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                   THE EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS
                   PROBABLE DATE A.D. 56 OR 57

                      BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION

        It is a pity that we are not able to visualize more
clearly the time and place of writing this powerful polemic
against the Judaizers who were trying to draw away from the
evangelical gospel the churches of Galatia. The data are not
clear as in the Thessalonian and Corinthian Epistles. There are
many things that can be said, but few are decisive. One is that
the Epistle was written about seventeen years after Paul's
conversion, adding the three years of  Ga 1:18  and the fourteen
of  2:1 , though not insisting on the full number in either case.
Unfortunately we do not know the precise year of his conversion.
It was somewhere between A.D. 31 and 36. Another thing that is
clear is that the Epistle was written after the Conference in
Jerusalem over the Judaizing controversy to which Paul refers in
 Ga 2:1-10  and after the subsequent visit of Peter to Antioch
( Ga 2:11-14 ). The natural interpretation of  Ac 15:1-33  is to
understand it as the historical narrative of the public meetings
of which Paul gives an inside view in  Gal 2:1-10 . Not all
scholars agree to this view, but the weight of the argument is
for it. If so, that rules out the contention of Ramsay and others
that Galatians is the earliest of Paul's Epistles. It was written
then after that Conference which took place about A.D. 49. It
seems clear also that it was written after the Epistles to the
Thessalonians (A.D. 50-51) which were sent from Corinth.

        Did Paul mean by Galatia the Roman province as he usually
does or does he make an ethnographic use of the term and mean the
real Celts of North Galatia? Luke uses geographical terms in
either sense. Certainly Paul preached in South Galatia in his
first mission tour. See  Ac 16:6  for the discussion about the
language there as bearing on his going into North Galatia. By
"the churches of Galatia" Paul can mean the whole of Galatia or
either South or North Galatia. The various items mentioned, like
the illness that led to his preaching ( Ga 4:13 ), "the first
time" or "formerly" ( 4:13 ), "so quickly" ( 1:6 ), are not
conclusive as to time or place. If Paul means only the South
Galatian Churches (Pisidia, Lycaonia, Phrygia), then the Epistle,
even if two visits had been made, could come some time after the
second tour of  Ac 16:1ff . The place could be Philippi, Corinth,
Ephesus, Antioch. Even so room must be made for the seventeen
years after his conversion plus the interval thereafter (some
twenty years in all). If Paul includes North Galatia, the time
would be more easily handled (the twenty years required from A.D.
31 to 36 to A.D. 51 to 57) and the place could be Ephesus,
Philippi, or Corinth. Special treatises on the date of Galatians
have been written by Askwith (1899), Round (1906), Steinmann
(1908), Weber (1900)

        Lightfoot held that the similarity of Galatians to Romans
(written from Corinth spring of A.D. 56 or 57) naturally argues
for the same general period and place. It is a possible
hypothesis that, when Paul reached Corinth late autumn or early
winter of A.D. 55 or 56 ( Ac 20:1f. ), he received alarming
reports of the damage wrought by the Judaizers in Galatia. He had
won his fight against them in Corinth (I and II Corinthians). So
now he hurls this thunderbolt at them from Corinth and later, in
a calmer mood, sends the fuller discussion to the church in Rome.
This hypothesis is adopted here, but with full recognition of the
fact that it is only hypothesis. The language and the topics and
the treatment are the same that we find in Romans. Galatians thus
fits in precisely between II Corinthians and Romans. It is a
flaming torch in the Judaizing controversy. This Epistle was the
battlecry of Martin Luther in the Reformation. Today it has
served as a bulwark against the wild criticism that has sought to
remove the Pauline Epistles from the realm of historical study.
Paul is all ablaze in this Epistle with indignation as he faces
the men who are undermining his work in Galatia.

                        SOME COMMENTARIES
                (Only a few out of a vast number)

Adeney (1911), Bacon (1909), Beet (1885), Bousset (1907), Baljon
(1889), Burton (1920), Ellicott (new ed. 1884), Emmet (1912),
Findlay (1888), Girdlestone (1913), Hovey (1887), Lagrange
(1918), Lietzmann (1910), Lightfoot (eleventh ed., 1905), Lipsius
(1902), Martin Luther (1535; tr. 1575), MacGregor (1914),
Mackenzie (1912), Ramsay (1900), Rendall (1903), Sieffert (Meyer
Komm., 9 ed. 1899), Watkins (1914), Williams (1910), Windisch (2
aufl. 1926), Wood (1887), Zahn (2 aufl. 1907).

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