《The Pulpit Commentaries – Galatians (Vol. 1)》(Joseph S. Exell)
Contents and the Editors
One of the largest and best-selling homiletical commentary sets of its kind. Directed by editors Joseph Exell and Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones, The Pulpit Commentary drew from over 100 authors over a 30 year span to assemble this conservative and trustworthy homiletical commentary set. A favorite of pastors for nearly 100 years, The Pulpit Commentary offers you ideas and insight on "How to Preach It" throughout the entire Bible.
This in-depth commentary brings together three key elements for better preaching:
· Exposition-with thorough verse-by-verse commentary of every verse in the Bible.
· Homiletics-with the "framework" or the "big picture" of the text.
· Homilies-with four to six sermons sample sermons from various authors.
In addition, this set also adds detailed information on biblical customs as well as historical and geographical information, and translations of key Hebrew and Greek words to help you add spice to your sermon.
All in all, The Pulpit Commentary has over 22,000 pages and 95,000 entries from a total of 23 volumes. The go-to commentary for any preacher or teacher of God's Word.
About the Editors
Rev. Joseph S. Exell, M.A., served as the Editor of Clerical World, The Homiletical Quarterly and the Monthly Interpreter. Exell was also the editor for several large commentary sets like The Men of the Bible, The Pulpit Commentary, Preacher's Homiletic Library and The Biblical Illustrator.
Henry Donald Maurice Spence-Jones was born in London on January 14, 1836. He was educated at Corpus Christi, Cambridge where he received his B.A. in 1864. He was ordered deacon in 1865 and ordained as a priest is the following year. He was professor of English literature and lecturer in Hebrew at St. David's College, Lampeter, Wales from 1865-1870. He was rector of St. Mary-de-Crypt with All Saints and St. Owen, Gloucester from 1870-1877 and principal of Gloucester Theological College 1875-1877. He became vicar and rural dean of St. Pancras, London 1877-1886, and honorary canon since 1875. He was select preacher at Cambridge in 1883,1887,1901, and 1905, and at Oxford in 1892 and 1903. In 1906 he was elected professor of ancient history in the Royal Academy. In theology he is a moderate evangelical. He also edited The Pulpit Commentary (48 vols., London, 1880-97) in collaboration with Rev. J. S. Exell, to which he himself contributed the section on Luke, 2 vols., 1889, and edited and translated the Didache 1885. He passed away in 1917 after authoring numerous individual titles.
00 Introduction
Introduction
GALATIA
GALATIA WAS a tract of country lying on the northward part of that elevated tableland which forms the central portion of the great peninsula we call Asia Minor. On the south, those uplands rest upon the long range of the Taurian Mountains running more or less parallel with the coast. On the north, they are upreared, first by the Olympus range, which, commencing in the neighborhood of Prusa (now Brusa), pursue a generally eastward direction, until, after being pierced by the river Ancharias (Akaria), which rises in those highlands, they are continued by the Aladag and Ulgaz Mountains as far as the Halys (Kizil-Irmak). Anciently these lands were to a considerable extent occupied by the Phrygians, then deemed, according to Homer ('Iliad,' 3:185-190), one of the finest races of mankind. But in the earlier part of the third century before Christ, hordes of Gauls, after a detachment of their hosts had been repulsed in an attempt to swarm into Greece, had managed to cross the Hellespont, and had poured themselves upon the western districts of Asia Minor, carrying havoc and rapine in every direction. With the details of their ensuing history we need not trouble ourselves. It is sufficient to remark that at length these wild tribes got bounded in within the limits of that country to which they gave their own name, being a district which they had wrested from its former Phrygian occupants. In the year B.C. 189 they were conquered by the Roman general, Cn. Manlius Vulso. The Romans, however, found it advisable to allow them for a long time to remain to a considerable degree independent, under princes of their own. One of these was the Deiotarus whose name is familiar to the readers of Cicero as a friend and a useful ally of his when Proconsul of Cilicia, and as afterwards defended by him, in his 'Oratio pro Rege Deiotaro,' when arraigned before Julius Caesar on the charge of attempting to assassinate him. This Deiotarus, B.C. 65, first united the Galatians under one sovereign. On the death of a successor of his, Amyntas, B.C. 25, Galatia, with the addition of some neighboring districts, was constituted into a Roman province under a governor.
