the Great had settled two thousand Jewish families in Lydia and Phrygia"; and even if we suppose that these settlements did not extend to Galatia properly so called, the Jewish colonists must in course of time have overflowed into a neighbouring country which possessed so many attractions for them. Those commercial instincts, which achieved a wide renown in the neighbouring Phoenician race, and which in the Jews themselves made rapid progress during the palmy days of their national life under Solomon, had begun to develope afresh. The innate energy of the race sought this new outlet, now that their national hopes were crushed and their political existence was well-nigh extinct. The country of Galatia afforded great facilities for commercial enterprise. With fertile plains rich in agricultural produce, with extensive pastures for flocks, with a temperate climate and copious rivers, it abounded in all those resources out of which a commerce is created”. It was moreover conveniently situated for mercantile transactions, being traversed by a great high road between the East and the shores of the AEgean, along which caravans were constantly passing, and among its townsit numbered not a few which are mentioned as great centres of commerce". We read especially of a considerable traffic in cloth goods; but whether these were of home or foreign manufacture we are not expressly told". With these attractions it is not difficult to explain the vast increase of the Jewish population in Galatia, and it is a significant fact that in the generation before St Paul Augustus directed a decree granting especial privileges to the Jews to be inscribed in his temple at Ancyra, the Galatian metropolis”, doubtless because this was a principal seat of the dispersion in these parts of Asia Minor. Other testimony to the same effect is afforded by the inscriptions found in Galatia, which present here and there Jewish names and symbols” amidst a strange confusion of Phrygian and Celtic, Roman and Greek. At the time of St Paul they probably boasted a large number of proselytes and may even have infused a beneficial leaven into the religion of the mass of the heathen population. Some accidental points of resemblance in the Mosaic ritual may perhaps have secured for the inspired teaching of the Old Testament a welcome which would have been denied to its Their attracted mentioned in the following verse, their * Joseph. Ant. xii. 3. 4. * An anonymous geographer (Geogr. la Galatie, par la fertilité de son solet lofty theology and pure code of morals". * Müller's Geogr. Min. l.c. “negotiatur plurimam vestem.’ It is interesting to find that at the present day a very large trade is carried on at Angora, the ancient Ancyra, in the fabric manufactured from the fine hair of the peculiar breed of goats reared in the neighbourhood. See Hamilton Asia Minor, I. p. 418, Texier, l. c. p. 602 sq., and especially Ritter's Erdkunde xviii. p. 505. It is to this probably that the ancient geographer refers. * Joseph. Antiq. xvi. 6. 2. The influence of Judaism on St Paul's converts here does not derive the same illustration from the statistics of the existing population as it does in some other places, Thessalonica for instance, where the Jews are said to form at least one half of the inhabitants. In 1836 Hamilton was informed that out of about 11,000 houses in Ancyra only 150 were Jewish, the majority of the population being Turks or Catholic Armenians, Asia Minor, 1. p. 419. Their influence. Jewish influence, but the aversion to swine's flesh was common to several Eastern peoples. Instances are given The Celtic type predominates. The Galatians retain their language Still with all this foreign admixture, it was the Celtic blood which gave its distinctive colour to the Galatian character and separated them by so broad a line even from their near neighbours. To this cause must be attributed that marked contrast in religious temperament which distinguished St Paul's disciples in Galatia from the Christian converts of Colossae, though educated in the same Phrygian worship and subjected to the same Jewish influences. The tough vitality of the Celtic character maintained itself in Asia comparatively unimpaired among Phrygians and Greeks, as it has done in our own islands among Saxons and Danes and Normans, retaining its individuality of type after the lapse of ages and under conditions the most adverse". A very striking instance of the permanence of Celtic institutions is the retention of their language by these Gauls of Asia Minor. More than six centuries after their original settlement in this distant land, a language might be heard on the banks of the Sangarius and