AUTHOR

That Paul is this letter’s author is uncontested—even skeptical scholars consider Galatians to be Pauline. As the author, Paul likely used an amanuensis (scribe), since his own handwriting began at 6:11. But Paul was indisputably behind all of the letter’s content. Of more significance, then, is the question of when the letter was written.

From the fourth through nineteenth centuries, the dominant (North Galatian) view was that Paul wrote to churches in ethnic Galatia in north-central Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Paul planted these Galatian churches (Gl 1:2) during his second missionary journey (Ac 16:6) and revisited them on his third journey (Ac 18:23). The result of this theory is a slightly later date for the letter: AD 57–58.

The more recent (and more likely) South Galatian view understands “Galatia” in Acts in the typical political sense of Roman provincial designations. Paul planted four churches in the south-central province of Galatia during his first missionary journey (Ac 13–14) and wrote to them shortly thereafter. If this theory is correct, it yields an earlier date of writing for the letter: as early as AD 49 (before the Jerusalem Council of Ac 15) and no later than AD 53–54. In this case Galatians would probably be the first biblical letter Paul wrote.

GALATIANS AND APOLOGETICS

Whether Galatians was written in AD 49 or AD 58, we are dealing with one of the New Testament’s earliest writings. This is crucial in demonstrating that Jesus’s followers started with a high Christology, or view of Jesus Christ. Such a viewpoint was not something added later. Paul and the early church saw Jesus as “Lord” (Gl 1:3), as the post-resurrection revealer (1:12), as the preexistent one sent forth by the Father (4:4), and as the changer of the world structure (6:14; see 2:20-21).

Galatians is also apologetically significant in systematically persuading believers to continue in the true gospel and reject all non-gospels. Paul was emphatic in his confirmation of a single true gospel, with its universal nature open to all peoples through faith (chaps. 1–2). He went on to show that only this true gospel places believers from all peoples in the true people of God and gives them God’s identity marker of the Holy Spirit through their faith in Christ (chaps. 3–4). Finally, Paul proclaimed that only the true gospel provides deliverance from sin’s power through the giving of the Holy Spirit (chaps. 5–6).