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Bible Commentaries
Eadie's Commentary on Galatians, Ephesians, Colossians and Philippians Eadie's Commentary
Paul's Apostleship; Warning Against a Different Gospel.Chapter 2
Paul's Visit to Jerusalem; Justification by Faith.Chapter 3
Faith versus Law; Promise to Abraham.Chapter 4
Adoption as Sons; Allegory of Two Covenants.Chapter 5
Freedom in Christ; Fruits of the Spirit.Chapter 6
Bearing One Another's Burdens; Final Exhortations.
- Galatians
by John Eadie
THE EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL TO THE GALATIANS
Based on the Greek Text
By
John Eadie, D.D., LL.D.
Οὐδὲ γὰρ δεῖ τὰ ῥήματα γυμνὰ ἐξετάζειν , ἐπεὶ πολλὰ ἕψεται τὰ ἁμαρτήματα , οὐδὲ τὴν λέξιν καθ᾿ ἑαυτὴν βαστάζειν ἀλλὰ τῇ διανοίᾳ προσέχειν τοῦ γράφοντος .-CHRYSOST. ad Galatians 1:17.
Officii mei est obscura disserere, manifesta perstringere, in dubiis immorari. -HIERONYM Praefat. lib. iii. cap. i. Commentar. in Epist. ad Galatas.
Non hic audeo praecipitare sententiam, intelligat qui potest, judicet qui potest, utrum majus sit justos creare quam impios justificare. -AUGUSTIN. Tract. LXXII. in Joannis Evangelium.
I myself can hardly believe that I was so plentiful in words, when I did publicly expound this Epistle of Paul to the Galatians, as this book showeth me to have been. Notwithstanding, I perceive all the cogitations which I find in this treatise, by so great diligence of the brethren gathered together, to be mine; so that I must needs confess, either all or perhaps more to have been uttered by me, for in my heart this one article reigneth, even the faith of Christ, from whom, by whom, and unto whom all my divine studies daily have recourse, to and fro, continually. And yet I perceive that I could not reach anything near unto the height, breadth, and depth of such high and inestimable wisdom; only certain poor and bare beginnings, and as it were fragments, do appear. Wherefore I am ashamed that my so barren and simple commentaries should be set forth upon so worthy an apostle and elect vessel of God.-LUTHER, Preface to Commentary on Galatians, English translation, London 1575.
ΠΑΥΛΟΣ - μέγας τῆς ἀληθείας πραγωνιστῆς καὶ διδάσκαλος .- ΓΡΗΓΟΡΙΟΣ ὁ Θδόλογος . Non est cujusvis hominis Paulinum pectus effingere. Tonat, fulgurat, meras flammas loquitur.-ERASMUS, Annot. ad Colossians 4:16. Omnis bonus Theologus et fidelis interpres doctrinae coelestis, necessario esse debet, primum grammaticus, deinde dialecticus, denique testis.-MELANCTHON.
PREFACE
The object of this Commentary is the same as that stated in the prefaces to my previous volumes on Ephesians, Colossians, and Philippians. Nor do its form and style greatly vary from those earlier Works. Only it is humbly hoped, that longer and closer familiarity with the apostle's modes of thought and utterance may have conferred growing qualification to expound him. The one aim has been to ascertain the meaning through a careful analysis of the words. Grammatical and lexical investigation have in no way been spared, and neither labour nor time has been grudged in the momentous and responsible work of illustrating an epistle which contains so vivid an outline of evangelical truth. To find the sense has been my first step, and the next has been to unfold it with some degree of lucid and harmonious fulness. How far my purpose has been realized, the reader must judge; but, like every one who undertakes such a task, I am sadly conscious of falling far short of my own ideal. While I am not sensible of being warped by any theological system, as little am I aware of any deviation from recognised evangelical truth. One may differ in the interpretation of special words and phrases, and still hold the great articles of the Christian creed. I have gone over every clause with careful and conscientious effort to arrive at its sense, and without the smallest desire to find a meaning for it that may not jar with my theology. For “Theology,” as Luther said, “is nothing else than a grammar and lexicon applied to the words of the Holy Spirit.” I am well aware that scholastic theology has done no small damage to biblical interpretation, as may be seen in so many of the proof-texts attached to Confessions of Faith. The divine words of Scripture are “spirit and life,” and have an inherent vitality, while the truth wedged into a system has often become as a mummy swathed up in numerous folds of polemical dialectics.
Several features of this epistle render its exposition somewhat difficult. In some sections, as in the address to Peter, the apostle's theology is but the expression of his own experience; brief digressions and interjected thoughts are often occurring; longer deviations are also met with before he works round more or less gradually to the main theme. The epistle is not like a dissertation, in which the personality of the author is merged; it is not his, but himself-his words welling up freshly from his heart as it was filled by varying emotions of surprise, disappointment, anger, sorrow, and hope. So, what he thought and felt was immediately written down before its freshness had faded; vindication suddenly passes into dogma, and dogma is humanized by intermingled appeals and warnings,-the rapid interchange of I, We, Thou, Ye, They, so lighting up the illustration that it glistens like the changing hues of a dove's neck. The entire letter, too, is pervaded by more than wonted fervour; the crisis being very perilous, his whole nature was moved to meet it, so as to deliver his beloved converts from its snares. One result is, that in his anxiety and haste, thought occasionally jostles thought; another idea presses upon him before the one under hand is brought to a formal conclusion; his faculty of mental association being so suggestive and fertile, that it pressed all around it into his service. These peculiarities show that the letter is an intensely human composition-the words of an earnest man writing in the fulness of his soul to other men, and naturally throwing himself on their affection; while there lies behind, in conscious combination, that divine authority which conferred upon him the apostleship in connection with the appearance and voice of the Saviour, and that divine training which opened up to him those sudden and perfect intuitions which he terms Revelation. The contents and circumstances of the epistle endeared it to Luther, for it fitted in wondrously to his similar experiences and trials, and he was wont to call it, as if in conjugal fondness, his Katherine von Bora. One may also cordially indorse the eulogy of Bunyan: “I prefer this book of Martin Luther's (except the Bible) before all the books that I have ever seen, as most fit for a wounded conscience.” For the epistle unveils the relation of a sinner to the law which condemns him, and from which, therefore, he cannot hope for acceptance, and it opens up the great doctrine of justification by faith, which modern spiritualism either ignores or explains away. Its explicit theology is, that through faith one enjoys pardon and has the Spirit conferred upon him, so that he is free from legal yoke; while his life is characterized by a sanctified activity and self-denial, for grace is not in conflict with such obedience, but is rather the spring of it-death to the law being life to God. It is also a forewarning to all time of the danger of modifying the freeness and fulness of the gospel, and of allowing works or any element of mere ritual to be mixed up with the atoning death of the Son of God, as if to give it adaptation or perfection.
Any one writing on Galatians must acknowledge his obligation to the German exegets, Meyer, De Wette, Wieseler, and the others who are referred to in the last chapter of the Introduction. Nor can he forget to thank, among others at home, Bishop Ellicott, Dean Alford, and Prof. Lightfoot, for their learned and excellent labours. Each of these English commentaries has its distinctive merits; and my nope is, that this volume, while it has much in common with them, will be found to possess also an individual character and value, the result of unwearied and independent investigation. Ellicott is distinguished by close and uniform adherence to grammatical canon, without much expansion into exegesis; Alford, from the fact that his exposition extends to the whole New Testament, is of necessity brief and somewhat selective in his remarks; while Lightfoot himself says, that “in his explanatory notes such interpretations only are discussed as seemed at all events possibly right, or are generally received, or possess some historical interest;” and his collateral discussions occupy longer space than the proper exposition. I have endeavoured, on the other hand, to unite grammatical accuracy with some fulness of exegesis, giving, where it seemed necessary, a synopsis of discordant views, and showing their insufficiency, one-sidedness, ungrammatical basis, or want of harmony with the context; treating a doctrine historically, or throwing it into such a form as may remove objection; noticing now and then the views and arguments of Prof. Jowett; and, as a new feature in this volume, interspersing several separate Essays on important topics. Authorities have not been unduly heaped together; in the majority of cases, only the more prominent or representative names have been introduced. The text is for the most part, but not always, the seventh edition of Tischendorf, to whom we are indebted for the Codex Sinaiticus א , and for his recent and exact edition of the Vatican Codex of the New Testament.
My thanks are due to Mr. John Cross, student of Balliol College, Oxford, for looking over the sheets as they passed through the press.
And now, as an earnest and honest attempt to discover the mind of the Spirit in His own blessed word, I humbly dedicate this volume to the Church of Christ.
John Eadie
6 THORNVILLE TERRACE, HILLHEAD, GLASGOW,
1 st January 1869.
INTRODUCTION
I. The Province of Galatia.
The Galatia or Gallograecia of the “Acts,” the region to which this epistle was sent, was a central district in Asia Minor, bounded on the north by Bithynia and Paphlagonia, on the south by Cappadocia and Phrygia, on the east by Pontus and Cappadocia, and on the west by Phrygia and Bithynia. The Roman province of Galatia was considerably larger than this territory, and comprised Lycaonia, Isauria, Phrygia, and Pisidia-the kingdom as ruled by the last sovereign Amyntas. Some critics therefore hold that this epistle was sent especially to believers in Lystra and Derbe; Mynster, Niemeyer, Paulus, Ulrich, Böttger, and Thiersch arguing that in the reign of Nero, Galatia included Derbe and Lystra along with Pisidia, and that therefore in Acts 13:14 there are full details of the apostle's missionary labours in the province. But Galatia is not used in the New Testament in this wide Roman sense; it has always a narrower signification. For by its side occur the similar names of Mysia, Pisidia, and Phrygia. Nay, Lycaonia, Pisidia, Phrygia-all included in the Roman province-are uniformly mentioned as countries distinct from Galatia; the obvious inference being that the terms denote various localities, without reference to political divisions. Thus the author of the Acts describes the apostle and his party as going “throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia” (Acts 16:6); and these are again distinguished from Lycaonia and Pisidia, Acts 13:14; Acts 14:6; Acts 14:24. Nay, the phrase first quoted- τὴν Φρυγίαν καὶ τὴν Γαλατικὴν χώραν , “the Phrygian and Galatian country”-implies that while Phrygia and Galatia were different, they were closely connected geographically; for the Galatian district was bounded south and west by Phrygia, nay, it had originally been Phrygian territory before it was conquered and possessed by the Gauls. The towns of Lystra and Derbe, “cities of Lycaonia,” with Iconium and Antioch, are never regarded as belonging to the apostolic Galatia, though the Roman Galatian province apparently included them. At the same time, in the enumeration of places in 1 Peter 1:1, an enumeration running from east to west, Galatia may be the Roman province mentioned with the others there saluted.