the Halys, which though slightly corrupted was the same in all essential respects with that spoken in the district watered by the Moselle and the Rhine. St Jerome, who had himself visited both the Gaul of the West and the Gaul of Asia Minor, illustrates the relation of the two forms of speech by the connexion existing between the language of the Phoenicians and their African colonies, or between the different dialects of Latin”. les yeux bleux rappellent le caractère in Milman's Hist. of the Jews I. p. 177 * Modern travellers have seen, or imagined they saw, in the physical features of the modern inhabitants of Galatia traces of their Celtic origin. So Texier, l.c. p. 598, ‘Sans chercher a se faire illusion, on reconnait quelquefois, surtout parmi les pasteurs, des types qui se rapportent merveilleusement à certaines races de nos provinces de France. On voit plus de cheveux blonds en Galatie qu’en aucun autre royaume de l'Asie Mineure; les tétes carrées et * Hieron. in Epist. ad Gal. lib. II. praef. “Galatasexceptosermone Graeco, quo omnis Oriens loquitur, propriam linguam eandem pene habere quam Treveros, nec referre si aliqua exinde corruperint, quum et Afri Phoenicum linguam nonnulla ex parte mutaverint, et ipsa Latinitas et regionibus quotidie mutetur et tempore’ (VII. P.I. p. 430, ed. Wallarsi). By ‘excepto sermone Graeco' he means that they spoke Greek in common with the rest of the With the knowledge of this remarkable fact, it will not be and their thought idle to look for traces of the Celtic character in the ::, Galatians of St Paul's Epistle, for in general the character of onsed. No doubt it had undergone many changes. They were no longer that fierce hardy race with which Rome and Greece successively had grappled in a struggle of life and death. After centuries of intercourse with Greeks and Phrygians, with the latter especially who were reputed among the most effeminate and worthless of Asiatics, the ancient valour of the Gauls must have been largely diluted. Like the Celts of Western Europe, they had gradually deteriorated under the enervating influence of a premature or forced civilisation". Nevertheless beneath the surface the Celtic character remains still the same, whether manifested in the rude and fiery barbarians who were crushed by the arms of Caesar, or the impetuous and fickle converts who call down the indignant rebuke of the Apostle of the Gentiles. St Paul's language indeed will suggest many coincidences, Minor cowhich perhaps we may be tempted to press unduly. incidences a nation even outlives its language. His de-in st nunciation of ‘drunkenness and revellings”, falling in with the : taunts of ancient writers, will appear to point to a darling sin of the Celtic people”. East, as well as Celtic. Thierry (I. p. His condemnation of the niggardly spirit with which they had doled out their alms, as a ‘mockery of God', will remind us that the race is constantly reproached with its greed of wealth, so that Gaulish avarice passed almost into a proverb". His reiterated warning against strife and vainglory" will seem directed against a vice of the old Celtic blood still boiling in their veins and breaking out in fierce and rancorous self-assertion". His very expression, “if ye bite and devour one another,’ will recall the angry gesticulations and menacing tones of this excitable people". But without laying too much stress on these points of resemblance, which however plausible do not afford ground enough for a safe inference, we may confidently appeal to the broader features of the Galatian character, as they appear in this Epistle. In two important points especially, in the general temperament and the religious bias of his converts, light is shed on the language of St Paul by the notices of the Gauls found in classical authors. 1. The main features of the Gaulish character are traced with great distinctness by the Roman writers. Quickness of apprehension, promptitude in action, great impressibility, an eager craving after knowledge, this is the brighter aspect of the Celtic character. Inconstant and quarrelsome, treacherous in their dealings, incapable of sustained effort, easily disheartened by failure, such they appear when viewed on their darker side. It is curious to note the same eager inquisitive temper revealing itself under widely different circumstances, at opposite limits both of time and space, in their early barbarism in the West and their worn-out civilisation in the East. The great Roman captain relates Broader features of resemblance. 1. General temperament of the Gauls. gives of the intemperance of the 1 Gal. vi. 6, 7. * Diod. Sic. v. 27 &rov ráv KeX- against simony, A.D. 459. |