In consequence of this it came to pass that the term Galatia is used in a wider and in a narrower sense. It sometimes designates the country properly so called; sometimes, the Roman province made up of this Galatia and other districts added thereto, which were different at different times. At the period we are now concerned with, these additional districts were Lycaonia, Isauria, and a portion of Pisidia; all lying to the south-west and south of Galatia proper. If the term as used by St. Paul denotes the country which was coextensive with the Roman province of that name, we might reckon the Churches of Antioch of Pisidia (now Yalobatch,) as well as those of Iconium (Konieh,) Derbe, and Lystra, cities of Lycaonia, as among "the Churches of Galatia." This hypothesis, however, is shown by Bishop Lightfoot ('Galatians: the Churches of Galatia'), as well as by others, to be untenable. It is the prevailing opinion of critics, and may be confidently assumed as the fact, that the word "Galatia" is used by the apostle with reference to this country in its stricter and more proper sense.
At this time the Galatians were divided into three septs.
(1) The Trocmi, occupying the easternmost position, on the right bank of the Halys, their capital being Tavium. Not far beyond their eastern border lay Comana (now Tokat), consecrated by being the sleeping-place of St. Chrysostom and of Henry Martyn.
(2) Next came the Tectosages, whose capital city, Ancyra (Angora), the capital also of the Roman province, lay a little north of the very midmost part of the peninsula of Asia Minor; it was famous in ancient times, as it is now, for the soft camlet fabrics woven from the fine hair of its goats.
(3) Westernmost were situated the Tolistoboii, or Tolistobogii, whose capital, Pessinus, situated south-westward from Ancyra, lay under Mount Dindymus, and was world-famed as being the chief center of the worship of Cybele, the mother of the gods; "Dindymene" (Horace); "cui Dindyma curae" (Virgil); the worship the report of which was blazed abroad everywhere by reason of the hideous self-mutilation of some of its priests, "Galli," or "Corybantes," and for the frenzy of its devotees, excited by hautboys and bronzen timbrels (" Corybantia aera ").
It has been stated that the Gauls gave the district which they occupied their own name. In explanation of this, we must observe that Galat is the form under which the name, which in Latin is Gall, commonly appears in Greek authors after the time of Herodotus, in whose 'Histories' it appears as Kelt. The Galliae of Europe, both Cisalpine (Lombardy) and France, were each of them by the Greeks called Galatia. In fact, the "Galatia" now before us was a third Gaul. It is to be further observed that when St. Paul, writing at the close of his life from Rome, tells Timothy (2 Timothy 4:10) that Crescens was gone to Galatia, the word was commonly, perhaps rightly, taken by Greek commentators, as referring to a European Gaul, and not to that in Asia Minor. Galat has very much the appearance of being the very word Kelt slightly varied in its utterance; but it is not quite certain that it is so; it may rather be the case (Bishop Lightfoot thinks) that Galat and Kelt were diverging forms of the same word, applied to different branches of the Celtic race. It has been surmised that both exhibit the same root as Gall, with a Celtic suffix.
It is interesting to observe that the Gauls embosomed in Asia Minor retained with "Celtic tenacity" their own original tongue to so great an extent that their language is declared by Jerome, in the Introduction to his Commentary on the Epistles, to be in his own time, which was more than three centuries later than St. Paul, very much the same (eadem fere) as he had heard spoken by the Gauls at Tr�ves. They used, however, the Greek language as well, for which reason they were at times called by the Romans Gallo-Graeci. Indeed, the Greek tongue, which under the empire got to be used even in Rome itself more customarily than Latin, was in vogue, as Jerome likewise observes, all over the East. They were thus bilinguals at least — not a few also, no doubt, being acquainted with the language of their Roman masters as well. Such was beyond question the case of many of the countries subject to the Roman empire (comp. John 19:20). Thus when Paul and Barnabas were visiting the neighboring country of Lycaonia, they no doubt addressed the people in Greek, assured of being understood by them; while they themselves failed to catch the import of the cries uttered by the Lycaonian populace, who in their excitement reverted quite naturally to their own more native speech (Acts 14:11-14).
The Galatic Land. It is noticeable that St. Luke does not use the word "Galatia" at all. He twice finds occasion to specify the district, and in both instances he names it "the Galatic Land" (Acts 16:6; 18:23). No doubt he found this designation of it already in use, though no instance of its occurrence elsewhere has been produced, and chose to employ it in preference to "Galatia," in order to make it more immediately obvious to the Roman readers to whom he was addressing his narrative, that it was not the entire Roman province of the name that he was now referring to. So also then he uses the term "Phrygia" in both cases in close connection with "the Galatic Land," there being no Roman province so called. He thus conjoins the two, as being linked together by a certain measure of identity in their populations; for in all probability not a few of the original Phrygian inhabitants still dwelt in the country, though now forming a stratum of population subordinate to that of their Gallic conquerors. At all events, "the Galatic" had originally formed a part of the country of the Phrygians.