The compound name Γαλλογραικία -Gallogrecia-Greek Gaul, is connected with the eastward migration of a fragment of the great old Keltic race which peopled western Europe. Indeed, Keltai, Galli, Galatae, are varying forms of the same name. The first of these terms, Κελτοί , Κέλται , is probably the earliest, being found in Hecataeus and Herodotus; while the other form, Γαλάτια , is more recent ( ὀψέ ), as is affirmed by Pausanias, though it came to be generally adopted by Greek writers as the name as well of the eastern tribes in Asia Minor, as of the great body of the people to the west of the Rhine. It occurs on the Augustan monument in the town of Ancyra; and being applied alike to the Asiatic and European Gauls, there needed occasionally some geographical notation to be added, such as that found in AElian- Γαλάτας Εὔδοξος τοὺς τῆς ῾Εῴας λέγει δρᾶν τοιαῦτα ; and it has been found on an inscription dug out from Hadrian's Wall in the north of England. Diefenbach shows that this name had an extensive range of application. Ammianus Marcellinus says, Galatas-ita enim Gallos Sermo Graecus adpellat; and Appian explains, ἐς τὴν Κελτικὴν τὴν νῦν λεγομένην Γαλατίαν . Galli- Γάλλοι , Gauls-was the current Roman name, though the other terms, Kelt and Galatian, are also used by Latin writers-the last being confined to the people who had settled themselves in Phrygia. Julius Caesar's words are, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua, Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Livy, in narrating the eastern wars in Galatia, calls the people Galli. Γαλλία is also employed by late Greek writers, and at a more recent period it almost superseded that of Galatia. Theodore of Mopsuestia has τὰς νῦν καλουμένης Γαλλίας - ad 2 Timothy 4:10, Fragm. p. 156, ed. Fritzsche. Diefenbach quotes from Galen, De Antidot. 1.2, a clause identifying the three names: καλοῦσι γὰρ αὐτοὺς ἔνιοι μὲν Γαλάτας , ἔνιοι δὲ Γάλλους , συνηθέστερον δὲ τῶν Κέλτων ὄνομα . Strabo reports some difference of language among the western Galatae-a statement which may be at once believed, for, not to speak of Welsh and Erse, such variations are found in places so contiguous as the counties of Inverness and Argyle. Appian, speaking of the Pyrenees, says, “that to the east are the Kelts, now named Galatians and Gauls, and to the west Iberians and Keltiberians.” But the names are sometimes used vaguely, and sometimes also for the sake of inter-distinction, as in the definition of Hesychius, Κελτοὶ ἔθνος ἕτερον Γαλατῶν ; in Diogenes Laertius, Κελτοῖς καὶ Γαλάταις ; and in fine, we have also the name Κελτογαλατία . These ethnological statements imply that the knowledge of ancient writers on the subject was not only vague and fluctuating, but often merely traditionary and conjectural, and that the various names-Greek and Roman, earlier and later, eastern and western-given to this primitive race, led to great confusion and misunderstanding. Perhaps it is not far from the truth to say that Kelt was the original name, the name employed by the people themselves; and that the Greeks, on getting the name or some peculiar variation of it, represented it by Galatae; while the Romans, by another initial change far from being uncommon, pronounced it Galli-the t or at in Kelt or Galat being a species of Keltic suffix. Not only is the initial letter of Kelti and Galli interchangeable, but there is a form Καλατία , Κάλατον , allied, according to some, to Caeldon-the Gauls of the hills-Celadon, Caledonii. The northern form of the word is Gadhael, Gaidheal, or Gaoidheal, of which the Scottish term Gael is a contraction. Hence Argyle is ar-Gadhael, the coast of the Gael, and Argyle has become Argyll, just as Gael became Gall, Galli. The conflicting mythical derivations of the name need not be referred to; it seems to be allied to the Irish Gal, “a battle,” Gala, “arms,” and will therefore mean “armed”- pugnaces, armati. This derivation is abundantly verified in their history, for they were, as Strabo says, “warlike, passionate, and ever prepared to fight.” The essential syllable in the earlier name is found in Celtiber, Κελτίβηρ ; and the other form, Gall, makes the distinctive part of Gallicia, a province in the Spanish peninsula, of Galway and of Galloway, connected with the idea of foreign or hostile; hence the old Scottish proverb about “the fremd Scots of Galloway.” The same syllable formed portion of the grand chieftain's name latinized by Tacitus into Galgacus, into whose mouth, in his oration before the decisive battle, the son-in-law of the Roman general puts those phrases which in their point and terseness have passed into proverbs: omne ignotum pro magnifico; solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant.
The Celtic races were among the earliest migrations from the East, and occupied western Europe; they were as far west, according to Herodotus, as to be “beyond the Pillars of Hercules” “they are near the Kynetae, which are the most western population of Europe.” They were also found in northern Italy, France, and the British Isles. Many Latin terms connected with war are of Keltic origin. But the ocean prevented any farther westward progress, and in their restlessness the Kelts retraced their steps, and commenced a series of movements towards the East. After some minor expeditions, and in the year 390 B.C., a portion of them, under Brennus or Bran, crossed the Apennines, captured Rome, and spread themselves over the south of Italy. According to Livy and Diodorus, these invaders came from the vicinity of Sens, and were therefore Kelts according to Caesar's account of the races of Gaul. Others suppose them to have belonged to the Kymric branch of the Gauls: Κίμβροι - Κιμμερίοι . About 279 B.C. another body of Gauls, under a leader of the same name, rushed eastward into Greece, overran Thrace and Macedonia, found immense wealth, and enriched themselves for another and more violent expedition,-their forces being said to consist of 150,000 infantry and 61,000 cavalry. These hardy hordes- ὀψίγονοι Τιτῆνες , late-born Titans-swarmed thick as snow-flakes- νιφάδεσσιν ἐοικότες , as the poet describes them. On pushing their way to Thermopylae so famed in olden story, they met 20,000 Greeks assembled to defend the pass, the shore being guarded also by an Athenian fleet. The Gauls, in spite of their numbers, were beaten back; and one party of them, crossing the mountains into AEtolia, ravaged the country with incredible barbarity. The leader then marched in haste on Delphi, gloating over the rich prize that should fall into his hands-the sacred treasures and statues and chariots dedicated to the sun-god; profanely joking, according to Justin, that the gods were so rich that they could afford to be givers as well as receivers. But the Delphian Greeks, mustering only 4000, proved more than a match for Brennus and his impatient troops. The defenders had an advantageous situation on the hill, and, aided by a stern and intense wintry cold, they bravely repulsed the barbarians. Their general, wounded and carried off the field, was unable to bear his mortification, and committed suicide; and the impetuous invaders, on being beaten, fled in panic-a national characteristic, and a few of them escaping the slaughter that accompanied their disorderly retreat through an unknown and mountainous territory, reached their brethren left behind at Thermopylae. According to Greek legend, Apollo's help led to the discomfiture of the invaders. Justin says that a portion of these marauders, the tribe called Tectosages, returned with their booty to Tolosa-Toulouse; but the story is uncertain, and the fluctuations of these Celtic tribes, ever in quest of new territories and plunder, cannot be distinctly traced-the hazy reports of their movements hither and thither cannot be clearly followed. The expedition to Delphi had bred fierce dissension among the leaders of the force, who, like all Keltic chiefs, were too self-willed and independent to maintain harmonious action for any length of time. Two leaders, named in a tongue foreign to their own, Leonnorius and Lutarius, had escaped the great disaster by refusing to join in the march; they and their followers fought their way through the Thracian Chersonese to the Hellespont, and after some quarrels and vicissitudes were carried across into Asia Minor. Nicomedes I., king of Bithynia, being at war at the time with his brother Zyboetes, gladly took these foreign mercenaries into his service, and by their help gained the victory, but at a terrible expense of misery to his country. In the campaign they had acted as it pleased them, and divided the prey among themselves. According to one statement, Nicomedes gave them a portion of the conquered country which was on that account called Gallogrecia. According to other accounts, the Gauls, disdaining all such trammels as usually bind allies or hired legionaries, set out to conquer for themselves, threw themselves over the country west and north of the Taurus, and either forced it to tribute or parcelled it out as a settlement. The Syrian princes were terrified into submission for a season; but their spirit at length revived, and one of them, Antiochus, got his surname of Soter from a victory over these truculent adventurers, or rather over one of their three tribes-the Tectosages. Such, however, was the importance attached to them, that the princes of various countries subsidized them, and they are found in Egyptian as well as in Syrian battles. But they were dangerous friends; for after helping to gain a battle for Antiochus Hierax, they turned and compelled him to ransom himself and form a bond with them. Their spreading over the country like a swarm- velut examen, and the terror Gallici nominis et armorum invicta felicitas, are referred to by Justin. In this way they became the terror of all states, an ungovernable army, whose two-edged sword was ever ready to be drawn to glut their own lust of booty, and which, when paid for, often cut on either side of the quarrel for which they had been bought, and was seldom sheathed. They knew their power, and acted according to their wild and rapacious instincts.
But their unquenchable turbulence became intolerable. Attalus, prince of Pergamus and father of Eumenes, gained a great victory over them, or rather over the two tribes, the Trocmi and Tolistoboii; he refused to pay them tribute, and hemmed them into the province proper of Galatia, about B.C. 230. Yet we find Attalus employing another horde of the same hirelings in one of his wars, who, as their wont had been, broke loose from all restraint, and plundered the countries and towns along the Hellespont, till their defeat by Prusias, about B.C. 216. But Rome was about to avenge its earlier capture. Some Gallic or Galatian troops had fought on the side of Antiochus at the battle of Magnesia; and the consul Manlius, against the advice of the decem legati who were with him, at once invaded their country, while the native Phrygian hierarchy, trodden down by the Gauls, encouraged the invaders. The Gauls, on being summoned to submit, refused- stolida ferocia; but they were soon defeated, in two campaigns and in a series of battles, with prodigious slaughter. Certain conditions were imposed on them, but their country was not wrested from them. They may by this time have lost their earlier hardihood, and, as Niebuhr remarks, have become quite effeminate and unwarlike, as the Goths whom Belisarius found in Italy. Fifty-two Gallic chiefs walked before the triumphal car of Manlius at Rome, B.C. 189. In subsequent years they were often employed as indispensable auxiliaries; they served both with Mithridates and with Pompey who showed them some favour, and some of them were at Actium on the side of Antony. Roman patronage, however, soon crushed them. Deiotarus, first tetrarch, and then made king by Pompey, was beaten at Pharsalia, but he was defended at Rome by Cicero; the second king of the same name was succeeded by Amyntas, on whose death Augustus reduced the country to the rank of a Roman province, B.C. 25, the first governor of which was the propraetor, M. Lollius. The difference between the limits of Galatia and the Roman province so named has been already referred to.
The Gauls who had so intruded themselves into Asia Minor, and formed what Juvenal calls altera Gallia, were divided into three tribes: the names of course have been formed with Greek terminations from the native terms which may not be very accurately represented. These three tribes were the Τολιστόβογιοι , to the west of the province, with Pessinus for their capital; the Τεκτοσάγες in the centre, with Ancyra for their chief city which was also the metropolis of the country; and the Τρόκμοι , to the east of the territory, their principal town being Tavium. Each tribe was divided into four tetrarchies, having each its tetrarch, with a judge and a general under him; and there was for the twelve tetrarchies a federal council of 300, who met at Drynaemetum, or oakshrine-the first syllable of the word being the Keltic derw, oak (Derwydd, Druid), and nemed in the same tongue meaning a temple. That, says Strabo, was the old constitution- πάλαι μὲν οὖν ἦν τοιαύτη τις ἡ διάταξις .
The previous statements, however, have been questioned, and it has been denied that those fierce marauders were Gauls. There are, it is true, contradictions and uncertainties among the old writers about them,-statements that can neither be fully understood nor satisfactorily adjusted. The outline is often dark, and the story is sometimes left incomplete, or filled in with vague reports, legends, or conjectures. But the wild wanderers referred to were generally believed to be Gauls proper from the west, and probably of the great division of Kymri or Welsh Kelts. Latham, in his edition of Prichard's Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations, p. 104, etc., throws out the conjecture that the Galatians were from Austrian Gallicia, and therefore of Sclavonic origin; but his arguments are neither strong nor strongly put. Others maintain that those Gauls or Galatians were of a German stock. There are obscurities in the distinctions made by Greek and Latin authors between the German and Gothic races, of which Suidas under Κελτοί is an example; for he says the Kelts are called Germans, adding, that they invaded Albion, and are also called Senones-a Gothic race beyond all dispute. Dion Cassius falls into similar blunders. “Some of the Kelts,” he says, “whom we call Germans, holding the whole of Keltike toward the Rhine, have made it to be called Germany.” He places the Kelts on both banks of the Rhine, or rather with this odd distinction, ἐν ἀριστερᾷ μὲν τὴν τε Γαλατίαν . . . ἐν δεξιᾷ δὲ τοὺς Κελτοὺς . He also identifies Kelts and Germans, calling the latter Κελτοί , and the Belgians Κελτικοί ; nay, vaguely regarding Κελτική as a Celtic territory bordering on Aquitania, he sometimes gives it the special meaning of Gallia, and at other times uses it in the broader sense of Western Europe containing Kelts and Germans. Other old writers were apparently quite as bewildered on the subject, and as various in their references. A knowledge of the geography and the history of outlying regions could not be easily obtained in those days, and much of it must have been the result of oral communication, so liable to mistake, exaggeration, and distortion. But a distinction was usually made, though it was not consistently adhered to; and the hypothesis that these Gauls were of a Teutonic origin is quite contrary to the current traditions and the ordinary beliefs of the earlier times. There are extreme views on both sides; such as the theory of Mone, that Germany as well as Gaul was peopled with Celts, and that of Holtzmann, that the two peoples named Celts and Germans were both alike a Teutonic race. Something like national vanity has been mingled with this dispute, which is not unlike a fierce and famous quarrel nearer home as to the origin and blood of the Picts. Thus Hofmann, in his Disputatio de Galat. Antiq. 1726, cries: En igitur coloniam Germanorum in Graecia-en virtutem majorum nostrorum quae sua arma ad remotissima loca protulit. Selneccer (Wernsdorf, De Repub. Galat.) is jubilant on this account: cum ad Galatas scripsisse Paulum legimus, ad nostros majores Germanos eum scripsisse sciamus. Germani ergo epistolam hanc sibi vindicent, ut haeredes et posteri. Luther also says, “Some imagine that we Germans are descendants of the Galatians. Nor perhaps is this derivation untrue, for we Germans are not very unlike them in temper.” “The Epistle to the Galatians is addressed to Germans,” Olshausen writes; “and it was the German Luther who in this apostolical epistle again recognised and brought to light the substance of the gospel. It can scarcely be doubted that the Galatians are the first German people to whom the word of the cross was preached.” Tournefort warms into enthusiasm when his travels carry him among Keltic affinities. Gleams of the same spirit are found in Thierry; and Texier says more distinctly, Pour nous, nous ne devons pas nous rappeler, sans un sentiment d'orgueil national, que les Gaulois ont pénétré jusqu'à centre de l'Asie mineure, s'y sont établis, et ont laissé dans ce pays des souvenirs impérissables.
