[8] 3. THE CHURCHES OF GALATIA. For a long time I failed to appreciate the accuracy of the narrative in Acts. 1 It has cost me much time, thought, and labour to understand it; 2 and it was impossible to understand it so long as I was prepossessed with the idea adopted from my chief master and guide, Bishop [9] Lightfoot, that in St Paul's Epistle the term Galatians denotes the Celtic people of the district popularly and generally known as Galatia. To maintain this idea I had to reject the plain and natural interpretation of some passages; but when at last I found myself compelled to abandon it, and to understand Galatians as inhabitants of Roman Galatia, much that had been dark became clear, and some things that had seemed loose and vague became precise and definite. As the two opposing theories must frequently be referred to, it will prove convenient to designate them as the North-Galatian and the South-Galatian theories; and the term North Galatia will be used to denote the country of the Asiatic Gauls, South Galatia to denote the parts of Phrygia, Lycaonia, and Pisidia, which were by the Romans incorporated in the vast province of Galatia. 3

The question as to what churches were addressed by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians is really of the first importance for the right understanding of the growth of the Christian Church during the period between 70 and 150 A. D.; and the prevalent view, against which we argue, leads necessarily to a misapprehension of the position of the Church in the Empire. The diffusion of Christianity was, as I hope to bring out more clearly in the following pages, closely connected with the great lines of communication across the Roman Empire, with the maintenance of intercourse, and with the development of education and [10] the feeling of unity throughout the Empire. The spread of Christianity had a political side. The Church may be, roughly speaking, described as a political party advocating certain ideas which, in their growth, would have resulted necessarily in social and political reform. 4 All that fostered the idea of universal citizenship and a wider Roman policy -- as distinguished from the narrow Roman view that looked on Rome, or even on Italy, as mistress of a subject empire, instead of head and capital of a co-ordinate empire -- made for Christianity unconsciously and insensibly; and the Christian religion alone was able to develop fully this idea and policy (v. p.365 ff).

The chief line along which the new religion developed was that which led from Syrian Antioch through the Cilician Gates, across Lycaonia to Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome. 5 One subsidiary line followed the land route by Philadelphia, Troas, Philippi, and the Egnatian Way 6 to Brindisi and Rome; and another went north from the Gates by Tyana and Caesareia of Cappadocia to Amisos in Pontus, 7 the great harbour of the Black Sea, by which the trade of Central Asia was carried to Rome. The main- [11] tenance of close and constant communication between the scattered congregations must be presupposed, as necessary to explain the growth of the Church and the attitude which the State assumed towards it. Such communication was, on the view advocated in the present work, maintained along the same lines on which the general development of the Empire took place; and politics, education, religion, grew side by side. But the prevalent view as to the Galatian churches separates the line of religious growth from the line of the general development of the Empire, and introduces into a history that claims to belong to the first century, the circumstances that characterised a much later period. The necessary inference from the prevalent view is, either that this history really belongs to a much later period than it claims to belong to (an inference drawn with strict and logical consistency by a considerable body of German scholars), or that the connexion between the religious and the general history of the Empire must be abandoned. If the arguments for the prevalent view are conclusive, we must accept the choice thus offered; but I hope to show that the prevalent view is not in accordance with the evidence.

FOOTNOTES:

1 My earlier views were expressed in the Expositor, January 1892, p.30. Compare also the paragraph which I wrote in Expositor, July 1890, p.20.

2 Among other things I have been obliged to rewrite the sketch of the history of Lycaonia and Cilicia Tracheia in Hist. Geogr., p.371, where I wrongly followed M. Waddington against Professor Mommsen in regard to the coins of M. Antonius Polemo. This error vitiated my whole theory.

3 I did not expect to be obliged to argue that this great province was called Galatia; but even this simple fact, which had been assumed by every writer since Tacitus, has recently been contested by Dr. Schurer, and I have appended a note on the subject at the end of this chapter.

4 In the writer's opinion the Church proved unfaithful to its trust, ceased to adhere to the principles with which it started, and failed, in consequence, to carry out the reform, or rather revolution, which would have naturally resulted from them But that chapter of history is later than the scope of the present volume.

5 This line is referred to in several passages which have never yet been properly understood, e.&., Ignatius, Ephes., sec. 12, Clement Ep. i., ad Corinth., sec I. See p.318 f.

6 I Cp. Rom. xv. 19. This route was taken by Ignatius' guards.

7 The early foundation of Churches in Cappadocia (I Peter i. I) and in Pontus (I Peter i. I; Pliny ad Traj., 96) was due to this line of communication. See p.224 ff.