Corinthians, he begs them that they in their turn will open their closed hearts to him.1 He had desired only the good of all of them, had drawn them into his heart to live and die with them; he was full of confidence and glorying on their behalf, full of comfort and joy. He could no longer regret that he had grieved them by his last letter (chaps. x.-xiii.), since this grief had wrought a wholesome repentance and a turning to good, and thereby the aim of this letter had been fulfilled. Titus also shared this confidence and rejoicing (vi. 1-vii. 16).

In the last section (chaps. viii. and ix.) he goes on to speak of the arrangements for the collection, admonishing them-pointing to the good example set by the Macedonians, and to the pattern of Christ Himself, who for our sakes exchanged His heavenly riches for earthly poverty-to give with liberality, each according to his means. He desires also to take with him when he goes to deliver the gift, a deputation chosen from the church, as a security against malicious calumnies regarding his honesty in the application of the money. As a consequence of this rich gift he hopes that many will with him thank and praise God for this proof of obedience to the gospel and the loyal and loving fellowship of the Corinthians with all Christians; and so concludes with an expression of thankfulness to God for His unspeakable

1 The section vi. 14-vii. 1 is out of place here, as it evidently breaks the connection between vi. 13 and vii. 2, which manifestly belong together. If the intervening verses were written by Paul they must have belonged to a previous epistle; it is possible that they originally followed 1 Cor. vi., but it is also possible that we have in them a fragment of the lost Epistle to the Corinthians which was the first of the series.

gift (ix. 13).

The formal conclusion of the epistle has either fallen out, owing to the addition of the "Four-Chapters Epistle" (see above), or alternatively -and this is probable—is to be sought in xiii. 11 ff., since the words there, "Rejoice, be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, be peaceable, and the God of love and of peace be with you," seem much more appropriate to the final letter of reconciliation than to the previous letter of condemnation.

The last Epistle to the Corinthians has, no doubt, like the second, the self-justification of the apostle as its main topic, and it is not wanting in occasional thrusts at his opponents (cf. i. 12; ii. 17; iii. 1, 15; iv. 2 f.; v. 12, 16; vi. 8 f.; vii. 2; viii. 20), but the defence rises above the purely personal attitude of the previous letter to questions of principle, and thereby takes its place alongside of the epistles to the Galatians and Romans, to which it also stands near in point of time, as of equal rank. Controversy, on the other hand, takes quite a subordinate place, in incidental allusions, as is natural, since the apostle now knows the majority of the church to be on his side; it is only like the last rumbling echo of a storm which is passing away, after discharging its tremendous thunder-claps (x.-xiii.). That this letter effected a complete reconciliation may be inferred as probable, since the Epistle to the Romans, written shortly afterwards from Corinth, manifests a calm and peaceful mood on the part of the apostle.

THE WRITINGS OF PAUL

CHAPTER IX

THE LETTER TO THE GALATIANS

THE answer to the question as to when the churches to which this letter is addressed were founded, depends on where we have to seek them, whether in the district of Galatia upon the Halys, inhabited by a Celtic population, or in the Roman province of Galatia, which, in addition to that district, included the districts of Pisidia, Phrygia, and Lycaonia. The following reasons seem decisively in favour of the latter: (1) Paul elsewhere in his designation of places uniformly employs the official Roman names of provinces, not the ethnic names. It is in the former, not in the latter, sense that he speaks of Syria, Cilicia, Asia, Macedonia, and Achaia; it is therefore extremely improbable that he made an exception in the case of Galatia only, and understood thereby only the little strip of territory with Celtic inhabitants on the Halys, instead of the very much more extensive Province.1 (2) It is improbable that Paul could have

1 It is true that Schürer, in the Jahrb. f. prot. Theol., 1892, endeavoured to establish the proof that no one ever understood by Galatia, at least in the period which has here to be considered, anything but Galatia proper in the narrower sense; but Theodor

founded in the region of Galatia several flourishing churches, since the use of the Celtic language, which was still prevalent there, would have placed serious difficulties in the way of his missionary activity; and why should the apostle have turned at all to the non-Greek-speaking heathen of Asia Minor, so long as there remained everywhere so many Greek-speaking heathen to be converted? And would he have spoken in an epistle to Celtic readers of Jews and Greeks? (iii. 28). Would it not have been more correct to say "barbarians" instead of Greeks? (3) It is improbable that no trace should remain in tradition of the foundation of the Galatian churches which attained

Zahn (Einleitung in d. N.T., i. 123 ff.) has convincingly proved that the establishment of the Roman provinces, while it did not banish the old ethnic names, did give rise to the use of a new terminology. Romans like Pliny the Elder, Tacitus, and the geographer Ptolemy, understood by Galatia the whole province. Paul could address his readers, even if they were not of Galatic, i.e. of Celtic, race, as “Galatians” in view of their belonging to the Roman province, just as at the present day the Frankish inhabitants of Würzburg are called Bavarians, although they have not been united with the Bavarian national territories very much longer than the Lycaonians had at that time been united with the Galatic tribes in the province of Galatia. The more various was the composition of a circle of Christians in regard to nationality, the more natural was it in addressing them to choose a designation unconnected with nationality and drawn from the political district in which they lived. This view has been supported by Hausrath, Weizsäcker, and Renan, and lately by the English scholar Ramsay (St Paul the Traveller and Roman Citizen, 1892), who also understands in Acts xvi. 6 and xviii. 23, by τὴν Φρυγίαν καὶ Γαλατικὴν χώραν or τὴν Γαλατικὴν χώραν καὶ Φρυγίαν, not Galatia in the narrower sense, but the Phrygian country so far as it belongs to the Roman province of Galatia. This is contested by Zahn, who, however, remarks with justice that the linguistic usage of Luke is in no case decisive for that of Paul,

such importance, as would be the case if we had to think of churches in the Celtic region. The foundation of these could thus only have taken place on the journey through this region which is mentioned in Acts xvi. 6, but so far from there being any mention here of the foundation of churches, it is directly excluded by the statement that Paul was forbidden by the Holy Spirit to preach the word in Asia.1

If, on the other hand, we understand by the Galatian churches those in the Roman province of Galatia, to

1 It has no doubt been remarked in opposition to this that Acts is in general fragmentary, giving, e.g., no account of the foundation of the Roman church, and it might have a special reason for drawing a veil over the founding of the Galatian churches on account of the unsatisfactory state of affairs which obtained there. But the case of the church at Rome, which was not founded by Paul, is quite different. In the case of the Galatian churches there would, according to the traditional view, be a deliberate concealment of their having been founded; and that is surely very improbable. A hypothesis has, it is true, been proposed which seems to offer a way of escape from this difficulty, namely that Paul did not intend any permanent missionary activity in the Galatic region, but was obliged by the accident of his falling ill to make a short stay there, of which the foundation of these churches was the fruit. Against this theory, however, it may be pointed out (1) that the statement in Acts xvi. 6, "at all in Asia," is too definitely worded to leave room for the supposition of a missionary work which, however accidentally caused, must at all events have been of some duration; and (2) that the supposition of an illness being the cause of a missionary work is too strange and improbable to make that interpretation of iv. 13 satisfactory. Instead of di' doévelav Tys σαρκὸς εὐηγγελισάμην ὑμῖν τὸ πρότερον, we ought perhaps to read δι do eveías, or even if the text stands it should doubtless be translated "amid weakness of the flesh." Besides this, it is to be noticed that the Tò Tρórepov = "the former time," does not necessarily refer to the first visit to Galatia, on which the church was founded. In any case this very obscure reference furnishes no argument against the South Galatian theory, which rests on the grounds given above.