Now, first, the names of these Galatian tribes appear to be Keltic names. The Tolisto-boii, or perhaps Tolisto-boioi, are Keltic in both parts of their appellation. For Tolosa is yet preserved in France and Spain; and the second portion of the word is Keltic also, the Boii being a well-known Gallic tribe-a turbulent and warlike race who left Transalpine Gaul, crossed into northern Italy by the pass of the Great St. Bernard, fought against the Roman power at intervals with varying fortunes, but on being at length driven out of the country, settled on a territory named from them Boien-heim-home of the Boii-Bohemia. The Tectosages bear also a Keltic designation. A Gallic tribe of the name is mentioned by Caesar as being also a migratory one, like so many of its sisters: Germaniae loca circum Hercyniam silvam Volcae Tectosages occupaverunt atque ibi consederunt; and Tolosa Tectosagum occurs in Pom. Mela, Galatians 2:5, as among the cities of Gallia Narbonensis. The Tectosages are supposed indeed by Meyer and others to have been a German tribe, called by Caesar Volcae Tectosages; but Volcae has no connection with the Teutonic Folk or Volk, for they were a Keltic race who had conquered a settlement in Germany and adopted German manners (Caesar says these things not from his own knowledge), while the great body of the tribe occupied the basin of the Garonne, with Tolosa (Toulouse) for its capital. The name of the Trocmi is more obscure. Some, as Strabo, followed by Texier, derive it from a chief; Bochart took it from Togarmah; others connect it with Θρηϊκες -Thraces; while others identify them with the Taurisci-mountain-dwellers.-Secondly, the persons engaged in the expedition into Greece, and the chiefs noted among them afterwards, have Keltic names like the Gallic ones in Caesar; ending in rix (chief), like Dumnorix; Albiorix, Ateporix occur after the lapse of two centuries; or in marus ( mar, great), as Virdumarus, and in tarus or torus, as Deiotarus, tar being equivalent to the Latin trans. The leader Brennus (king) was called Prausus - terrible (Gaelic, bras; Cornish, braw). Brennus had a colleague or Συνάρχων ; Pausanias calls him Ακίχωριος , and Diodorus Siculus Κιχώριος . In the Kymric tongue the name would be Kikhouïaour, or Akikhouïaour, which without the augment a would be Cyçwiawr.-Thirdly, names of places often end in the Keltic briga (hill) and iacum. -Fourthly, Pausanias refers to a plant which the Greeks called κόκκος , the kermes berry, but which the Galatians φωνῇ τῇ ἐπιχωρίῳ call ὗς , or according to a better reading ὕσγη , the dye being called ὑσγινόν . Now, the Kymric has hesgen, a sedge, and the Cornish has heschen. Pausanias tells also that one mode of military arrangement among the invading Gauls was called τριμαρκισία , from their native name for a horse, μάρκας ; tri or trî being Celtic for three, and march or marc the name of a steed. In Irish and Gaelic and Welsh, trimarchwys signifies “men driving three horses.”-Fifthly, the long lance, the distinctive weapon of the infantry, was the γαῖσον ; hence the epithet γαισάται Γαλάται . It is in Irish gad, a lance, gaide, gaisthe, s solitaria often falling out. It is often incorporated into proper names, as Radagaisus, Gaisatorix, not unlike Breakspear, Shakespear. It is allied to the Saxon goad, and the old Scottish gad, the name of a spear and a fishing-rod. The account of the word and epithet given by Polybius is wholly wrong. Γαῖσος occurs in the Sept., Joshua 8:18, and in the Apocrypha, Jdt 9:9 .-Sixthly, Jerome is a witness whose testimony may be trusted, for it is that of an ear-witness. He had sojourned both among the Treviri for some time when a young man- adolescentulus, and he had journeyed to Galatia, and seen its capital Ancyra. In a letter to Ruffinus he refers to a pilgrimage- totum Galatiae et Cappadociae iter. In the preface to the second book of his Commentary he says, Scit mecum qui videt Ancyram metropolim Galatiae civitatem. Not only does he mention his being in Gaul, but he writes more definitely to Ruffinus, in the letter already quoted- quum post Romana studia ad Rheni semibarbaras ripas eodem cibo, pari frueremur hospitio. In his second book against Jovinian he tells a story about the cannibalism and ferocity of the natio Scotorum whom he saw in Gaul; and more precisely still, he informs Florentius of a literary work, librum Sancti Hilarii quem apud Treviros manu mea ipse descripseram. Now, Jerome's distinct words are: “It is true that Gaul produces orators, but Aquitania boasts a Greek origin”- et Galatae non de illa parte terrarum, sed de ferocioribus Gallis sint profecti. . . . Unum est quod inferimus, Galatas excepto sermone Graeco quo omnis Oriens loquitur, propriam linguam eandem pene habere quam Treviros. So that six hundred years after their first settlement in Asia Minor their old language was spoken by them.
But, according to Meyer, Winer, Jablonski, Niebuhr, Hug, Hermes, Olshausen, Baumgarten-Crusius, Holtzman, German was the language spoken then, as now, in and around Treves. This statement, however, though partially true, does not prove the point contended for. For there had been an intrusive change of population toward the end of the third century. A colony of Franks had settled in the territory of the Treviri, and naturally brought their language with them- Γερμανοὺς οἱ νῦν Φράγγοι καλοῦνται . Yet the older tongue survived, and might survive for a long period afterwards, like the Welsh tongue of the present day, centuries after the annexation of the principality to England. Wieseler argues from the testimony of early writers as to the Germanic descent and blood of the Treviri. Tacitus says indeed that the Treviri and the Nervii affected a German origin,-a confession that they were not pure Germans, and he proceeds to distinguish them from peoples which were German haud dubie. Strabo indeed seems to admit that the Nervii were a German race. But the Treviri are called Belgae and Gauls again and again, as by Tacitus in his Annal. 1.42, 43, 3:44. In his Hist. 4.71, 72, 73, Cerealis addresses them, Terram vestram ceterorumque Gallorum. . . . Caesar says, Treviros quorum civitas propter Germaniae vicinitatem . . .; haec civitas longe plurimum totius Galliae equitatu valet . . .; Gallus inter Gallos,-in which places they are distinguished from Germans; and Pom. Mela writes, Clarissimi Belgarum Treveri. Their leaders' names are Keltic, such as Cingetorix. Some doubt is thrown on this by the way in which Pliny speaks of them, and there may have been, as Thierry allows, some German tribes mixed up with them, as was the case among the Keltic Belgians. Caesar's statement, De Bell. Gall. 2.4, may be accounted for in the same way, and the apparently Teutonic names of some of the leaders in the invasion, such as Lutarius (Luther) and Leonnorius, may be thus explained. Great stress is laid on the names of these two leaders, and on the name of a tribe called Teutobodiaci, and a town oddly styled Germanopolis. Thierry supposes that the Tolistoboii were Teutonic, because of the name of Lutarius their leader. But the Teutonic origin of even these names has been disputed. With regard to the first word, there is a Keltic chieftain in Caesar named Lucterius, and Leonorius is the name of a Cymric saint. The second syllable of the tribal name is found in the name of the warrior queen Boadicea, in the name Bodotria, and the o being resolvable into ua, the word assumes the form of buáid, victoria. Zeuss also adduces such forms as Tribodii, Catbud, Budic, etc. Germanopolis, as Prof. Lightfoot remarks, is an exceptional word, and probably denotes some fragment of an exceptional population; or the name may have been one of later introduction, as the Greek termination may indicate. The name does not appear till more recent times, it being conjectured that a foreign colony had been planted there. Still more, the dissyllable German itself, not being the native Teutonic name of the people, may have a Keltic origin,-according to Grimm, from garm, clamor, or according to Zeuss, from ger or gair, vicinus.
Lastly, Ammianus Marcellinus, writing in former times, speaks of the tall stature, fair and ruddy complexion of the Gauls, and the blue eyes of their women; and Diodorus describes the white skins and yellow hair of the ῾Ελληνογαλάται . If any faith can be placed in national resemblance of form and feature in two periods so remote, Texier may be listened to: Sans chercher à se faire illusion, on reconnaît 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 têtes carrées et les yeux bleux rappellent le caractère des populations de l'ouest de la France. Cette race de pasteurs est répandue dans les villages et les yaëla (camps nomades) des environs de la métropole.
All these points enumerated are conclusively in favour of the old and common belief of the Keltic origin of the Galatians.
The original population of the province indeed was Phrygian, though in the current name no account is taken of that people, but of the Greeks who were settled in it, as in all the East since the period of Alexander's conquests, so that Strabo calls it Γαλατία ῾Ελλήνων . The partial amalgamation of these races must have occupied a long time. The Phrygian superstition may have taken hold of the Kelts from some points of resemblance to their ancestral faith and worship; and they learned to use the Grecian language, which was a kind of common tongue among all the tribes round about them, while neither the Phrygian nor the Gallic vernacular was wholly superseded. The Gauls had coins with Greek inscriptions prior to the Christian era. The consul Manlius, addressing his troops, says of the Galatians: Hi jam degeneres sunt mixti, et Gallograeci vere quod appellantur . . . Phrygas Gallicis oneratos armis. The Galatian lady who is praised by Plutarch and others for killing her deforcer, spoke to her attendants in a tongue which the soldiers knew not. The Jewish dispersion had also been spreading itself everywhere, and was found in Galatia. The population was therefore a mixed one, but it was profoundly pervaded by a Keltic element which gave it character. The manifestations of that temperament occasioned this epistle, and are also referred to in it. The Γαλατικά of Eratosthenes has been lost, and we can scarcely pardon Jerome for giving us no extracts from Varro and other writers on Galatia, forsooth on this weak pretence,- quia nobis propositum est, incircumcisos homines non introducere in Templum Dei.
II. Introduction of the Gospel into Galatia.
It was during the apostle's second great missionary circuit that he first preached the gospel in Galatia, probably about A.D. 51 or 52. A mere passing hint is given, a mere allusion to evangelistic travel, as it brought the apostle nearer to the sea-board and his voyage to Europe. The simple statement is, “Now when they had gone throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the gospel in Asia.” The apostle had proposed to visit Asia or Ephesus, but the set time had not come; and on arriving in Mysia, he and his party prepared to go north-east into Bithynia, but “the Spirit of Jesus did not suffer them”-such is the better reading. Thus checked and checked again, passing by Mysia, they were guided to Troas, the point of embarkation for Greece. They could not therefore purpose to preach in Bithynia after such a prohibition, and probably the prohibition to preach in Asia suggested the opposite continent of Europe. If the apostle had any idea of crossing to Europe at this time, the effort to advance into Bithynia may have been to reach Byzantium, and get to the West by the ordinary voyage and highway. These brief words with regard to Galatia are thus a mere filling up of the apostle's tour, during which he was guided into a way that he knew not, and led by a path that he had not known. When it is said that he went through the Galatian territory, it is implied that he journeyed for the purpose of preaching, as is also shown by the contrast that he was forbidden “to preach” in Asia-preaching being the one aim and end of all his movements. In the cities of Galatia, then, the apostle preached at this time, and naturally formed associations of believers into churches. But nothing is told of success or opposition, of inquirers, converts, or antagonists.
