GALATIANS
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GALATIANS
9 ; V, 8). From some passages in this epistle (e. g. i, 11-24 ; ii, 1-'21) it would appear also that insinuations had been disseminated among the Galatian churches to the effect that Paul was not a divinely-commission- ed apostle, but only a messenger of the church at Jeru- salem ; tliat Peter and he were at variance upon the subject of the relation of the Jewish rites to Christian- ity ; and that Paul himself was not at all times so strenuouslv opposed to those rites as he had chosen to he among the Galatians. Of this state of things intel- ligence having been convej'ed to the apostle, he wrote this epistle for the purpose of vindicating his own pre- tensions and conduct, of counteracting the influence of these false views, and of recalling tiie Galatians to the simplicity of the Gospel which they had received. The ini])ortance of the case was probably the reason why the apostle put himself to the great labor of writ- ing this epistle with his own hand (vi, 11).
III. Thiie and Place ofWrit'mg. — On the date of this epistle great diversity of opinion prevails. (See Fisch- er, De femjmre quo ep. ad G. script a fuerit, Longos. 1808 ; Keil, De tempore, etc., in his Opusc. acad. p. 351 sq. ; also Utb. d. Zeit. etc., in Tzschirner's Analekten, iii, 2, 65 sq. ; Niemej'er, De tempore, etc., Gott. 1827; Ulrich, Ueh. d. Ahfassungzeit, etc., in the Theol. Stud. u. Krit. 1836, ]). 448 sq.). Marcion held this to be the earliest of Paul's letters (Epiphanius, adv. Ilceres. xlii, 9) ; and Tertullian is generally supposed to favor the same opinion, from his speaking of Paul's zeal against Juda- ism displayed in this epistle as characteristic of his be- ing yet a neophyte ((idv. Marc, i, 2U) ; though to us it does not appear that in this passage Tertullian is re- ferring at all to the writing of this epistle, but onl}' to PauPs personal intercourse with Peter and other of the apostles mentioned by him in the epistle (ii, 9-14). Michaelis also has given his suffrage in favor of a date earlier than that of the apostle's second visit to Gala- tia, and very shortlj^ after that of his first. Koppe's view (Nov. Test, vi, 7) is the same, though he supposes the apostle to have preached in Galatia before the visit mentioned by Luke in Acts xvi, G, and which is usual- ly reckoned his first visit to that district. Others, again, such as IMill {Proleg. in Nov. Test. p. 4), Calo- vius (IJiblia Illnst. iv, 529), and, more recentlj', Schra- der (Der A p. Paulus, i, 22(1), place the date of this epis- tle at a late period of the apostle's life : the last, in- deed, advocates the date assigned in the Greek MSS., and in the Syriac and Arabic versions, which announce that it was "written fiom Rome" during the apostle's imprisonment there. But this subscription is of very little critical authority, and seems in every way im- probable ; it was not unlikely suggested by a mistaken reference of the expressions in ch. vi, 17 to the suffer- ings of imprisonment. See Alford, Prolegomena, p. 459. Lightfoot {Journal of Sacred and Class. Phi'ol. Jan. 1857) urges the probaliility of its having been written at about the same time as the Epistle to the Komaus, and finds it verj' unlikely that two epistles so nearly allied in subject and line of argument should have liecn separated in order of composition by the two epistles to the Corinthians. He would therefore as- sign Corinth as tlie place where the epistle was writ- ten, and the three months that the apostle staid there (Acts XX, 2, 3) as the exact period. But when the lan- guage of the epistle to the Galatians is compared with that to the Pomans, the similarity between the two is sucli as ratlier to suggest that the latter is a devcl- opnu'nt at a later period, and in a more s3-stematic form, of thoughts more hastily thrown out to meet a pressing emergency in the former. The majority of interpreters, however, concur in a medium view be- tween these extremes, and fix the date of tliis epistle at some time shortly after the apostle's second visit to Galatia. Prom the apostle's abrupt exclamation in chii]i. i, 0, '• I marvel that yc arc so soon removed from him tliat called .you," etc., it seems just to infer that he wrote this epistle not verj' long after he had left
Galatia. It is true, as has been urged (see especiallj' Conybcare and Howson's Life and Ejnstles of St. Paul, ii, 132), that oiVw Ta\tuQ in this verse may mean " so quicklf as well as "so soon;" but the abruptness of the apostle's statement appears to us rather to favor the latter rendering ; for, as a complaint of the qidck- ness of their change respected the manner in which it had been made, and as the apostle could be aware of that only by report, and as it was a matter on which there might be a diff"erence of opinion between him and them, it would seem necessarv that the grounds of such a charge should be stated ; whereas if the com- plaint merely related to the shortness of time during which, after the apostle had been among them, tliey had remained steadfast in the faith, a mere allusion to it was sufficient, as it was a matter not admitting of any diversitj' of opinion. We should consider, also, the obvious fervor and freshness of interest that seems to breathe through tlie whole epistle as an evidence that he had but lately left them.