GALATIA

(Ga·laʹti·a).

The Roman province that occupied the central portion of what is now known as Asia Minor. It was bounded by other Roman provinces​—in part by Cappadocia on the E, Bithynia and Pontus on the N, Asia on the W, and Pamphylia on the S. (1Pe 1:1) This central plateau region lay between the Taurus Mountains on the S and the mountains of Paphlagonia on the N. In its north-central portion was the city of Ancyra, now called Ankara, the capital of Turkey. And through this area flowed the middle segment of the Halys River (the modern Kizil Irmak) and the upper Sangarius River (Sakarya), both of which empty into the Black Sea. The history of this region (400 and more years, from the third century B.C.E. forward) shows there were many changes in the boundaries and political affiliations of this strategic area.

It appears that around 278-277 B.C.E. large numbers of Indo-European people known as Celts, or Galli, from Gaul, whom the Greeks called Ga·laʹtai (hence the name given this region), moved across the Bosporus and settled there. They brought with them their wives and children and apparently avoided intermarrying with the people already there, in this way perpetuating their racial characteristics for centuries. Their last king, Amyntas, died in 25 B.C.E., and it was during his reign as a puppet of the Roman Empire and thereafter that the area designated as Galatia was enlarged to include portions of Lycaonia, Pisidia, Paphlagonia, Pontus, and Phrygia.

To Whom Addressed. The question of which congregations were included in the address “the congregations of Galatia” (Ga 1:2) has long been a controversy. In support of the contention that these were unnamed congregations in the northern part of the province of Galatia, it is argued that the people living in this area were ethnically Galatians, whereas those of the S were not. However, Paul in his writings usually gives official Roman names to the provinces, and the province of Galatia in his time included the southern Lycaonian cities of Iconium, Lystra, and Derbe as well as the Pisidian city of Antioch. In all these cities Paul had organized Christian congregations on his first evangelizing tour when he was accompanied by Barnabas. That the congregations in the cities of Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, and Pisidian Antioch were addressed agrees with the way the letter mentions Barnabas, as one apparently known by those to whom Paul was writing. (2:1, 9, 13) There is no indication elsewhere in the Scriptures that Barnabas was known to Christians in the northern part of Galatia or that Paul even made any trips through that territory.