The Roman province of Galatia stretched from north to south across what is now modern Turkey, taking in an area that was originally settled by the people called the Gauls, from whose name came the name of the province. The Roman province included an area in the south where the people were not Gauls and it was to this area that Paul went in his early missionary work, visiting the cities of Antioch in Pisidia, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe (Acts 13 and 14). There has been discussion by scholars about who exactly the Christians were to whom Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians, Were they the Christians of those cities just named, people who were not Gauls but who were referred to as Galatians because their cities came into the Roman province of Galatia? Or were they Gauls from further north, in the original area of Galatia? Fortunately it does not affect our understanding of the letter to know exactly who the readers were, apart from identifying them as Gentiles in Asia Minor who were very confused about the Christian attitude to the Jewish Law. Many scholars support the view that the people to whom Paul wrote were the converts of the cities named in Acts 13 and 14 and we shall therefore identify the Galatians as those among whom Paul and his co-worker Barnabas preached during the period A.D. 45-48 or 49, in south Galatia.

Paul passed through northern Galatia on his travels, according to Acts, but we have no record of the establishment of churches there. When we turn to the first letter of Peter, however, we find that it is addressed to Christians scattered throughout the various Roman provinces of Asia Minor, including the provinces of Pontus and Bithynia, to the north of Galatia. The Gospel was taken into northern Asia Minor although Paul's letters and the record of Acts are silent about how this happened.

Paul's thought in the letter to the Galatians shows many resemblances to the much longer letter that he wrote to the Christians in Rome and it is usually accepted that he wrote to the Galatians before he wrote to the Roman Christians. The main problem which Paul deals with in the letter to the Galatians is whether Gentile Christians needed to follow the Jewish Law and accept circumcision. In Galatians 2:1-10, Paul refers to a meeting which he had in Jerusalem with the leading apostles, at which it was agreed that the Gentiles need not accept the Law. However, what follows in Galatians 2: 11-14, shows that there was still lack of agreement in the Jerusalem church as a whole, about the issue, even after the leaders had apparently come to an. agreement. If the meeting described in Galatians 2:1-10 is identified with the Church meeting described in Acts 15 (this will be considered later in this chapter) then it would appear that Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians some time during his second or third main journey, before he wrote the letter to the Romans, which can be dated around A.D. 56. This would give us a date between A.D. 53 and 55 for the letter to the Galatians. If, however, the meeting described in Galatians 2:1-10 refers to a preliminary meeting before a large meeting, to which Acts 15 may refer, the letter would have been written some years earlier.

Paul’s journeys through Galatia

·