Roman colonies were established in the province of Galatia, mainly in its southern portion, either by founding cities or reconstituting cities. Among these were Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, and Lystra.

Despite the enormous size of this province there does not seem to have been any regular presence of legions in Galatia during Paul’s time there, though there were of course retired soldiers in various of the colony cities. One reaches this conclusion because after years of quiet the Parthian tribes did arise in rebellion in about a.d. 55 in Armenia and Nero put the Galatian legate Cn. Domitius Corbulo in command of the eastern forces to check the advance of the Parthians. However, as Corbulo hastened east he had to requisition two legions from the governor of Syria in order to have troops for the task. Furthermore, it took him two years of training to get them ready to fight the Parthians and he had to conduct levies throughout Galatia and Cappadocia as well. Sherk goes so far as to say that during the period from Augustus until Nero there were no legions stationed in the Galatian province. This reminds us that it is a mistake to over-estimate the Roman military presence in most of the regions Paul evangelized.

In part, what made the province, especially its southern portion, governable was the building of a great Roman road, the Via Sebaste, sometime around or just before 6 b.c. This road linked most of the major colonies of the southern part of the province including Pisidian Antioch, Iconium and Lystra.  It is important to bear in mind that Roman roads in the northern part of the province were only constructed for the first time in the 70s and 80s a.d. which led to great growth in Roman military presence in that part of the region thereafter. The existence of Roman roads in the south but not in the northern part of the province in Paul’s day must be factored into the discussion of the audience Paul is addressing in Galatians.

What must also be borne in mind is that since the Roman province of Galatia included many different tribes and peoples and not just the descendents of the Celts or Gauls, the only term which could be predicated of all of them in Paul’s day would be Galatians. He could not for instance call them Phrygians or Lycaonians if he had evangelized a cross section of the residents of this Roman province. In fact, there is clear evidence from the inscriptions of the period that the entire region was regularly called Galatia in the NT era (cf. ILS 9499; IG Rom. 3.263, Eutropius 7.10), and not just the Celtic or Gallic part.

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The further history of this province is of some relevance to our discussion because the earliest Christian discussions of Paul’s Galatians were undertaken with a knowledge only of subsequent developments in the province. By this I mean that we need to be aware that Vespasian detached almost all of Pisidia from Galatia in a.d. 74 and about a.d. 137 Lycaonia Galatica was removed and added to an enlarged province of Cilicia. In a.d. 297 southern Galatia was united with surrounding regions to form a new province of Pisidia with Antioch as its capital, and this in turn meant that the province of Galatia at this point reverted back to its original ethnological dimensions. It was this later truncated form of Galatia that was known as the province of Galatia to Christian commentators who discussed Paul’s Galatians between the fourth and nineteenth centuries of this era. It is not surprising under these circumstances that these commentators assumed that by ‘Galatians’ Paul was referring to the residence of ethnic or old kingdom of Galatia which coincided with the Roman province of Galatia after a.d. 297. The older commentators were all or almost all north Galatianists in regard to where they located Paul’s audience. It was only with the rise of the age of archaeology that this assumption about the locale of Paul’s Galatian converts began to be challenged by W. M. Ramsay and others, starting at the end of the nineteenth century.

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Recently, J. M. Scott has made the interesting suggestion that Paul’s image of the world, which he learned while a Jew, be taken into consideration. Specifically he suggests that Paul shared the same view as Josephus and other Jews that the table of nations in Gen. 10 determined how a Jew would view the pagan nations. Josephus identifies Gomer, the first son of Japheth with the Galatians “who are understood as occupying the whole Roman province of Galatia, including south Galatia (Ant. 1.123, 126)”. Paul may have thought in similar fashion as Josephus, but Paul’s use of provincial terminology elsewhere in his epistles, and the fact that he is addressing mainly Gentiles who are unlikely to have been familiar with the traditions Josephus cites, makes it more probable that Paul is simply using provincial terminology in Galatians.

