Where was Galatia?

Question

Where was Galatia?

Accepted Answer

Galatia was the high plateau of central Asia Minor around Ancyra, today's Ankara; the map point stands in the middle of the region, south of the city. The name comes from the Galatians, Celtic tribes who crossed into Asia in 278 BC and settled there, around Ancyra, Pessinus and Tavium. In 25 BC Rome made it a province and added the lands to the south, Pisidia and Lycaonia, so that Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, the cities of Paul's first journey, were Galatian by law though not by race; from the map point they lie 160 to 195 km to the south and south-west. This double meaning is the question behind the letter “unto the churches of Galatia”. The older view, still common in Europe, takes the Galatians to be the Celts of the north, whom Paul would have visited on his second and third journeys when Acts says he went through “Phrygia and the region of Galatia” and “all the country of Galatia and Phrygia”; the letter then dates to the mid-50s. The South Galatian view, argued by William Ramsay from the Roman provincial boundaries, makes the recipients the churches of Antioch, Iconium, Lystra and Derbe, and allows the letter to be as early as about 48, before the council of Jerusalem; many English-language commentaries now prefer it. Peter also writes to “the strangers scattered throughout Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia”, listing the provinces. The Galatians kept their Celtic speech: Jerome, who had lived in Trier, wrote in the 380s that they spoke almost the same tongue as the Treveri of the Rhineland. Ancyra's temple of Augustus and Roma, built under Augustus, carries on its walls the fullest copy of the emperor's own account of his reign, the Monumentum Ancyranum; the temple still stands in Ankara.