The apostle's own reference to this visit is as brief, incidental, and obscure as the passage in Acts. “Ye know how, through infirmity of the flesh, I preached the gospel unto you at the first:” Galatians 4:13. The plain meaning of this declaration is, that he was detained in the province by sickness, and that on this account, and not because of any previous plans and arrangements, he preached the gospel at his first visit to Galatia. The phrase δἰ ἀσθένειαν admits grammatically of no other meaning, and πρότερον refers to the earlier of two visits. See the commentary under the verse. But he reminds them of his cordial welcome among them as “an angel of God, even as Christ Jesus;” asserts, too, that in their intense and demonstrative sympathy they “would have plucked out their eyes, and given them to him,” and that they overlooked that infirmity which tended from its nature to create loathing of his person and aversion to his message. See commentary on Galatians 4:14. Their impulsive and excitable nature flashed out in enthusiastic reception of him; and their congratulations of one another on the message and the messenger were lavished with characteristic ardour,-all in sad contrast with their subsequent defection. But we learn, too, from some allusions in his appeals, that in Galatia as everywhere else, he preached Christ and His cross,-pictured Him clearly, fully, as the one atoning Saviour,-and announced as on a placard to them the Crucified One. That preaching was followed by the descent of the Spirit; miracles had been wrought among them, and their spiritual progress had been eager and marked “Ye were running well.” But the bright morning was soon and sadly overcast.
Some indeed suppose that an earlier visit than the one now referred to is implied in Acts 14:6, which says that Paul and Barnabas, on being informed of a persecution ripening against them in Iconium, “fled unto Derbe and Lystra, cities of Lycaonia, and unto the region that lieth round about.” But these geographical notations plainly exclude Galatia, as we have seen in the previous chapter; and ἡ περίχωρος , the country surrounding Lystra and Derbe-cities toward the south of Lycaonia, cannot include Galatia which was situated so far to the north, Phrygia lying between. Such references as Macknight gives in proof to Pliny and Strabo have been already disposed of. Koppe maintains that the mention of Barnabas in Galatians 2:13 presupposes a personal knowledge of him on the part of the Galatians, which could only be acquired through an earlier visit. But Acts 14:6 will not, as we have just seen, warrant any belief in such a visit; nor does the statement of the strength of that current of Judaistic influence which at Antioch carried even Barnabas away, really imply any more than that his name, as the apostle's recognised fellow-labourer, must have been in course of years quite familiar to them. It is a mistake on the part of Koppe and Keil to affirm that the visit on the second missionary circuit was one of confirmation only, which must therefore imply previous evangelical labour. It is true that Paul and Barnabas resolved on such a journey, and that, from a difference of opinion as to the fitness of Mark to accompany them, Paul and his new colleague Silas carried out the intention. “They went through Syria and Cilicia confirming the churches,” Acts 15:41; then proceeded to Derbe and Lystra where Timothy joined them; and the result of the tour is formally announced thus: “So were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily.” But this daily increase implies that the confirmation of believers was not the only service in which the apostle engaged; he also preached the gospel so as to gain numerous converts. The description of this journey ends at Acts 16:5, and the next verse begins a new and different section-the account of a further journey with a somewhat different end in view, preaching being the principal aim and work.
During his third missionary circuit, a second visit was paid by the apostle to the Galatian churches, probably about three years after the first, or about A.D. 54. As little is said of this visit in Acts as of the first. It is briefly told in Acts 18:23, that “he went over the Galatian country and Phrygia in order, strengthening all the disciples.” The apostle passed through Phrygia in order to reach Galatia, and therefore Phrygia precedes in the first account; but at the next visit he passed through Galatia in order to reach Phrygia, and Galatia naturally stands first in the second account. The results are not stated, but we know that the effects of this “strengthening” were soon exhausted. It may be safely surmised that the allusions in the epistle to his personal presence among them, which have in them an element of indignation or sorrow, refer to his second visit-all being so fair and promising at his first residence. During the interval between the first and second visit, incipient symptoms of defection seem to have shown themselves; the Judaistic teachers had been sowing their errors with some success. The constitutional fickleness of the people had begun to develop itself when novelty had worn off. He did not need to warn them about “another gospel” at his first visit; but at the second visit he had felt the necessity of uttering such a warning, and that with no bated breath: He, the preacher of such a gospel, angel or man, let him be accursed. The solemn censure in Galatians 5:21 might be given at any of his visits, for it fitted such a people at any time; though perhaps, after a season of suppression at their conversion, these sins might reappear in the churches during the reaction which followed the first excitement. At the second visit, the earlier love had not only cooled and its effervescence subsided, but estrangement and misunderstanding were springing up. Such a change is implied in the sudden interrogation introducing an exposure of the motives of those who were paying them such court, and superseding him in their affections: “Am I become your enemy because I tell you the truth?” See commentary under Galatians 4:15-17. The apostle had the fervent and abiding interest of a founder in the Galatian churches: in the crisis of their spiritual peril, he travailed in birth for them-suffered the throes of a first travail at their conversion, and those of a second now, that “Christ might be fully formed in their hearts.”
It is probable that the apostle followed in Galatia his common practice, and preached “to the Jews first, and also to the Greeks.” The historian is silent indeed on this subject, and it is wholly baseless in Baur, Schneckenburger, and Hilgenfeld to allege that the reason of the silence is because Paul did not follow his usual method, there being in fact no Jews to preach to. Hofmann inclines to the same view, though not for the same reasons. But the view of Baur assumes a primarily improbable hypothesis, that Luke constructed his narrative for the purpose of showing how the gospel was transferred from the rejecting Jews to the accepting Gentiles. In reply, besides, it may be stated, that on that ground the accounts of his labours at Lystra and at Athens must be taken as exceptions, which certainly show the improbability of the hypothesis. The reason alleged by Olshausen for the historian's brevity, viz. that he wished to bring the apostle over as speedily as possible to Rome, is nearer the truth; only Olshausen's argument can scarcely be sustained, that Luke thereby consulted the wishes and circumstances of his first readers. Nor is it less likely that the apostle at his first visit, and so far as his feeble health permitted, would labour in the great centres of population-in Ancyra, Pessinus, Tavium, and Gordium. But we have several indirect arguments that many Jews had settled in the province and neighbourhood. We find in Josephus a despatch of king Antiochus, in which he says that he had thought proper to remove two thousand Jewish families from Mesopotamia and Babylon into Lydia and Phrygia. Wherever there was an opening for gain, wherever traffic could be carried on, wherever shekels could be won in barter or commercial exchange, there the Jews were found, earnest, busy, acute, and usually successful,-the Diaspora surged into all markets; yet in the midst of its bargains, buying, selling, and getting gain, it forgot not to build its synagogues. Josephus quotes an edict of Augustus addressed to the Jews at Ancyra, protecting them in their special religious usages and in the enjoyment of the Sabbath; and he ordains that the ψήφισμα formally granted by them be preserved ( ἀνατεθῆναι ), along with his decree, in the temple dedicated by the community of Asia in Ancyra. Names and symbols found in the inscriptions lead to the same conclusion. So that there was to be found in the territory a large Jewish population, to whom the apostle would prove that Jesus was the promised Messiah. How many of them received the gospel, it is impossible to say.
The churches, therefore, were not made up wholly of Gentiles, as Baur, Schneckenburger, and Hilgenfeld contend. That there was a body of Jews in them is probable also from the clauses in which the apostle identifies himself with them: “we Jews by nature,” Galatians 2:15; “redeemed us from the curse of the law,” Galatians 3:13; “we were kept under the law,” Galatians 3:23; “we are no longer under a schoolmaster,” Galatians 3:25; “we were in bondage under the elements of the world,” Galatians 4:3. Heathen believers are specially appealed to in many places, Galatians 4:8-12; and to preach to them was his special function, Galatians 1:16, Galatians 2:9: they are assured that to get themselves circumcised is of no avail, Galatians 5:2; and the party who would force circumcision upon them are stigmatized as cowardly time-servers, Galatians 6:12-13. These Gentiles are regarded by Storr, Mynster, Credner, Davidson, and Jowett as proselytes of the gate; but the assertion has no sure foundation. Some may have been in that condition of anxious inquirers, but in Galatians 4:8 they are accused of having been idolaters; and the phrase “weak and beggarly elements,” to which again- πάλιν -they desired to be in bondage, may characterize heathenism in several of its aspects as well as Judaism. See commentary on Galatians 4:8. But it is no proof of the existence or number of Jewish Christians to allege that Peter, Galatians 1:1, wrote to elect strangers in Galatia; for διασπορά may be there used in a spiritual sense, and it is certain that many words in that epistle must have been addressed to Gentiles: Galatians 2:11-12, Galatians 4:3. Besides, the apostle makes a free and conclusive use of the Old Testament in his arguments-a mode of proof ordinarily unintelligible to a Gentile. Again and again does he adduce a quotation as portion of a syllogistic argument, conscious that his proof was taken from what was common ground to them both-from a source familiar to them and acknowledged to be possessed of ultimate authority. It is true that the Old Testament contained a divine revelation preparatory to the new economy, and that the apostle might use it in argument anywhere; but there is in this epistle a direct versatility in handling the Hebrew Scriptures, as well as an uncommon and esoteric application of them, which presupposes more familiarity with them and their interpretation than Gentiles by birth could be easily supposed to possess.
The amazing success of the apostle's first labours in the midst of numerous drawbacks, might be assisted by various secondary causes, such as the novelty of the message, and the unique phenomenon of its proclamation by one who was suffering from epileptic paralysis. The Celtic temperament, so easily attracted by novelty, might at once embrace the new religion, though, on the other hand, nothing could be more remote than the Phrygian cultus from the purity and simplicity of the gospel. Yet that gospel, presented in the enthusiastic eloquence of a man so wildly earnest as to appear “beside himself,” and yet so feeble, so stricken, and so visibly carrying in himself the sentence of death, arrested and conquered them with ominous celerity. It is impossible to say what about the gospel specially captivated them, though there is no doubt that the cross was exhibited in its peculiar prominence. The appeal in Galatians 3:1 would seem to imply, that as the public and placarded presentation of the Crucified One is brought forward to prove the prodigious folly of their apostasy, it may be inferred that this was the doctrine by which they had been fascinated, and which spoke home, as Prof. Lightfoot surmises, to their traditionary faith in the atoning efficacy of human blood. That the blood of bullocks and of goats could not take away sin, was a profound and universal conviction in old Gaul, if Caesar may be credited; and man for man appeared a juster and more meritorious substitution. Might not, then, the preaching of the man Jesus put to death as a sacrificial victim throw a wondrous awe over them, as they saw in it the realization of traditionary beliefs and hopes?
