Did Paul Write for Asterix?:The Extent of Celtic Ethnicity in Galatia and the Audience of Galatians

Galatia, the Roman province in what is now central Turkey, was named after the Galatai, the Celtic group who moved from Europe to the area in the third-century BCE and became the dominant political force there. Some NT scholars (especially French ones!) have seen Gallic identity as key to understanding Paul’s letter to Christians in that province. “The Gauls had, par excellence, ingenia indomita [‘indomitable dispositions’], a huge love of freedom. And we may ask ourselves if Paul was not conscious of touching the Galatians at a sensitive point in representing to them the Mosaic Law as a yoke, and Christian life as a life of freedom.” (Lagrange on Galatians, 1926, Oakes translation). Oakes’s article examines inscriptions and other evidence to assess the extent to which people in Galatia and among Paul’s audience might be seen as having Celtic ethnicity, in various senses ranging from genetics to language use, material culture and self-identification. He concludes that, despite their political domination, Celts were only ever a small percentage of the population and of Paul’s audience, and that the non-Celts would not have seen their identity in Celtic terms.