RELIGION OF THE GALATIANS
The Gallic invaders do not appear to have at once adopted the worship of Cybele; for when, in the third generation after the conquest, they were attacked by the Romans, the Phrygian priests of Cybele met the Roman general, clad in the robes of their office, and chanting wild strains of prophecy, in which they announced to him that the goddess approved of his enterprise, and would make him the master of the country (Lightfoot, quoting Livy, 38:18; Polybius, 22:20). Perhaps this prediction had later the effect of making the Gauls, through its accomplishment, more ready to submit to the claims made on behalf of the goddess to their homage. At all events, they appear subsequently to have embraced her worship most cordially. The fervid fanaticism of her rites would naturally present a great attraction to the temperament of a people so excitable as they were. Among the inscriptions found at Pessinus, as also at Comana (Tokat), there are several, Bishop Lightfoot observes, specifying priests of Cybele by names which are evidently Gaulish. Her worship lingered long in this its old home: the Emperor Julian found it still subsisting there, and tried hard to revive this, as well as other Gentile cults, into renewed vigor. The Galatians, however, served other gods as well (Galatians 4:8). At Tavium the principal object of worship was a colossal bronze statue of Zeus. At Ancyra there was a magnificent temple of Augustus in white marble, still subsisting in ruins. As their Lycaonian neighbors recognized Hermes as one of their divinities as well as Zeus, we may well believe that his cult also was accepted by these Gauls; both were adopted from the Phrygians, the former possessors of the soil, together with probably much, at least, of their other idolatrous worship. As being a less civilized race than that which they dispossessed, they might have been on that account the more ready to lend an ear to their religious teaching, especially since these idolatrous cults were very commonly localized, and consequently claimed to be taken on by the new-comers along with the places to which they were attached. They had besides brought with them forms of religious or idolatrous observance of their own, which, after the manner of idolaters, they would more or less amalgamate with those others; but of these we know nothing.
JEWS IN GALATIA
Amongst these idolatrous nations there was scattered far and wide a large diffusion of Jews, forming, in respect to the spread of the gospel, a most important element of the population. In addition to circumstances tending, here as elsewhere, to their diffusion, it appears that there were some which in Asia Minor were especially operative. Antiochus the Great, King of Syria, before he was compelled towards the close of his long reign to give way in the year B.C. 191 before the advancing power of Rome, held sway over a wide belt of country reaching from the shores of the Aegean right across the continent as far as beyond Babylon. And we learn from Josephus ('Ant.,' 12:3, 4) that this king, with a view to the consolidation of his power, ordered his general Zeuxis to remove two thousand Jewish families from Mesopotamia and Babylon into Lydia and Phrygia, and to locate them "in the castles and places most convenient;" at the same time securing to them the free exercise of their religion, making them grants of land for building homes and for husbandry, and conferring various immunities indicative of his confidence in their loyalty to his government. If this scheme was fully carried out, it would infer the implantation in those countries of a population of not less than ten thousand people. Some of these could hardly fail of becoming established in Galatia. It is, indeed, quite supposable that the disquiets in these parts of his dominions which, as he tells Zeuxis, led him to adopt this measure, had their origin in part in the turbulent spirit of the Gauls recently settled in Asia Minor or still roving about unsettled. At all events, these Jewish settlements in "Phrygia" would become nuclei, sending forth ramifications which would quickly spread in districts so fertile as Galatia was. That Jews did abound in the Galatic region in particular is evinced by another fact recorded by Josephus ('Ant.,' 16:6, 2), who tells that by Augustus's command a copy of an address which he had received from the Jews, together with a decree of his issued in consequence of it, which ensured to them protection in their religious observances, was inscribed upon a pillar in his temple at Ancyra, the capital of the province. Accordingly, we find in the history of the Acts abundant proofs of the great influence which the Jews were able to exercise in all these parts of Asia Minor of whose evangelization St. Luke has given any details; and the like may be presumed to have been the case in other places his references to which are only brief and allusive. The important influence of the Jewish population of "those parts" (Acts 16:3) is further shown by the circumstance that, in consideration thereof, St. Paul at Lystra or Iconium thought it advisable to circumcise Timothy to facilitate his evangelizing work.