Still Christianity had nothing in common with the Phrygian religion, which was a demonstrative nature-worship, both sensuous and startling. The cultus was orgiastic, with wild music and dances led by the Corybantes-not without the usual accompaniment of impurities and other abominations, though it might have mystic initiations and secret teachings. Rhea or Cybele (and Rhea might be only another form of ἔρα , the earth), the mother of the gods, was the chief object of adoration, and derived a surname from the places where her service was established. The great Mother appears on the coins of all the cities, and many coins found in the ruins of the Wall of Hadrian have her effigy. At Pessinus her image was supposed to have fallen from heaven, and there she was called Agdistes. Though the statue was taken to Rome during the war with Hannibal, the city retained a sacred pre-eminence. Strabo says that her priests were a sort of sovereigns endowed with large revenues, and that the Attalian kings built for her a magnificent temple. The Keltic invaders are supposed to have been accustomed to somewhat similar religious ordinances in their national so-called Druidism. But the Druidical system, long supposed to be so specially characteristic of the Keltic races, has been greatly exaggerated in its character and results. The well-known description in Caesar was based on reports which he harmonized and compacted; and the value of those reports may be tested by others which follow in the same Book as to the existence of a unicorn in the Hercynian Forest, and as to another animal found there like a goat, which had no knee-joints, and which was caught by sawing through the tree on which it leaned when asleep, for it could not rise when it had been thrown down. The statement of Caesar, based on mere unsifted rumour, was amplified by succeeding writers; and Pliny, Strabo, Ammianus Marcellinus, and Pomponius Mela have only altered and recast it, while Lucan and Tacitus added some new touches. If the Druids held the high and mysterious rank assigned to them in popular imagination,-if they dispensed laws, taught youth, offered sacrifices, possessed esoteric science, and held great conventions,-how comes it that they never appear in actual history, but are only seen dimly in the picturesque descriptions of these Greek and Roman authors, not one of whom ever saw a Druid? In all the previous intercourse of Gaul with Rome, no living Druids ever appear on the scene, and no one notices their presence or influence in any business-in any consultations or national transactions. Caesar never alludes to them save in the abstract,-never, in his marches, battles, or negotiations in Gaul and Britain, comes into contact with one of them, or even hints at their existence. Tacitus relates that when the Capitol was burned during the struggle between Otho and Vitellius, the Druids predicted ( Druidae canebant) from that occurrence the fall of the empire. The same author records, indeed, how at the invasion of Mona (Anglesea) they were seen in terrible commotion, the Druidesses like weird women or furies screaming and brandishing torches. His picture, however, is coloured for effect, since no genuine information is imparted by his description. Ausonius describes the Druids as an ancient race, or rather caste, but he has no allusion to their sacerdotal character. Descent from them is in his view a special honour, like that from any of the mythical deities: stirpe Druidarum satus, si fama non fallit fidem; stirpe satus Druidum. Lucan also vaguely alludes to them in the first book of his Pharsalia, and they help to fill up his elaborate picture. Again, if the Druids had possessed the authority claimed for them, how is it that we never find them in flesh and blood confronting the first Christian missionaries? The early church makes no mention of them, though there was a continuous battle with heathenism from the second century to the age of Charlemagne. It is remarkable that in no classic author occurs the term Druid as a masculine noun and in the singular number. The forms Druides and Druidae do not always distinctly determine the sex; but the feminine term undoubtedly occurs so often as to induce a suspicion that the order consisted chiefly of females. It is somewhat remarkable that in the Keltic church of the Culdees in Ireland, the person holding the office of Co-arb was sometimes a female, and that office was one of very considerable territorial influence. The only living members of the Druidical caste that we meet with are women. AElius Lampridius puts among the omens preceding the assassination of the Emperor Alexander Severus, that a Druidess accosted him with warning- mulier Dryas eunti exclamavit Gallico sermone. Vopiscus tells of Aurelian consulting Gallic Druidesses- Gallicanas Dryadas -on the question whether the empire should continue in his posterity; and he further relates that Diocletian, when among the Tungrians in Gaul, had transactions with a Druidess as to futurity: cum in quadam caupona moraretur, et cum Dryade quadam muliere rationem convictus cotodiani faceret. These Druidesses appear in a character quite on a level with that of a Scottish spaewife. Divitiacus the AEduan, a personal friend of Cicero, is said by him not to be a Druid indeed, but to belong to the Druids, and he is described as being famous for fortune-telling and guessing as to events to come. The Druids were probably a sacerdotal caste of both sexes that dealt chiefly in divination. Suetonius says that Druidism, condemned by Augustus, was put down by Claudius. An extirpation so easily accomplished argues great feebleness of power and numbers on the part of the Druids, and no one else records it. Yet Tacitus afterwards describes the seizure of Mona and the cutting down of the grove. The anecdotes given by Vopiscus-one of which he had heard from his grandfather ( avus meus mihi retulit)-exhibit them as late as the third century. The nearest approach to the apparition of a living pagan Druid fighting for his faith is that of a Magus named Broichan at the Scottish court of Brud king of the Cruithne or Picts, who dwelt by the banks of the Ness. The magic of St. Columba proved more powerful than his; and the Magus, if he were a Druid, was not a whit exalted above the mischievous Scottish witches. In a Gaelic manuscript quoted by Dr. M'Lauchlan, and which he ascribes to the 12th or 13th century, this Magus is called a Druid. Dr. M'Lauchlan is inclined to hold that the old Scottish heathenism had magi, and that these were of the order of the Druids; but he does not point out a single element of resemblance between the Scottish Geintlighecht and the description of the Druids in the sixth book of the Gallic War, or between it and the Zoroastrian system to which he likens it. The oriental aspect of the Scottish paganism is faint, save in superstitious regard for the sun in some form of nature-worship. The naming of the four quarters of the heavens after a position assumed towards the east, the west being behind or after, the north being the left hand, and the south the right hand, may spring not from the adoration of the elements, but from universal instinct, as it is common alike to Hebrew and Gaelic. The connection of cromlechs, upright pillars and circles of stones, with the Druids is certainly not beyond dispute. The Roman Pantheon was not very scrupulous as to the gods admitted into it; and if the Druids were extirpated, it must have been for other reasons than their religion. What kind of theology they taught, it is impossible to say; the careless way in which Caesar speaks of the population of Gaul as being divided into equites and plebs as in Roman fashion, and in which he gives Roman names to their objects of worship, takes all true historical value from his account. Not more trustworthy is Pliny's statement about the amulet used by the Druids which himself had seen,-a large egg, to the making of which serpents beyond number contributed; and on his sole authority rests the tradition of the white robe of the arch-Druid, the misletoe, and the golden sickle. The Druids, if a sacerdotal caste, were apparently devoted to astrology or some other kinds of soothsaying, and they are socially ranked by Caesar with the equites. According to Strabo and Caesar, they affirmed that souls were immortal like the world-that matter and spirit had existed from eternity. Some liken Druidism to Brahmanism, and Valerius Maximus pronounces it a species of Pythagoreanism. But so little is really known of the songs of the Bards, the ritual of the Ovates, or the teaching of the Druids- φιλόσοφοι καὶ θεολόγοι , that all attempts to form a system rest on a very precarious foundation “ y chercher davantage c'est tomber dans l'hypothèse pure. ” They served in some idolatrous worship, and they taught immortality in the shape of transmigration, though they seem to have had also a Flaith-innis or Isle of the Blessed. Their system might find some parallel in the Phrygian worship, and be absorbed into it. But in a word, there is no foundation whatever for what has been apparently surmised sometimes, that socalled Druidical teaching might have disposed the Galatians to that immediate reception of the truth which is described in this epistle. The attempt to prove from a symbolic tree called Esus figured on an old altar found under Notre-Dame in Paris, that the Druids worshipped a personal god not unlike the Jehovah of the Old Testament, is only a romantic absurdity.
The Phrygian system of religion was one of terror,-Paul's was one of confidence and love; dark, dismal, and bloody had been the rites of their fathers,-the new economy was light, joy, and hope. Perhaps the friendless, solitary stranger, unhelped by any outer insignia, nervous and shattered, yet unearthly in his zeal and transported beyond himself in floods of tenderness and bursts of yearning eloquence on topics which had never greeted their ears or entered their imagination, might suggest one of the olden sages who spoke by authority of the gods, and before whose prophesying their fathers trembled and bowed. But apart from all these auxiliary influences, there was the grace of God giving power to the word in numerous instances; for though with so many-perhaps with the majority-the early impressions were so soon effaced, because profound and lasting convictions had not been wrought within them, yet in the hearts of not a few the gospel triumphed, and the fruit of the Spirit was manifest in their lives. The Christianity planted in Galatia held its place, in spite of numerous out-croppings of the national character, and in spite of the cruelties of Diocletian and the bribes and tortures of Julian. In the subsequent persecutions not a few were found faithful unto death.
III. Occasion and Contents of the Epistle.
The Judaists had apparently come into the Galatian churches before the apostle's second visit (Credner, Schott, Reuss, Meyer), though at that period the mischief had not culminated. But the course of defection was swiftly run, and after no long time the apostle felt the necessity of decided interference. Neander and De Wette, however, date the intrusion of the false teachers after the second visit. Who these Judaists were, whether Jews by birth or proselytes, has been disputed. They might belong to either party,-might have journeyed from Palestine, like those who came down to Antioch, and said, “Except ye be circumcised after the manner of Moses, ye cannot be saved;” or some of them might be proselytes, contending for the obligation of that law to which they had conformed prior to the introduction of the gospel. Most likely what had happened in the Galatian province was only a repetition of what had taken place at Antioch, as the apostle himself describes it in the second chapter. There were myriads of Jews who believed, and who were all zealous of the law; and an extreme faction holding such opinions were the inveterate enemies of the apostle of the Gentiles. It was so far innocent in Judaea to uphold the Mosaic law and its obligation on Jewish believers, but it was a dangerous innovation to enforce its observance on Gentile converts as essential to salvation. For the Mosaic law was not meant for them; the rite of circumcision was adapted only to born Jews as a token of Abrahamic descent, and of their inclusion in the Abrahamic covenant. The Gentile had nothing to do with this or with any element of the ceremonial law, for he was not born under it; to force it on him was to subject him to foreign servitude-to an intolerable yoke. Apart from the relation of circumcision to a Jew, the persistent attempt to enforce it as in any way essential to salvation was derogatory to the perfection of Christ's work, and the complete deliverance provided by it. Legal Pharisaism was, however, brought into Galatia, circumcision was insisted on, and special seasons were observed. To upset the teaching of the apostle, the errorists undermined his authority, plainly maintaining that as he was not one of the primary twelve, he could on that account be invested only with a secondary and subordinate rank and authority; so that his teaching of a free gospel, unconditioned by any Mosaic conformity, might be set aside. The apostle's doctrine on these points had nothing in the least doubtful about it. The trumpet had given no uncertain sound. But while the false teachers were undermining his apostolic prerogative, they seem to have tried also to damage him by representing him as inconsistent in his career, as if he had in some way or at some time preached circumcision. He had circumcised Timothy, and had been, as his subsequent life showed, an observer of the “customs,” and it was insinuated that he accommodated his message to the prejudices of his converts. Since to the Jews he became as a Jew, there might be found in his history not a few compliances which could be easily magnified into elements of inconsistency with his present preaching. In some way, perhaps darker and more malignant, they laboured to turn the affections of the Galatian people from him, and to a great extent they succeeded. We learn from the apostle's self-vindication what were the chief errors propagated by the Judaists, and what were the principal calumnies directed against himself.
These open errors and vile insinuations did immediate injury. The noxious seed fell into a congenial soil among the Galatians. Their jubilant welcome to the apostle cooled into indifference, hardened into antagonism. Their extreme readiness to accept the gospel indicated rather facility of impression than depth of conviction. The temperament which is so immediately charmed by one novelty, can from its nature, and after a brief period, be as easily charmed away by a second attraction. Their Celtic nature had sincerity without depth, ardour without endurance, an earnestness which flashed up in a moment like the crackling of thorns, and as soon subsided,-a mobility which was easily bewitched-witched at one time by the itinerant preacher, and at another time witched away from him by these innovators and alarmists. What surprised the apostle was the soonness of the defection, as well as the extent of its doctrinal aberrations and its numerical triumph. It had broken out like an infectious pestilence. The error involved was vital, as it supplanted his gospel by another “which is not another,” neutralized the freeness of justification, rendered superfluous the atoning death of the Son of God, set aside the example of Abraham the prototype of all believers in faith and blessing, was a relapse to the weak and beggarly elements, and brought an obligation on all its adherents to do the whole law.
Besides, there was apparently in the Galatian nature a strange hereditary fondness for ritualistic practices; the worship of Cybele was grossly characterized by corporeal maimings. What was materialistic with its appeal to the senses, what bordered on asceticism and had an air of superstitious mystery about it, had special fascinations for them-such as the circumcision of Hebrew ordinance in its innocent resemblance to Phrygian mutilation, or the observance of sacred periods with expectation of immediate benefit from ritualistic charms. As the errorists brought a doctrine that seemed to near some of their former practices, and might remind them of their national institute, they were the more easily induced to accept it. Having begun in the Spirit, they soon thought of being made perfect by the flesh. They were taught to rest on outer observances more or less symbolic in nature, to supplement faith with something done by or upon themselves, and to place their hopes of salvation, not on the grace of Christ alone, but on it associated with acts of their own, which not only could not be combined with it but even frustrated it. In no other church do we find so resolute a re-enactment of Judaistic ceremonial. The apostle bids the Philippians beware of the concision,-of the mere mutilators, implying that Judaizing influence had been at work, but not with such energy and success in Europe as in Asia Minor. Addressing the Colossians, he tells them that they had been “circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ”-a statement of privilege perhaps suggested by some attempt to enforce a physical circumcision, while other elements of mystical theosophy had been propagated among them. The Judaism in Galatia is more Pharisaic, and that of Colosse more Essenic in type. Separation from social intercourse with heathen believers, and the observance of Mosaic regulations as to diet, also characterized the Judaists; and perhaps they were on this point more readily listened to, as the people in Pessinus abstained from swine's flesh. Pausanias gives a mythological reason for the abstinence.
The peril being so imminent, the alarmed and grieved apostle wrote to them in indignant surprise. He felt that their defection was all but incomprehensible, as it was in such contrast to their early and hearty reception of the gospel and himself. He was filled with holy anxiety for them, though he has nothing but angry censure for their seducers who had no true respect for the law which they were trying to bind on them, for they did not themselves keep the whole of it, but were only by a wretched diplomacy endeavouring to escape from persecution, that is, by representing to the bigoted Jews that they made heathen believers Jewish proselytes as a first and indispensable step in their change to Christianity.
