Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians

HEN St Paul carried the Gospel into Galatia, he was The Gala. thrown for the first time among an alien people differing ... widely in character and habits from the surrounding nations. A race whose home was in the far West, they had been torn from their parent rock by some great social convulsion, and after drifting over wide tracts of country, had settled down at length on a strange soil in the very heart of Asia Minor. Without attempting here to establish the Celtic affinities of this boulder people by the fossil remains of its language and institutions, or to trace the path of its migration by the scores imprinted on its passage across the continent of Europe, it will yet be useful, by way of introduction to St Paul's Epistle, to sketch as briefly as possible its previous history and actual condition. There is a certain distinctness of feature in the portrait which the Apostle has left of his Galatian converts. It is clear at once that he is dealing with a type of character strongly contrasted for instance with the vicious refinements of the dissolute and polished Corinthians, perhaps the truest surviving representatives of ancient Greece, or again with the dreamy speculative mysticism which disfigured the halforiental Churches of Ephesus and Colossae. We may expect to have light thrown upon the broad features of national character which thus confront us, by the circumstances of the descent and previous history of the race, while at the same time such a sketch will prepare the way for the solution GAL. I

The names Celtae, Galatae, and Galli.

of some questions of interest, which start up in connexion with
this epistle.
The great subdivision of the human family which at the
dawn of European history occupied a large portion of the
continent west of the Rhine with the outlying islands, and
which modern philologers have agreed to call Celtic, was known
to the classical writers of antiquity by three several names,
Celtae, Galatae, and Galli". Of these, Celtae, which is the most
ancient, being found in the earliest Greek historians Hecataeus
and Herodotus”, was probably introduced into the Greek
language by the colonists of Marseilles", who were first brought
in contact with this race. The term Galatae is of late intro-
duction, occurring first in Timaeus, a writer of the third
century B.C." This latter form was generally adopted by
the Greeks when their knowledge was extended by more direct
and frequent intercourse with these barbarians, whether in
their earlier home in the West or in their later settlement in
Asia Minor. Either it was intended as a more exact repre-
sentation of the same barbarian sound, or, as seems more
probable, the two are diverging but closely allied forms of the
same word, derived by the Greeks from different branches of
the Celtic race with which at different times they came in
contact". On the other hand, the Romans generally designated

this people Galli. Whether this word exhibits the same root as Celtae and Galatae, omitting however the Celtic suffix", or whether some other account of its origin is more probable, it is needless to enquire. The term Galli is sometimes adopted Usage of by later Greek writers, but, as a general rule, until some time 3.” after the Christian era they prefer Galatae, whether speaking ** of the people of Gaul properly so called or of the Asiatic

colony". The Romans in turn sometimes borrow Galatae from

* See Zeuss Gramm. Celt. p. 758.

* Owing to the bearing of this fact, which has not been sufficiently noticed, on such passages as a Tim. iv. Io, I have thought it worth while to collect the following particulars. (1) Before the Christian era, and for two centuries afterwards, the form Galatia (Galatae) is almost universally used by Greek writers to the exclusion of Gallia (Galli), when they do not employ Celtice (Celtae). It occurson the Monumentum Ancyranum (Boeckh Corp. Inscr. III. pp. 89, 90) erected by Augustus in the capital of Asiatic Gaul, where to avoid confusion the other form would naturally have been preferred, if it had been in use. It is currentin Polybius, Diodorus, Strabo, Josephus, Plutarch, Appian,Pausanias, and Dion Cassius. It appears also in Athen. p. 333 D, Clem. Alex. Strom. I. p. 359 (Potter), and Origen c. Cels. p. 335 B. Even AFlian (Nat. An. xvii. 19, referring however to an earlier writer) when speaking of the Asiatic people is obliged to distinguish them as Taxáras roos éwows. On the other hand St Basil (Op. 1. p. 28, Garnier) describes the European Gauls as roos éortreptovs Taxdras kai Kextot's. In Boeckh C. I. no. 9764 the Asiatic country is called ukpá Taxaria, ‘Little Gaul.” (2) The first instance of Gallia (Galli) which I have found in any Greek author is in Epictetus (or rather Arrian), Dissert. ii. 20. 17, Çarep roës Tax\o's # uavla kal 6 olvos (probably not before A.D. 100). It occurs

Celtic migrations.

the Greeks, but when they do so it is applied exclusively to
the Celts of Asia Minor, that is, to the Galatians in the modern
sense of the term. The word Celtae still remains in common
use side by side with the Galatae of the Greek and Galli of the
Roman writers, being employed in some cases as coextensive
with these, and in others to denote a particular branch of the
Celtic race".
The rare and fitful glimpses which we obtain of the Celtic
peoples in the early twilight of history reveal the same restless,
fickle temperament, so familiar to us in St Paul's epistle. They
appear in a ferment of busy turmoil and ceaseless migration”.
They are already in possession of considerable tracts of country
to the south and east of their proper limits. They have over-
flowed the barrier of the Alps and poured into Northern Italy.
They have crossed the Rhine and established themselves here
and there in that vague and ill-defined region known to the
ancients as the Hercynian forest and on the banks of the
Danube. It is possible that some of these were fragments
sundered from the original mass of the Celtic people, and
dropped on the way as they migrated westward from the
common home of the Aryan races in central Asia: but more
probable and more in accordance with tradition is the view that
their course being obstructed by the ocean, they had retraced
their steps and turned towards the East again. At all events,

See similar notices in Strabo iv. p. 195,
Appian Bell. Hisp. § 1. The form Ta-

* e.g. in Caesar Bell. Gall. i. 1. See on the main subject of the preceding

Maria of European Gaul still continued
to be used occasionally, when Tax\la
had usurped its place. It is found for
instance in Julian Epist. lxxiii, and in
Libanius frequently: comp. Cureton
Corp. Ign. p. 351. Ammianus(xv.9) can
still say, ‘Galatas dictos, ita enim Gal-
lossermo Graecusappellat.' Even later
writers, who use Tax\tal of the Roman
provinces of Gaul, nevertheless seem to
prefer Taxaria when speaking of the
western country as a whole, e.g. Ioann.
Lydus Ostent. pp. 52, 54 (Wachsmuth),
Hierocl. Synecd. app. p. 313 (Parthey).

paragraph a good paper by M. D'Arbois
de Jubainville, Les Celtes, Les Galates,
Les Gaulois, from the Revue Archéo-
logique, Paris 1875.
* For the migrations of the Celts see
the well-known work of Thierry Histoire
des Gaulois (4th ed. 1857), or Contzen
Wanderungen der Kelten (Leipz. 1861).
They are considered more in their philo-
logical aspect in Diefenbach's Celtica,
and in Prichard's Celtic Nations edited
by Latham. The article “Galli' by
Baumstark in Pauly's Real-Encyclopä-
die is a careful abstract of all that

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