In closing this part of the discussion it is important to note that everything in Galatians suggests that the majority, perhaps the vast majority, of Paul’s Galatian converts are Gentiles not Jews, otherwise all these arguments about not submitting to circumcision would not be on target. Then too, these arguments also suggest that these Galatian Christians were attracted indeed even bewitched by the Judaizing suggestions or demands of the agitators and this makes it natural to suppose that the Galatian Christians had already had some exposure to Judaism before becoming Christians. Perhaps they had even had a positive and close exposure by spending time with Jews in the synagogue in at least some cases. One must also make sense of the fact that Paul feels he can use an elaborate Jewish allegory in Gal. 4 and arguments about covenants and Abraham and the development of salvation history to convince them not to listen to or follow the teaching of the agitators. In short, Paul is using Jewish arguments to convince Gentiles not to become more Jewish! This too suggests an audience conversant with Judaism and perhaps the basic lineaments of the Hebrew Scriptures as well. All of this is understandable if Acts 13–14 is right that Paul’s standard operating procedure when he was in the province of Galatia was to preach in the synagogue first until he was thrust out, and that his converts, both Jewish and Gentile came out of that Jewish matrix (cf. Acts 13:43, 48; 14:1). In other words, Galatians would be a word on target if his audience already knew a good deal about Judaism and the Hebrew Scriptures, it would be a word on target if he is in the main addressing God-fearers. It would be less apt if the Gentiles he is worried about had had no association with or knowledge of Judaism prior to Paul’s arrival in Galatia.

Migration was a key factor in the movements of the Gauls into Asia Minor, as were inducements from the Hellenistic Bythnians, under their king Nicomedes.  Bythnia later became a Roman province.

One of the most moving sculptures from the classical period is that of "The Dying Gaul".  Although the warrior has been vanquished, he is dignified in death:

The Dying Gaul, also called The Dying Galatian (Italian: Galata Morente) or The Dying Gladiator, is an ancient Roman marble semi-recumbent statue now in the Capitoline Museums in Rome. It is a copy of a now lost Greek sculpture from the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) thought to have been made in bronze. The original may have been commissioned at some time between 230 and 220 BC by Attalus I of Pergamon to celebrate his victory over the Galatians, the Celtic or Gaulish people of parts of Anatolia. The original sculptor is believed to have been Epigonus, a court sculptor of the Attalid dynasty of Pergamon.

(Wikipedia)

The reputation of the Gauls / Galatians / Celts as mercenaries was not unwarranted.

gladiator (n.)

mid-15c., "Roman swordsman," from Latin gladiator (fem. gladiatrix) "fighter in the public games; swordsman," from gladius "sword" (there is no verb *gladiare), which probably is from Gaulish (compare Welsh cleddyf, Cornish clethe, Breton kleze "sword;" see claymore). Old Irish claideb is from Welsh.

The close connection with Celtic words for 'sword', together with the imperfect match of initial consonants, and the semantic field of weaponry, suggests that Latin borrowed a form *gladio- or *kladio- (a hypothetical variant of attested British Celtic *kladimo- 'sword') from [Proto-Celtic] or from a third language. [de Vaan]

(etymonline)

Phonological-etymological notes from Doug Adams:

It is indeed an imperfect match of initial consonants but throughout its history Latin has shown a tendency to voice initial k's.  Thus Romance (Spanish) has gato < cattus and golpe 'blow' < colophos.  No explanation has ever been offered up for the phenomenon.

The Celtic connection is quite probable.  And certainly these kinds of words are liable to borrowing.  Look at epee or claymore in English.

There is still much to mull over about Celts and Celtic.

 

Selected readings

• "Who were the Galatians? How did they get where they were?" (7/2/25)
• "A revolutionary, new translation of the gospels" (5/4/21)
• "An eccentric translation of the bible" (5/1/24)

[Thanks to Mark Metcalf]

July 11, 2025 @ 4:23 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and art, Language and history, Language and religion

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