And first, and formally, the apostle vindicates his full apostolic authority: affirming, that his office was primal like that of the original twelve; that his gospel was in no sense of human origin or conveyance, but came to him directly by the revelation of Jesus Christ; that his change from Judaism to Christianity was notorious; that his views as the apostle of the Gentiles had all along been decided; that when false brethren stealthily crept in to thwart him, he had opened out his teaching fully to James, Peter, and John, who acquiesced in it; that he would not circumcise Titus, his fellow-labourer; that the apostles of the circumcision acknowledged his mission and gave him the right hand of fellowship; and that so averse to any compromise on the point of a free gospel was he, that at Antioch he publicly rebuked Peter for his tergiversation. While his opponents were men-pleasers, his whole conduct showed that another and opposite motive was ever ruling him, for men-pleasing and Christ's service were incompatible; that the insinuation of his preaching circumcision was met and refuted by the fact that he was still persecuted; and that, finally, he desires to be no further troubled, for his connection with the Saviour had left its visible traces upon him, as he bears in his body the marks of Jesus.
Secondly, as to the doctrine of the Judaists, he utterly reprobates it; calls it a subversion of the gospel of Christ; asserts that justification is not of works, but only of faith in Christ; identifies this doctrine with his own spiritual experience; adduces the example of Abraham whose faith was counted for righteousness; proves that law and curse are associated, and that from this curse Christ has redeemed us; argues the superiority of the promise to the law in a variety of particulars; shows the use of the law as a paedagogue, while during paedagogy, and prior to the fulness of the time, the heir was a minor, differing nothing from a bond-slave; repeats his sense of their danger; fortifies his argument by an allegory based on the history of Abraham, the lesson of which is the spiritual freedom of the children of the promise, and in which they are exhorted to stand fast; utters a solemn warning, that if a man gets himself circumcised, Christ profits him nothing, and that all who seek justification by the law are fallen from grace; affirms that circumcision and uncircumcision are nothing in themselves, and that he who troubled the Galatians, whoever he might be, shall bear his judgment, exclaiming in a moment of angry contempt, “I would they were even cut off that trouble you.” Toward the end of the epistle the apostle recurs to the same errors; accuses their patrons of being simply desirous of making a fair show in the flesh, and of wishing to avoid persecution; and he concludes by avowing his glorying in the cross, and his belief that what is outer is nothing, and what is inner is everything.
There are in the epistle some elements of Galatian character referred to or implied. The Galatians are warned against making their liberty an occasion for the flesh; against biting and devouring one another; against fulfilling the lusts of the flesh and doing its works which are specified; against vainglory, and mutual provocation, and envy. Exhortations are also tendered to them against selfishness and conceit; against sowing to the flesh, for the harvest is certainly of the same nature as the seed; against exhaustion or despondency in welldoing; and they are encouraged, at the same time, as they have opportunity, to do good.
It may be safely surmised that these advices were not tendered at random, but that they were meant to meet and check certain national propensities detected by the apostle in the Galatian people. Whatever modifying effect their long residence in Asia Minor might have had, however much certain earlier characteristics may have been toned down, they were not wholly obliterated. Their fickleness (Galatians 1:4) has been noticed by several observers. Caesar pictures this feature of their western ancestors: Partim qui mobilitate et levitate animi novis imperiis studebant. ” Again he says, Et infirmitatem Gallorum veritus, quod sunt in consiliis capiendis mobiles et novis plerumque rebus student; and he adds some touches about their anxiety for news, and their sudden counsels on getting them. In another place, where he repeats the sentiment, he asserts, Ad bella suscipienda Gallorum alacer ac promptus est animus, sic mollis ac minime resistens ad calamitates perferendas mens eorum est. Livy observed the same feature: Primaque eorum praelia plus quam virorum, postrema minus quam feminarum esse. Tacitus speaks of one tribe as levissimus quisque Gallorum et inopia audax. Polybius says, διὰ τὸ μὴ τὸ πλεῖον , ἀλλὰ συλλήβδην ἅπαν τὸ γιγνόμενον ὑπὸ τῶν Γαλατῶν , θυμῷ μᾶλλον ἢ λογισμῷ βραβεύεσθαι . Their modern historian also thus characterizes them: Les traits saillans de la famille Gauloise, ceux qui la distinguent le plus, à mon avis, des autres familles humaines peuvent se résumer ainsi, une bravoure personnelle que rien n'égale chez les peuples anciens, un esprit franc, impétueux, ouvert à toutes les impressions, éminemment intelligent; mais a côté de cela une mobilité extrême, point de constance, une répugnance marquée aux idées de discipline et d'ordre si puissantes chez les races Germaniques, beaucoup d'ostentation, enfin une désunion perpétuelle, fruit de l'excessive vanité.
The passion of their ancestors for a sensuous religion has been also marked: Natio est omnium Gallorum admodum dedita religionibus. Diodorus Siculus relates the same characteristic. Cicero tells of Deiotarus, that he did nothing without augury, and that he had heard from his own lips that the flight of an eagle would induce him to come back, after he had gone a considerable portion of a journey. That the old nation was impetuous and quarrelsome has been told by several writers, and there is earnest exhortation in the epistle against a similar propensity in the Galatian churches. Ammianus brands them as extremely quarrelsome, and of great pride and insolence “their voices are formidable and threatening, whether in anger or in good humour.” Diodorus affirms their love of strife and single combats among themselves after their feasts; their disregard of life arising from their belief in the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration: Κάτοινοι δὲ ὄντες καθ᾿ ὑπερβολὴν . . . μεθυσθέντες εἰς ὕπνον ἢ μανιώδεις . “The nation,” says Ammianus Marcellinus, “is fond of wine, and of certain liquors resembling it; many of the lower class, their senses being weakened by continual intoxication, run about at random.”
The warring against the works of the flesh might also allude to certain national propensities. Their ancestors were marked by intemperance and quarrelsomeness-they are forbidden to bite and devour one another.
What effect was produced by the epistle we know not. The Judaistic influence may have been neutralized for a time, but it might not be uprooted. Some of the fathers witness that the errors rebuked still continued, with more or less modification. Jerome says without hesitation, that the traces of their virtues and their errors remained to his day. They followed the Jewish reckoning of the paschal feast. One sect is described as insanientes potibus et bacchantes. Galatia was the region of later ecclesiastical strifes and heresies. Jerome gives a catalogue of them in his second preface to his commentary on the epistle.
The epistle consists of two parts-the first doctrinal, and the second practical; or it may be taken as consisting of three sections: the first containing personal vindication, and in the form of narrative-the first two chapters; the second, doctrinal argument-the third and fourth chapters; and the third, practical exhortation-the fifth and sixth chapters. The autobiographical portion is linked on to the dogmatic section by the language addressed to Peter at Antioch; and the conclusion at which he arrives, at the end of the fourth chapter-the freedom of believers-suggests the admonition to stand fast in that freedom, and then not to abuse it, but to walk in love and in the spirit-the works of the flesh being so opposite. Other counsels follow, connected by some link of mental association.
IV. Genuineness of the Epistle.
The earlier fathers have no direct citations from the epistle, but their allusions betoken unconscious familiarity with its language. Thus Clement writes: “Christ our Lord gave His blood for us by the will of God”-not unlike Galatians 1:4; “His sufferings were before your eyes”-a faint reminiscence of Galatians 3:1. Ignatius says: “He obtained the ministry not of himself, nor by men,” like Galatians 1:1; “If we still live according to Jewish law, we confess that we have not received grace,” borrowed from Galatians 5:3-4. Though these Ignatian epistles may not be genuine, they are early productions, and give us the echoes of a sub-apostolic writer. In the Syriac recension, Ignatius, ad Polycarp. enjoins: “Bear all men as the Lord beareth thee; bear the infirmities of all men, as thou saidst;” which may be compared with Galatians 6:2. Polycarp is more distinct: “Knowing then this, that God is not mocked,” Galatians 6:7; “Built up into the faith delivered to us, which is the mother of us all,” Galatians 4:26; “The Father, who raised Him from the dead,” Galatians 1:1. The allusions taken from Barnabas xix. and Hermas, Simil. 9.13, may scarcely be quoted as proof. In the Oratio ad Graecos, ascribed to Justin Martyr, occurs the quotation from Galatians 4:12, γίνεσθε ὡς ἐγὼ ὅτι κᾀγὼ ἤμην ὡς ὑμεῖς ; and the sins named in Galatians 5:20 are quoted with the apostle's addition: καὶ τὰ ὅμοια τούτοις . In his Dial. c. Tryph. cap. 90, 96, he adduces two quotations from the Old Testament like those in Galatians 3:10; Galatians 3:13, and in the apostle's version too, which agrees neither with the Hebrew nor the Septuagint. The first quotation is introduced by the apostle's marked words, ὑπὸ κατάραν . In his Apology, 1.53, Justin quotes Isaiah 54:1, and works upon it, as does the apostle in Galatians 4:27.
Irenaeus quotes the epistle by name: Sed in ea quae est ad Galatas sic ait, quod ergo lex factorum, posita est usque quo veniat semen cui promissum est. Allusions are also found in Galatians 3:6; Galatians 3:5, to Galatians 4:8-9,-in Galatians 3:16; Galatians 3:3, to Galatians 4:4-5, which is avowedly quoted from the apostle's letter to the Galatians- in epistola quae est ad Galatas; and in Galatians 5:21; Galatians 5:1 are quoted Galatians 3:15; Galatians 3:19; Galatians 4:4. The Alexandrian Clement quotes expressly Galatians 4:19, under the formula Παῦλος Γαλάταις ἐπιστέλλων . Tertullian is as explicit in referring to Galatians 5:20: Paulus scribens ad Galatas. The Epistle to Diognetus contains the expression: παρατήρησιν τῶν μηνῶν καὶ τῶν ἡμερῶν ποιεῖσθαι . Melito repeats in spirit Galatians 4:8-9. Athenagoras cites the phrase, “the weak and beggarly elements.” This epistle is found in all the canonical catalogues, in the Muratorian Fragment, and it is included also in the old Syriac and Latin versions. Marcion recognised it, and placed it in pre-eminence- principalem adversus Judaismum. According to Hippolytus, the Ophites made considerable use of it, and their writings contain many quotations: ἡ ἄνω ῾Ιερουσαλήμ , Galatians 4:26, in Haeres. 5.7; and in do. 5.8, Galatians 4:27 is quoted. The Valentinians were also well acquainted with the epistle, as Irenaeus testifies in Galatians 1:3; Galatians 1:5. Celsus asserts that the Christians, whatever their wranglings and shameful contests, agreed in saying continually, “The world is crucified to me, and I to the world;” Origen quietly adding, τοῦτο γὰρ μόνον ἀπὸ τοῦ Παύλου ἔοικε μεμνημονευκέναι ὁ Κέλσος . See commentary under Galatians 2:11, and the attitude of the Clementine Homilies in relation to the passage.
The one exception against all critics is Bruno Bauer, who regards the epistle as made up of portions of Romans , 1 st and 2d Corinthians, and condemns the compilation as stupid, aimless, and contradictory. To review his assertions would be vain; they are so weak that the merit of perverse or learned ingenuity cannot be assigned to them. The process is a simple one, to find similar turns of thought and expression in the same man's letters on similar or collateral themes, and then, if he write three letters in such circumstances within a brief space of time, to argue that one of them must be spurious from its accidental or natural resemblances to the other two. The shortest, like the Epistle to the Galatians, may be selected as the one to be so branded. And yet such similarities of thought and diction as are adduced by Bruno Bauer are the standing proofs of identity of authorship, for every writer may be detected by the unconscious use of them. Some of the similarities which he arrays throughout his seventy-four pages are close like those taken by him from Romans where the apostle is illustrating the same truths as he has been discussing in this epistle; but many other instances have no real resemblance-are only the accidental employment of like terms in a totally different connection. Baur himself says of this epistle, that to Rome, and the two epistles to Corinth, gegen diese vier Briefe ist nicht nur nie auch nur der geringste Verdacht der Unächtheit erhoben werden, sondern sie tragen auch den Character paulinischer Originalität so unwidersprechlich an sich, dass sich gar nicht denken lässt, welches Recht je der kritische Zweifel gegen sie gelten machen könnte.
