2. Their religious prowess of these converts in the warfare of the Christian Church. 2. Equally important, in its relation to St Paul's epistle, tendencies is the type of religious worship which seems to have pervaded the Celtic nations. The Gauls are described as a superstitious people given over to ritual observances1. Nor is it perhaps a mere accident that the only Asiatic Gaul of whom history affords more than a passing glimpse, Deiotarus the client of Cicero, in his extravagant devotion to augury fully bears out the character ascribed to the parent race". and ritual The colours in which contemporary writers have painted the religion of the primitive Gauls are dark and terrible enough. passionate A gross superstition, appealing to the senses and the passions istic, rather than to the heart and mind, enforcing rites of unexampled cruelty and demanding a slavish obedience to priestly authority, such is the picture with which we are familiar. It is unnecessary here to enquire how far the religious philosophy of the Druids involved a more spiritual creed. The Druids were an exclusive caste with an esoteric doctrine, and it is with the popular worship that we are concerned. The point to be observed is that an outward material passionate religion had shown in grown up among the Gauls, as their own creation, answering to their hea- some peculiar features of their character. Settled among the Phrygians they with their wonted facility adopted the religion of the subject people. The worship of Cybele with its wild ceremonial and hideous mutilations would naturally be attractive to the Gaulish mind. Its external rites were similar enough in their general character to those of the primitive Celtic religion to commend it to a people who had found satis then wor ship. corpora intolerantissima laboris atque 1 Cæsar's words are, 'Natio est om- nibus,' Bell. Gall. vi. 16; comp. Diod. Sic. v. 27. 2 Cicero de Div. i. 15, ii. 36, 37. 8 The nobler aspect of the Druidical system has been exaggerated. See the remarks of M. de Pressensé, Trois Premiers Siècles, 2me série, 1. p. 52. ing their faction in the latter. And though we may suppose that the mystic element in the Phrygian worship, which appealed so powerfully to the Græco-Asiatic, awoke no corresponding echo in the Gaul, still there was enough in the outward ritual with its passionate orgies to allure them. Then the Gospel was offered to them and the energy of the Apostle's preaching took and infecttheir hearts by storm. But the old leaven still remained. The Christianpure and spiritual teaching of Christianity soon ceased to ity. satisfy them. Their religious temperament, fostered by long habit, prompted them to seek a system more external and ritualistic1. 'Having begun in the Spirit, they would be made perfect in the flesh. Such is the language of the Apostle rebuking this unnatural violation of the law of progress. At a later period in the history of the Church we find the Galatians still hankering after new forms of Christianity in the same spirit of ceaseless innovation, still looking for some 'other gospel' which might better satisfy their cravings after a more passionate worship. 1 Compare the language of a modern historian describing the western race in a much later age; Motley Dutch Republic III. p. 26The stronger infusion of the Celtic element, which from the earliest ages had always been 2 Gal. iii. 3. II. THE CHURCHES OF GALATIA. What is meant by Galatia? Considerations in the Ro man pro vince. IN what sense do the sacred writers use the word Galatia? Has it an ethnographical or a political meaning? In other words, does it signify the comparatively small district occupied by the Gauls, Galatia properly so called, or the much larger territory included in the Roman province of the name? This question must be answered before attempting to give an account of the Galatian Churches. Important consequences flow from the assumption that the favour of term covers the wider area1. In that case it will comprise not only the towns of Derbe and Lystra2, but also, it would seem, Iconium and the Pisidian Antioch: and we shall then have in the narrative of St Luke' a full and detailed account of the founding of the Galatian Churches. Moreover the favourite disciple and most constant companion of the Apostle, Timotheus, was on this showing a Galatian'; and through him