by Kent Leslie ✉️
This is a Roman-style intro, because there was no postal service. Letters were delivered by friends who were already traveling there; or if you were rich, by slaves. You put the author and recipients at the beginning of the scroll so you can unroll the papyrus, read that bit, then roll it back up.
Paul’s letters were dictated aloud—as we can tell by all the Greek sentence fragments. He had a secretary (the technical term people use is amanuensis) who’d write everything Paul said onto wax tablets. Then edit everything he got wrong, or anything Paul decided to say differently or delete. Then write it out later on papyrus. Can’t afford to waste papyrus!
Paul, an apostle. [1.1] It’s how Paul introduces himself:
No last name. Paul had a last name! As a Roman citizen, he had a praenomen, nomen, and cognomen. Saying his full name was how he identified himself as a Roman citizen.
- Praenomen is his first name, which you already know; it’s Saul. (For Greeks, that’d often be
Σαῦλος /Sa’úlos, ’cause they liked to put Greek endings like -os on their nouns.) - Nomen is his family name, like Smith. That name is nowhere in the bible.
- Cognomen is a name to distinguish you from all the other Paul Smiths out there. Roman habit was to give sons the same name as their fathers, for inheritance reasons; so you’ll find a lot of Seniors and Juniors among ancient Romans.) Sometimes your cognomen would be Senior or Junior, or Tertius for the third. Sometimes it’d be a nickname, and Paul is obviously Saul’s cognomen.
- Non-Roman Jews, like Jesus and Peter, were usually known by their father’s name, or patronymics. Like Icelanders. Like James and John bar Zebedee. But Paul never gave his father’s name. Might’ve been the same name, for all we know: Saul bar Saul.
You notice a lot of the people of the New Testament, including Roman Christians, are first-name-only. Why? Likely persecution. Don’t wanna make your family suffer because of your faith, so you don’t use your last name.
An apostle. [1.1] Paul calls himself an apostle because he is an apostle. Jesus himself made him one.
You all know the story from Acts 9: Headed to Damascus, bright light, falls down; people say “falls off his horse” but Acts does not say they were riding horses; and if you fall off a horse onto the solid stone pavement of a Roman road you’re gonna break something.
In Acts 26.14 Paul says Jesus’s statement to him was in Aramaic, so I got out my Aramaic bible. (The Aramaic/Syriac translation of the New Testament is called the Peshitta. It dates back to the second century. Lots of Aramaic-speaking Christians insist it’s not a translation—Jesus and the apostles did speak Aramaic, after all!—and that the Greek New Testament is a translation of their NT. Archeology doesn’t back up this claim any. Regardless, the Peshitta is nearly as old as the Greek NT.) So Jesus tells him,
Paul spends three days praying; Jesus sends him Ananias of Damascus, one of the guys he’s come to arrest, to cure him. Jesus tells Ananias, “This man is my chosen instrument to take my name to gentiles, kings, and Israelites.” [Ac 9.15] Apóstolos means someone who’s been sent (stólos) out (apó), and that is definitely Paul.
But you know how people get with titles. Especially ones they covet.
The thinking, which is false, which you still find in Christianity, is the only apostles are first-century apostles: The Twelve. Minus Judas Iscariot. Plus Matthias ’cause they voted on him. Plus Paul. Maybe Barnabas ’cause the Holy Spirit told the Antioch church to send him on a mission. Maybe Silas and Timothy and Sosthenes ’cause they helped Paul write letters. Maybe James and Jude because they’re Jesus’s brothers and wrote some New Testament. And maybe Mark and Luke because they wrote gospels. But nobody else!
The reality: Anybody Jesus personally sends out, to be Jesus to the lost, is an apostle.
But this only-the-Twelve mindset already existed in Paul’s day, and was already in the Galatians’ heads. Paul can’t be an apostle, because Jesus picked and trained the Twelve, and there are only Twelve, and he was raptured so he’s not making new apostles. Right?
Except he is making new apostles. Paul’s one of them. And who’s to say he doesn’t do this all the time?
Not from men or by man. [1.1] Not to say Jesus isn’t a man. But Paul’s apostleship is a God-thing. We humans don’t make apostles. We don’t lay hands on people and poof, they’re an apostle. If a church tries that, they’re doing it wrong. Best they can do is acknowledge Jesus made this person an apostle, and they’re just recognizing the call of God on them.
All the brothers with me. [1.2] This reminds us Paul’s part of a missionary team. It’s not just him and Barnabas, or him and Silas, or him and Timothy. Lots of people had the Holy Spirit tell them, “Go share my gospel,” so they did. Together. Because if it’s just you, that’s a red flag.
To the churches of Galatia. [1.2] Galatia is a Roman province in the land mass the Greeks called Anatolia, Romans called Asia Minor, and its inhabitants now call Türkiye. There’s a map on this blog.
- It used to be a Hittite territory.
- Then the Phyrigians, a European people-group, conquered it and ran it during the Bronze Age. (King Midas was a Phrygian.)
- Then the Cimmerians, an Iranian people group, conquered them.
- Then the Lydians conquered them. (King Croesus was a Lydian. Are you noticing a rich-person theme here?)
- Then the Persians under Cyrus conquered them.
- Then the Macedonians under Alexander the Great conquered them.
And now we get to the Gauls. Galatia is named after them; Greek-speakers called them Galáte. They were Celts from mainland Europe, whom Julius Caesar later pushed back into what’s now called France, and conquered it and made it part of the Roman Empire. But back in the 300s
Galatia was super loyal to Augustus and the Roman Empire, because Augustus made them Roman citizens. But a lot of them still spoke Celtic instead of Greek as late as the 4th century.
So Paul’s letter is not to one church, but all the churches in the region. Like the church of Ankyra—which is now Ankara, the capital of Türkiye. And the churches of Pessinus, Tavium, and Gordion—the old Phrygian capital.