Similarly Renan (Saint Paul, 1S69, p. 12S): 'The apostolic group thus made almost at one stretch a journey of more t han one hundred leagues, across la little-known country, which, from an absence of Koman colonies and Jewish synagogues, did not offer tbtm any of the facilities which they had met with up to that time.'
It is sometimes confidently asserted that the South Galatian theory ' is shipwrecked on the rock of Greek grammar' (F. H. Chase, in Expositor, 4th ser., viii. [1893] 411, ix. [1894] 342). On the second missionary tour St. Paul and Silas ' went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia {ttjv ^pvyiav Kai Ta\aTLKT]v xf^po-v), having been forbidden of the Holy Ghost to speak the word in Asia' (Ac 16*^), and in the third tour ' they went through the region of Galatia and Phrygia (ttji' TaXariKi]!' Xcipav Kal ^pvyiav) in order, stablishing all the churches' (18-^). Ramsay interprets both the Greek phrases as ' the Phrygo-Galatian country,' i.e. the regio which is ethnically Phrygian and politically Galatian, accounting for the variation by the fact that in the one instance the district was traversed from Avest to east, and in the other from east to west. He takes the phrases to denote, in part or in whole (here his exegesis wavers), the South Galatian country which St. Paul had already evangelized in his first tour. Now it must be admitted that if the modern theory, which Ramsay
has so long and strenuously advocated, were bound up with this interpretation, there would be no little difficulty in accepting it. For the natural reference of the words 'they went through (SLrjXdov) the Phrj-go-Galatic region, having been forbidden (kw\v- devT€s) ... to speak the word in Asia ' is to a district east of Asia and north of Iconium and Antioch, South Galatia being now left behind. Ramsay, however, contends that KicXvdevres is not antecedent to, but synchronous with, the verb 5i7j\dov, and translates ' they went through the Phrygo-Galatic region forbidden ... to speak the word in Asia.' The grammatical point is fully discussed by E. H. Askwith {The Epistle to the Gal., 1899, p. 34 ff.), who produces a number of more or less similar constructions (cf. Giii'oid, loc. cit. 16 ff. ). affTraad/xevoi. in Ac 25'^ would be the most striking parallel, but here Hort thinks that some primitive error has crept into the text. And at the best the proposed exegesis, admittedly unusual, is very precarious, while the South Galatian theory is really independent of it. Many advocates of this theorj" prefer the alternative offered by Giti'ord, who holds [loc. cit. p. 19) that in the present con- text ' the region of Phrygia and Galatia' can only mean ' the borderland of Phrygia and Galatia northward of Antioch, through which the travellers passed after "having been forbidden to speak the word in Asia."' This is substantially the view of Zahn {op. cit. i. 176; cf. 189 f.), who is willing to make a further concession. ' It could be taken for granted, therefore, in spite of the silence of Acts, which in 16® mentions mereh- a journey of the missionaries through these regions, that Paul and Silas on this occasion preached in Phrygia and a portion of North Galatia; and that the disciples . . . whom Paul met on the third missionary journey to several places of the same regions (Ac 18'-') had been converted by the preaching of Paul and Silas on the second journey.' Only, as Zahn himself is tlie first to admit, ' everyone feels the uncertainty of these combinations.'
The present tendency of the North Galatian theorists is greatly to restrict the field of the Apostle's activity in Galatia proper. Lightfoot's assumption that he carried his mission through the whole of North Galatia is felt to be ' as gratuitous as it is embarrassing' (Schmiedel, EBi, ii. IGOG). Tivium and Ancyra are now left out of account, and only ' a few churches, none of them very far apart,' are supposed to have been planted in the west of North Galatia {ib. ) ; but the more the sphere of operations is thus limited, the more difficult does it become to believe that ' the churches of Galatia' are to be sought exclusively in this small and hypothetical mission-field, while the great and flourishing churches of South Galatia are heard of no more.
The following points, though severally indecisive, all favour the South Galatian theory. (1) The baneful activity of Judaizers in Galatia suggests the presence of Jews and Jewish Christians in the newly planted churches, and there is abundant evidence of the strength and prominence of the Jews in Antioch (Ac IS'^'^i 141"), Iconium (14'), and Lystra {W'^ ; cf. 2 Ti P 3'^), whereas even Philo's inflated list of countries where Jews were to be found in his time {Leg. ad Gaium, xxxvi.) does not include Galatia proper, and among the Jews who made the journey to Jerusalem at Pentecost there were Asians and Phrygians but apparently no Galatians (Ac 2^). (2) The writer of Acts, who in general uses ethnographic rather than political terms, avoids 'Galatia,' which would have been taken to mean Old Galatia, and twice employs the phrase ' Galatic region.' Ramsay's view is that the term ' Galatic ' excludes Galatia in the narrow sense, and that 16", in the light of contemporary