St Paul's communications with these Churches would be more or less close to the end of his life. It must be confessed too, that this view has much to recommend it at first sight. The Apostle's account of his hearty and enthusiastic welcome by the Galatians, as an angel of God, will have its counterpart in the impulsive warmth of the barbarians at Lystra, who would have sacrificed to him, imagining that 'the Gods had come down in the like 1 The warmest advocates of this view are Böttger Beiträge 1. p. 28 sq., III. p. I sq., and Renan Saint Paul p. 51, etc. See more on this subject in Colossians p. 24 sq. 2 See above, p. 7, note 2. ness of men'.' His references to the temptations in the flesh,' view. Without stopping however to sift these supposed coinci- Objections dences, or insisting on the chronological and historical difficul- to this ties which this view creates, there are many reasons which make it probable that the Galatia of St Paul and St Luke is not the Roman province of that name, but the land of the Gauls. By writers speaking familiarly of the scenes in which they had themselves taken part, the term would naturally be used in its popular rather than in its formal and official sense. It would scarcely be more strange to speak of Pesth and Presburg, of Venice and Verona, as 'the Austrian cities,' than to entitle the Christian brotherhoods of Derbe and Lystra, Iconium and Antioch, 'the Churches of Galatia.' Again, analogy is strongly in favour of the popular use of the term. Mysia, Phrygia, Pisidia, are all 'geographical expressions' destitute of any political significance; and as they occur in the same parts of the narrative with Galatia', it seems fair to infer that the latter is similarly used. The direct transition for instance, which we find from Galatia to Phrygia, is only explicable if the two are kindred terms, both alike being used in a popular way. Moreover, St Luke distinctly calls Lystra and Derbe 'cities of Probable of Galatia. Lycaonia',' while he no less distinctly assigns Antioch to Pisidia2; a convincing proof that in the language of the day they were not regarded as Galatian towns. Lastly, the expression used in the Acts of St Paul's visit to these parts, the Phrygian and Galatian country, shows that the district intended was not Lycaonia and Pisidia, but some region which might be said to belong either to Phrygia or Galatia, or the parts of each contiguous to the other. It is most probable therefore that we should search for the Churches of Galatia within narrower limits. In the absence of all direct testimony, we may conjecture that it was at Ancyra, now the capital of the Roman province as formerly of the Gaulish settlement, 'the most illustrious metropolis,' as it is styled in formal documents*; at Pessinus, under the shadow of Mount Dindymus, the cradle of the worship of the great goddess, and one of the principal commercial towns of the district; at Tavium, at once a strong fortress and a great emporium, situated at the point of convergence of several important roads; perhaps also at Juliopolis, the ancient Gordium, formerly the capital of Phrygia, almost equidistant from the three seas, and from its central position a busy mart'; at these, or some of these places, that St Paul founded the earliest 'Churches of Galatia.' The ecclesiastical geography of Galatia two or three centuries later is no safe guide in settling questions relating to the apostolic age, but it is worth while to 1 Acts xiv. 6. 2 Acts xiii. 14. 3 Acts xvi. 6. See below, p. 22, note 3. 4 Boeckh Corp. Inscr. no. 4015 ǹ βουλὴ καὶ ὁ δῆμος τῆς λαμπροτάτης μητροπόλεως Αγκύρας. It is frequently styled the metropolis' in inscriptions and on coins. 5 Strabo xii. p. 567. 6 Strabo 1. c. See Hamilton's Asia Minor p. 395. Perhaps however Tavium lay too much to the eastward of St Paul's route, which would take him more directly to the western parts of Galatia. 7 Pliny v. 42 'Caputque quondam ejus (i.e. Phrygiae) Gordium.' Comp. Livy xxxviii. 18 'Haud magnum quidem oppidum est, sed plusquam mediterraneum, celebre et frequens emporium: tria maria pari ferme distantia intervallo habet.' See Ritter Erdkunde XVIII. p. 561. The identity of Gordium and Juliopolis however, though assumed by Ritter, Forbiger, Kiepert, and others, is perhaps a mistake: see Mordtmann in Sitzungsber. der Königl. bayer. Akad. 1860, p. 169 sq. |