The genuineness of the epistle has thus been unanimously acknowledged-the slight exception of Bruno Bauer not sufficing to break the universal harmony. The apostle's mental characteristics are indelibly impressed on the letter. In a doctrinal discussion or a practical dissertation, in a familiar correspondence on common things, or in any composition which does not stir up feeling or invoke personal vindication, one may write without betraying much individualism; but when the soul is perturbed, and emotions of surprise, anger, and sorrow are felt singly or in complex unity, the writer portrays himself in his letter, for he writes as for the moment he feels, what comes into his mind is committed to paper freshly and at once without being toned down or weakened by his hovering over a choice of words. The Epistle to the Galatians is of this nature. It is the apostle self-portrayed; and who can mistake the resemblance? The workings of his soul are quite visible in their strength and succession; each idea is seen as it is originated by what goes before it, and as it suggests what come after it in the throbbings of his wounded soul; the argument and the expostulation are linked together in abrupt rapidity, anger is tempered by love, and sorrow by hope; and the whole is lighted up by an earnestness which the crisis had deepened into a holy jealousy, and the interests at stake had intensified into the agony of a second spiritual birth. The error which involved such peril, and carried with it such fascination, was one natural in the circumstances, and glimpses of its origin, spread, and power are given us in the Acts of the Apostles. Who that knows how Paul, with his profound convictions, must have stood toward such false doctrine, will for a moment hesitate to recognise him as he writes in alarmed sympathy to his Galatian converts, who had for a season promised so well, but had been seduced by plausible reactionists-the enemies of his apostolic prerogative, and the subverters of that free and full gospel, in proclaiming and defending which he spent his life?
V. Place and Time of Composition.
The place and time of composition have been, and still are disputed, and the two inquiries are bound up together. If the letter was written at Ephesus, the period was relatively early; but if at Rome, it was late in the apostle's life.
Those who hold that the gospel was preached in Galatia at an earlier epoch than that referred to in Acts 16:6, assign a correspondent date to the epistle. Others hold that it was written before the apostolic convention in Jerusalem, as Baumgarten, Michaelis, Schmidt. Koppe, Keil, Borger, Paulus, Böttger, Niemeyer, Ulrich, though not for the same reasons, generally maintain this view. Marcion seems to have believed, like these critics, that it was the earliest of Paul's epistles. According to Tertullian and Epiphanius, he set this epistle first in his catalogue; but as he places the Epistles to the Thessalonians after the Epistle to the Romans, no great credit can be reposed in his chronology, for which, however, Wieseler contends. Tertullian's words are, principalem adversus Judaismum epistolam nos quoque confitemur quae Galatas docet, and there follows a running comment on the epistle. The epithet principalis has apparently an ethical meaning, placed first as being the most decided against Judaism. Epiphanius says of Marcion's canon, αἱ ἐπιστολαὶ αἱ παῤ αὐτῷ λεγόμεναί εἰσι πρώτη μὲν πρὸς Γαλάτας , δευτέρα δὲ πρὸς Κορινθίους . Again: Αὕτη γὰρ παῤ αὐτῷ πρώτη κεῖται . ῾Ημεῖς δὲ τὴν ἀναλογὴν τότε ἐποιησάμεθα οὐχ ὡς παῤ αὐτῷ , ἀλλ᾿ ὡς ἔχει τὸ ἀποστολικὸν ῥητὸν , τὴν πρὸς ῾Ρωμαίους τάξαντες πρώτην . But the chronology is wrong which dates the apostle's first visit to Galatia before Acts 16:6, and the relative οὕτως ταχέως in Galatians 1:6 is rather an indefinite term on which to found a distinct date.
But the epistle is by some supposed to be the last of Paul's epistles, and to have been written at Rome. The epigraph ἐγράφη ἀπὸ ῾Ρώμης is found in several MSS., as B, K, L, the two Syriac and Coptic versions. The same conjecture is found, among the fathers, in Eusebius of Emesa, Jerome, Theodoret, Euthalius, and OEcumenius; and their opinion has been followed in more recent times by Flacius, Baronius, Bullinger, Hunnius, Calovius, Lightfoot, Hammond, Schrader, Köhler, and Riccaltoun. Theodoret dates the epistle as the first of the Roman imprisonment; and Köhler dates it the last, in A.D. 69, two years before Nero's death. The notion that the apostle was in prison when he wrote the letter has partly given rise to the hypothesis. But the language of the apostle in Galatians 4:20, “I desire to be present with you,” does not prove that he was in bonds-does not bear out all Jerome's paraphrase, vellem nunc praesens esse si confessionis me vincula non arctarent. Jerome repeats the same idea under Galatians 6:11 ( prohibebatur quidem vinculis). Theodoret merely gives his opinion in his general preface, and OEcumenius in his brief prefatory note to this epistle. On Galatians 4:20, the commentator named Eusebius in the Catena says, ἐπειδὴ ἐτύγχανε δεδεμένος καὶ κατεχόμενος . Riccaltoun says on Galatians 6:17, that “the clause, ‘from henceforth let no man trouble me,’ would go near to persuade one that this epistle was written near about the time when he finished his course, and much later than that which is commonly fixed on; and the note of being written from Rome, which is allowed not to be authentic, seems much nearer the true date than any other which has been pitched upon before he went thither.” The clauses so referred to are otherwise better and more naturally explained. See the commentary under them. The conjecture that the epistle was sent from Rome has therefore no authority-no warrant from any expression in the letter itself, is plainly contradicted by the chronology of the Acts, and the οὕτω ταχέως would certainly be inapplicable to a period so very late.
Other opinions may be noticed in passing. Beza assigns Antioch as the place of composition, before the apostle went up to Jerusalem; Macknight fixes on the same place, but dates the epistle after the council; Michaelis supposes it to have been written from Thessalonica, and Mill from Troas; while Lardner, Benson, and Wordsworth hold that the apostle only once had visited Galatia, and that the epistle was written at Corinth during his first visit to that city, Acts 18:11. These opinions may be at once set aside. Wordsworth's argument based on the omission of any direction about a collection for the poor is exceedingly precarious, especially when viewed in connection with 1 Corinthians 16:1.
It has been held by perhaps the majority that the epistle was written at Ephesus. The apostle, on leaving Galatia, after his second visit of confirmation, having “passed through the upper coasts,” arrived at Ephesus, and there he remained three years, from A.D. 54 to 57. In this city he could easily and frequently receive intelligence of the Galatian churches; and if the news of their danger reached him, he would at once despatch a remonstrant epistle. The οὕτως ταχέως fits into this period, and to any year of it-his surprise that they were changing so soon after his second visit to them, or so soon after their conversion or after the intrusion of the false teachers. The elastic οὕτω ταχέως will suit any of these termini, but it would not so naturally suit an epoch very much later, though perhaps a year or so might make no great difference. In such a conclusion one might be content to rest, the sojourn at Ephesus being alike probable in chronology and in circumstances as the place and period of composition. The first Epistle to Corinth was written at this time and from Ephesus, and in that epistle there is a reference to the Galatian churches: “Now concerning the collection for the saints, as I have given order to the churches of Galatia, even so do ye,” 1 Corinthians 16:1. These words may not mean that the apostle sent a written order to the Galatians, for they may refer to some command given by him during his second and recent visit.
But there are other letters written nearly at the same period which have a generic resemblance to the one before us. Between it and the first Epistle to the Corinthians there are no such striking points of similarity as would imply an all but simultaneous origin. The case is different with the second Epistle to the Corinthians and that to the Romans; and it has been suggested that the resemblances are so close and so numerous, as to furnish an argument for supposing the three epistles to have been written about the same period. The reasoning is quite legitimate. The state of mind under which one writes in any crisis does not soon subside, especially if similar topics are presenting themselves for illustration and similar perils are prolonging the excitement when another epistle is to be composed. The previous thoughts, if they are to be repeated, clothe themselves instinctively in the previous words; the old allusions recur; and though there may be much that is new,-though there may be fuller statement and varying appeal,-still there is a ground-tone of similarity, like the vibration of a chord which had been already struck a brief period before. What we refer to is not repetition or mechanical identity, nor the jejune iteration of characteristic idioms and turns of expression, nor the formal recalling and employment of the earlier diction; but the spirit has been so moved by a recent train of ideas and emotions as unconsciously to combine them with newer thoughts and fresher arguments.
In the second Epistle to the Corinthians there are themes akin to those more briefly handled in Galatians, but with marked difference of circumstance. The apostle's vindication of his office as compared with that of the original twelve, while it is as undaunted in spirit as in Galatians, is not so incisive-not so autobiographical in character, and is wrapt up with other elements of his career. The challenge to his enemies and to the false apostles is laden with touching allusions and crowded with vehement appeals, wrought out with a selfdepreciation which yet could assert itself in ringing accents, if its divine prerogatives were impugned or thrust in any way into a lower place; for he was “not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles.” But his conversion and his life prior to that change which involved his call to the apostleship are not alluded to in the letter to the Corinthians. The hostility to himself rested on a different ground-still Jewish, but not of that fanatical pharisaical type which it assumed in Galatia; and therefore the self-vindication takes another form-not the assertion of a divine call, but of work done, and especially suffering endured and pressing anxieties. 2 Corinthians 11:23-33; 2 Corinthians 12:10-11. The allusions in Galatians to bodily suffering and to the στίγματα of the Lord Jesus are brief, but in second Corinthians (2 Corinthians 11:21-33) the argument bursts out in a torrent of overwhelming force and grandeur. In the two first chapters, and toward the end, the descriptive appeals are so copious, that they would fill up the half of the Epistle to the Galatians. In Galatians his enemies are not directly flagellated, save in their subversion of the gospel, though their hostility is taken for granted; but in Corinthians his antagonists are openly pictured in various attitudes and assailed “some who think of us as if we walked after the flesh;” there are allusions to his meanness of presence; there are “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ,” acting like the serpent that beguiled Eve through his subtlety: 2 Corinthians 11:14-15. In both epistles there is extreme anxiety about his converts, lest they should be seduced into error and estranged from himself. In both epistles, also, he is quite conscious of the power of the adverse influence used against himself, of the hollow court paid to his converts to wean them from him; in both there is a suspicion that his authority has been shaken, and that the seeds of evil and alienation have been sown. But in Galatians the sphere of enmity is more limited; the error threatening to come in a flood is palpable and simple, though multifarious in result; the people were passionate and demonstrative, and are appealed to in terms fitted to awe and impress them. In Corinthians, on the other hand, the sources of opposition are apparently numerous and complicated; there were rivalries and factions, so that there was a party taking for its motto, “I am of Christ;” there had been false philosophies at work denying the resurrection, along with propensities to idolatry, and the sexual impurities connected with it. Spiritual gifts, such as that of tongues, had been abused, and had led to scenes of disorder. The apostle is anxious to impress upon them his unabated love in the midst of his stern rebukes, and his disinterestedness in all his labours, which some had apparently called in question, and his care not to build on another man's foundation, which some had been mean enough to do. Little of this field of discussion is found in Galatians. In a word, both epistles are loving letters, not cold and impersonal treatises; and they let out more of the writer's heart-of his joys, his loves, his griefs, his anxieties, his fears, his hopes, his physical weakness and trials-than any other parts of his writings. They are a true cardiphonia, and in them you learn more of him as a creature of flesh and blood-of like passions with those about him; beneath the mantle of inspiration you find a man intensely human and sensitive-no one more alive to affront and disparagement, or more keenly desirous to stand well with those whose spiritual benefit he was spending himself to promote.
Now all these general points of similarity are certainly a token of identity of authorship, but they scarcely amount to a proof that both epistles were written at the same period. The diversity is as great as the resemblance; the crisis was somewhat alike in both cases; and though some time elapsed between the dates of the two letters, such resemblance would be easily accounted for. But there are other points of coincidence. The points first adduced by Prof. Lightfoot are not very striking, and little stress can be laid on them. “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us,” is quite different, save in general doctrinal import, from “He hath made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin.” The image, “Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap,” is not “reproduced in almost the same words,” “He that soweth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly;” for in the first case it is the certain identity of the harvest with the seed, and in the second case it is its amount apart from its character, which is asserted; in Galatians it is like quality, but in Corinthians like quantity. There are other and more striking similarities which Prof. Lightfoot has adduced, though he professes not to lay any great stress upon them:
Galatians 1:6, “another gospel,” and in 2 Corinthians 11:4.
Galatians 1:9; Galatians 5:21, “tell you before,” and in 2 Corinthians 13:2.
Galatians 1:10, “persuade men,” and in 2 Corinthians 5:11, but in a different sense.
Galatians 4:17, “zealously affect you,” and in 2 Corinthians 11:2, “zealous over you.”
