The Galatians were no wimps!

Galatia (click to see map)

 

In trying to pin down just who the Galatians were, I am dazzled by the migrations of huge numbers of people.  For example I found that Gauls/Celts had come from what is now Eastern Europe, in c. 278/277 BC.  Wikipedia says: Three tribes crossed over from Thrace to Asia Minor. They numbered about 10,000 fighting men and about the same number of women and children.

(I have recently been amazed to learn that the Vikings got themselves to Austria!  How intrepid were these people.  I reckon they carried no spare fat on their bodies!)

So the Galatians were no wimps.  They were fighting men; they were hired as mercenaries in those warring times.  They were called Galatians because their ancestors were Celts who had come from Gaul. No doubt there was also a healthy mix of Greek as well.

I wonder if the “churches of Galatia” could be at least some of the Seven Churches of Revelation.

There is just too much to learn!  I’ve just looked up Gaul in my big Bible Atlas.  Christianity was spread back to Gaul from this Asia Minor area.  To quote: Relations between Asia Minor and south-east Gaul (France) remained close: it was from Asia Minor that Gaul was evangelised.  When the churches of Ludgunum (Lyons) and Vienna, in the Rhone Valley, suffered a severe persecution in AD 177, it was to the churches of Asia Minor that the survivors wrote with details of the persecution; and it was from Asia Minor (probably from the vicinity of Smyrna) that the new bishop of Lyon was brought to replace the bishop who had died in the persecution.  The new bishop, Iranaeus, was a theological writer of the early church.   

Joyce Voysey

You've got mail - an impassioned letter from Paul

How lovely to be back with Paul.  We last caught up with him in April/May 2013 when we read the book of Acts, which we now know is part 2 of the gospel of Luke.  There we learned about Paul from another writer.  Here in Galatians, we are hearing from Paul himself as he writes an impassioned letter of greeting, of instruction, and of warning, to the church members in Galatia.

I've started my reading of Galatians this time with The Message.  It's so interesting to know a little about Eugene Petersen's reasons for giving the world this new reading of the Bible.  In "A User's Guide to the Remix" at the beginning of my copy of The Message is this:

The Message was paraphrased over a period of ten years, straight from the Bible's original languages (Greek and Hebrew).  The idea of The Message isn't to water down the Bible, making it easier to digest.  The idea is to make it readable -- to put those ancient words that their users spoke and wrote every day into words that YOU speak and write every day.

So, turning to Petersen's Introduction to Galatians we read:

When men and women get their hands on religion, one of the first things they often do is turn it into an instrument for controlling others... Paul of Tarsus was dong his diligent best to add yet another chapter to this dreary history...

But this colossal character Paul one day suddenly saw a different path forward.  It changed his life and it changed the world.  Not that it was easy.  Traditions (disguised as law) can bind people in outmoded beliefs and practices.  But the spirit of GRACE and FREEDOM Paul discovered as a newly minted disciple of Jesus (he was a contemporary of Jesus but never met him in the flesh) was so profound, that nothing would stop him in his mission to preach this good news to as wide a field as he could outside the Jewish world. 

And so we begin in the Roman province of Galatia.

The nascent Christian Church

Greetings fellow readers! 

We have been inspired by Madelon Maupin’s wonderful Bible insights shared at the Northern Australia Church Alive Summit, so we will follow her lead and read Paul’s letter to the Galatians this month.  Who were the Galatians?  Why did Paul write to them?  What was his basic message? What does it say to us today?

Last month we read Mary Baker Eddy's Message to The Mother Church for 1900.  A passage that caught my attention was on page 6 where Eddy talks about the “so-called fog of this Science”:

“Any mystery in Christian Science departs when dawns the spiritual meaning thereof; and the spiritual sense of the Scriptures is the scientific sense which interprets the healing Christ.  A child can measurably understand Christian Science, for, through his simple faith and purity, he takes in its spiritual sense that puzzles the man.  The child not only accepts Christian Science more readily than the adult, but he practises it.  This notable fact proves that the so-called fog of this Science obtains not in the Science, but the in material sense which the adult entertains of it.”

Now let's launch ourselves back into the world of the nascent Christian church...

Julie Swannell