Galatians 6:15, “a new creature,” and in 2 Corinthians 5:17.
These are more than fortuitous cases; they indicate the use of favourite phraseology. Some words are peculiar to the two epistles. The figure κατεσθίειν occurs Galatians 5:15 and 2 Corinthians 11:20, ἀποροῦμαι , Galatians 4:20, 2 Corinthians 4:8; φοβοῦμαι μήπως , Galatians 4:11, 2 Corinthians 11:3; 2 Corinthians 12:20, and nowhere else; τοὐναντίον , Galatians 2:7, 2 Corinthians 2:7, and nowhere else in Paul's epistles; κυρόω in Gal 3:15 , 2 Corinthians 2:8, and nowhere else in the New Testament; and κανών is found in Galatians 6:16, and in 2 Corinthians 10:13. These words are not so distinctive or so numerous as to form a substantial proof, but they have some weight when taken along with other coincidences.
Prof. Lightfoot adduces one peculiar connection between the two epistles-the counsel to restore a fallen brother. In Galatians it certainly comes in abruptly, and seems to have been suggested by something without, not by anything in the immediate course of thought. It is surmised that what had happened at Corinth gave rise to the admonition. A member of that church had fallen into sin, and the apostle had bidden the church subject him to discipline. But the church had in severity gone beyond what was necessary, and the apostle pleads for his forgiveness and restoration. Such an event so happening at the time might suggest the injunction, “Restore such a one in the spirit of meekness,” guarding against excessive severity.
The similarity of the Epistle to the Galatians in many points to that to the Romans has often been remarked. Jerome, in the preface to his Commentary, says: ut sciatis eandem esse materiam et Epistolae Pauli ad Galatas et quae ad Romanos scripta est, sed hoc differre inter utramque, quod in illa, altiori sensu et profundioribus usus est argumentis. Similar themes are surrounded with similar illustrations. There is very much more material in Romans, both at the beginning and end of the epistle, but the Epistle to the Galatians is imbedded in it. The one is like an outline, which is filled up in the other, but with less of a personal element. The Epistle to the Romans is more massive, more expansive, and has about it as much the form of a discussion or a didactic treatise as of a letter. The presumption then is, that as the likeness between the two epistles is so close, they were written much about the same time. Nobody doubts the likeness, though many deny the inference, for the plain reason that this similarity will not prove immediate connection of time, since the inculcation of analogous truths may, after even a considerable interval, lead to the use of similar diction. No one can safely or accurately measure the interval from the nature or number of such similarities. It is certain, however, that no long time could have elapsed between the composition of the Epistle to the Galatians and that to the Romans, and their juxtaposition in point of time may not exceed the relative limit implied in οὕτως ταχέως .
The points of similarity between Galatians and Romans are, generally, as follows in this table:-
Galatians 2:16. Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Romans 3:20. Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Galatians 2:19. For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. Romans 7:4. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead to the law by the body of Christ; that ye should be married to another, even to him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. Galatians 2:20. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me. Romans 6:6. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. Galatians 3:5-6. He therefore that ministereth to you the Spirit, and worketh miracles among you, doeth he it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? Even as Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Romans 4:3. For what saith the scripture? Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto him for righteousness. Galatians 3:7. Know ye therefore that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham. Romans 4:10-11. How was it then reckoned? when he was in circumcision, or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision. And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised: that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also. Galatians 3:8. And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the heathen through faith, preached before the gospel unto Abraham, saying, In thee shall all nations be blessed. Romans 4:17. (As it is written, I have made thee a father of many nations,) before him whom he believed, even God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth those things which be not as though they were. Galatians 3:9. So then they which be of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham. Romans 4:23-24. Now, it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead. Galatians 3:10. For as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse: for it is written, Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them. Romans 4:15. Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression. Galatians 3:11. But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. Romans 1:17. For therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith: as it is written, The just shall live by faith. Galatians 3:12. And the law is not of faith: but, The man that doeth them shall live in them. Romans 10:5. For Moses describeth the righteousness which is of the law, That the man which doeth those things shall live by them. Galatians 3:15-18. Brethren, I speak after the manner of men: Though it be but a man's covenant, yet if it be confirmed, no man disannulleth, or addeth thereto. Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ. And this I say, that the covenant, that was confirmed before of God in Christ, the law, which was four hundred and thirty years after, cannot dis- annul, that it should make the pro- mise of none effect. For if the inheritance be of the law, it is no more of promise: but God gave it to Abraham by promise. Romans 4:13-16. For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to hisseed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect. Because the law worketh wrath: for where no law is, there is no transgression. Therefore it is of faith, that it might be by grace; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed: not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all. Galatians 3:22. But the scripture hath concluded all under sin, that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. Romans 11:32. For God hath concluded them all in unbelief, that he might have mercy upon all. Galatians 3:27. For as many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ. Romans 6:3; Romans 13:14. Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?-But put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof. Galatians 4:5-7. To redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father. Where- fore thou art no more a servant, but a son; and if a son, then an heir of God through Christ. Romans 8:14-17. For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. For ye have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear; but ye have received the Spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. Galatians 4:23; Galatians 4:28. But he who was of the bond woman was born after the flesh; but he of the free woman was by promise....Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the chil- dren of promise. Romans 9:7-8. Neither, because they are the seed of Abraham, are they all children: but, In Isaac shall thy seed be called: That is, They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise are counted for the seed. Galatians 5:14. For all the law is ful- filled in one word, even in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Romans 13:8-10. Owe no man anything, but to love one another: for he that loveth another hath fulfilled the law....If there be any other commandment, it is briefly comprehended in this saying, namely, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law. Galatians 5:16. This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh. Romans 8:4. That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. Galatians 5:17. For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh: and these are contrary the one to the other; so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. Romans 7:23; Romans 7:25. But I see another law in my members warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. . . . So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin. Galatians 6:2. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. Romans 15:1. We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.
These resemblances are very striking, and would seem to indicate nearness of period in the composition. But Dean Alford interposes thus: “It may be that the elementary truths brought out amidst deep emotion, sketched, so to speak, in rough lines in the fervent Epistle to the Galatians, dwelt long on St. Paul's mind, even though other objects of interest regarding other churches intervened, and at length worked themselves out under the teaching and leading of the Spirit into that grand theological argument which he afterwards addressed, without any special moving occasion, but as his master-exposition of Christian doctrine, to the church of the metropolis of the world.” The statement is true, but it does not on this point bring out the whole truth. For the resemblances are closer, more definite, and in every way more characteristic than the objection allows. Not only is the Galatian outline preserved in Romans, but its minutiae, its sudden turns, its rapid logic beating down opposition, its peculiarities of quotation and proof are rewritten; the smaller touches are reproduced as well as the more prominent courses of argument; forms of thought and imagery suggested and sharpened by personal relations and direct collision in the shorter letter, are reimpressed on the longer and more impersonal production, without any immediate necessity. The parallel is about as close in many sections as between Ephesians and Colossians. See our Introductions to these epistles. There are also words peculiar to the two epistles, such as κῶμοι , μακαρισμός , μέθη , δουλεία , βαστάζειν , ἐλευθερόω , ἴδε , κατάρα , καταρᾶσθαι , ὀφειλέτης , παραβάτης ; and phrases also, as τί ἔτι… παῤ ὅ , οἱ τὰ τοιαῦτα πράσσοντες , τί λέγει ἡ γράφη ; So that Prof. Lightfoot's argument becomes very plausible, and, to use his own words, “The reasons given certainly do not amount to a demonstration, but every historical question must be decided by striking a balance between conflicting probabilities; and it seems to me that the arguments here adduced, however imperfect, will hold their ground against those which are alleged in favour of the earlier date.” He ingeniously concludes that the epistle may have been written between the second Epistle to the Corinthians and the Epistle to the Romans, and on the journey between Macedonia and Achaia. This view is adopted by Bleek, and virtually by Conybeare and Howson, who date the epistle from Corinth, while Grotius and De Wette do not definitely commit themselves to it.
Looking, in a word, at both sides of the question, we feel it still to be impossible to arrive at absolute certainty on this point, and critics will probably oscillate between Ephesus and Greece. The opinion that Greece was the place where the epistle was written has certainly very much to recommend it, though we may not be able to reach a definite and indisputable conclusion.
VI. Commentaries on the Epistle.
There are the well-known commentaries of Chrysostom, Theodoret, OEcumenius, and Theophylact, with some extracts from Eusebius Emesenus, Severianus, and Theodore of Mopsuestia in Cramer's Catena. Extracts from Gennadius and Photius are found in OEcumenius. Among the Latin fathers may be named Marius Victorinus (Abbe Migne's Pat. Lat. viii.), the pseudo-Ambrose or Hilary, Jerome, Augustine, Pelagius, Primasius, and others of less note. Mediaeval writers may be passed over. Luther follows, with Calvin, Beza, Erasmus, Musculus, Bullinger, Calovius, Zanchius, Crocius, Cocceius, Piscator, Hunnius, Tarnovius, Aretius, Wolf, etc.; and the Catholic commentators, Estius and a-Lapide. Wetstein, Grotius, and the writers in the Critici Sacri and Fratres Poloni are well known, and so are the collectors of annotations, as Elsner, Kypke, Krebs, Knatchbull, Loesner, Alberti, Küttner, Palairet, Heinsius, Bos, Keuchenius, Doughtaeus, and Hombergk. There are also the older English expositors, Ferguson, Dickson, Hammond, Chandler, Whitby, Locke, Doddridge, etc. etc. We have also the general commentaries of Koppe, Flatt, Morus, Rosenmüller, Jaspis, Hyperius, Cameron, and Reiche 1859.
The following more special commentaries may be noted: Luther, 1519; Pareus, 1621; Wesselius, 1756; Semler, 1779; Schulze, 1784; Mayer, 1788; Krause, 1788; Carpzov, 1794; Borger, 1807; Paulus, 1831; Rückert, 1833; Matthies, 1833; Usteri, 1833; Schott, 1833; Zschokke, 1834; Sardinoux, 1837; Olshausen, 1841; Windischmann, 1843; Baumgarten-Crusius, 1845; Peile, 1849; Conybeare and Howson, 1850; Jatho, 1851; Hilgenfeld, 1852; Brown, 1853; Jowett, 1855; Bagge, 1856; Trana, 1857; Ewald, 1857; Bisping, 1857; Winer, 4th ed., 1859; Wieseler, 1859; Wordsworth's New Test. P. iii., 1859; Webster and Wilkinson, do. vol. ii., 1861; Meyer, 1862; Schmoller, Lange's Bibelwerk, viii., 1862; Kamphausen, Bunsen's Bibelwerk, viii. Halb-band, 1863; Hofmann, 1863; Gwynne, 1863; Ellicott, 3d ed., 1863; Alford, New Test. vol. iii., 4th ed., 1865; Matthias, 1865; Lightfoot, 1865; Vömel, 1865; Carey, 1867; Larsen (Kjobenhavn), 1867. Reference may be made also to Bonitz, Exam. 3:20 ; 3:1800; Hauk, Exeget. Versuch über 3:15 ; 3:22, Stud. u. Kritik. 1862; Hermann, de P. Epist. ad Galat. tribus primis capitibus, 1832; Elwert, Annot. in 2:1-10 ; 2:1852; Keerl in 6:1-10 ; 6:1834; Holsten, Inhalt, etc., des Briefes an die Galaten, 1859, enlarged and reprinted, 1868; Fritzsche, de nonnullis ad Galat. Epistolae locis, Opuscula, p. 158, etc., 1838.
Of a popular and practical nature are-Perkins, 1609; Riccaltoun, 1772; Barnes, 1840; Haldane, 1848; Anacker, Leipzig 1856; Twele, Hannover 1858; Kelly, 1865; Bayley, 1869. Exegetical remarks on portions of the epistle may also be found of a rationalistic nature in Holsten's Zum Evangelium des Paulus und des Petrus, Rostock 1868; and of an opposite character in OErtel's Paulus in der Apostel-geschichte, Halle 1868.
When Buttmann, Matthiae, Kühner, Winer, Scheuerlein, Bernhardy, Madvig, Schmalfeld, Krüger, Schirlitz, Green, A. Buttmann, and Jelf are simply named, the reference is to their respective Grammars; and when Suidas, Hesychius, Rost und Palm, Wahl, Wilke, Bretschneider, Robinson, Cremer, Liddell and Scott are simply named, the reference is to their respective Lexicons. The references to Hartung are to his Lehre von den Partikeln der griechischen Sprache, Erlangen 1832.