St Paul's Letter to the Celts?

St. Paul was born to a well to do Jewish family of Tarsus, now part of Southern Turkey. The son of a Roman citizen, he was known as Saul until his conversion to Christianity.According to Paul, he himself at first persecuted Christians to the death (Phil 3:6). Acts places him at the martyrdom of Stephen (Acts 7:58–60; 22:20), but Paul later embraced Christianity. Upon his conversion, Saul changed his name to Sergius Paulus. 

St. Paul by El Greco, c. 1608-1614

Paul made several journeys through out Asia Minor, including the Roman province of Galatia in central Anatolia. Galatia now lies in the heart of modern Turkey. The name is related to other names through out Europe that were inhabited by Celts. Gaul, Galicia in Iberia (part of modern day Spain and Portugal) Galicia in Central Europe (divided between modern Poland and the Ukraine). The Romans termed the inhabitants of Galatia the “Galli” and referred to the place as “the Gaul of the East.”

The Galatians were in their origin a part of that great Celtic migration which invaded Macedonia; led by Brennus the second, a Gaulish chief (The first Brennus sacked Rome in 387 B.C).He invaded Greece in 281 B.C, with a huge war band and was turned back in the nick of time from plundering the temple of Apollo at Delphi. At the same time, another Gaulish group was migrating with their women and children through Thrace. They had split off from Brennus' Gauls in 279 B.C, and had migrated into Thrace under their leaders Leonnorius and Lutarius. Some seventeen Celtic chieftains brought their people out of Greece. Grouped into two grand divisions, there were some 20,000 Celts in all.

As so often happens in cases of invasion, the invaders came at the express invitation of Nicomedes I of Bithynia, who required help in a dynastic struggle against his brother. Three tribes of Gauls crossed over from Thrace to Asia Minor. They numbered about 10,000 fighting men and about the same number of women and children, divided into three tribes, Trocmi, Tolistobogii and Tectosages. They were eventually defeated by the Seleucid king Antiochus I, in a battle where the Seleucid war elephants shocked the Celts. While breaking the momentum of the invasion, the Galatians were by no means exterminated.

Instead, the migration led to the establishment of a long-lived Gaulish territory in central Anatolia, which included the eastern part of ancient Phrygia, a territory that became known as Galatia. There they ultimately settled, and being strengthened by fresh accessions of the same clan from Europe, they overran Bithynia and supported themselves by plundering neighboring countries.

Saint Paul Writing His Epistles

As Rome increased its power in the eastern Mediterranean, it grew more impatient with these Celtic troublemakers. After the battle of Magnesia in 180B.C, in which Galatian mercenaries fought the Romans on the side of the losing Syrians, the Romans invaded Galatia in 179B.C and forced it to submit to Rome.

As a client state of Rome, the Galatians managed to continue their Celtic tradition of fighting on the losing side in causes not their own. They backed the Roman General Pompey in his struggle against Julius Caesar in the Roman Civil War, and then they backed Mark Anthony against Octavian (Augustus Caesar) in the civil war that followed Julius Caesar’s assassination. Belatedly sensing which way the wind was blowing, the last Galatian king Amyntas tried to fix things at the last minute by switching sides on the eve of the decisive naval battle of Actium. The switch proved timely. The victorious Octavian confirmed Amyntas on his throne as king of Galatia, but when Amyntas mysteriously died in an ambush six years later in 35 B.C, Octavian terminated his kingdom and proclaimed Galatia a Roman province.

Galatia, as a Roman province.

About 75 years after this, Galatia again entered history through the Epistle of Paul. "OfoolishGalatians,whohathbewitchedyou,thatyeshouldnotobeythetruth,beforewhoseeyesJesusChristhathbeenevidentlysetforth,crucifiedamongyou?"(Galatians 3:1)During his second missionary journey the Apostle Paul, accompanied by Silas and Timothy (Acts 16:6), visited the "region of Galatia," where he was detained by sickness (Epistle to Galatians 4:13), and had thus the longer opportunity of preaching to them the gospel. 

On his third journey he went over "all the country of Galatia and Phrygia in order" (Acts 18:23). During the journeys of Paul he was received with enthusiasm in Galatia. In Acts, xvi, 6 and xviii, 23:"And they went through the Phrygian and Galatian region" and "he departed and went through the Galatian region and Phrygia". The Galatians were fickle; at Lystra the multitude could scarcely be restrained from sacrificing to Paul (because they assumed he was a god); shortly afterwards they stoned him and left him for dead. The churches of Galatia were founded by Paul himself (Acts 16:6; Gal 1:8; 4:13, 4:19).

There is some dispute as to the location of the "churches of Galatia" as Roman province of Galatia contained areas not part of the original Celtic homeland; however artifacts and architectural remains excavated in the region leave little doubt that St Paul's Galatians were Celts. In the ancient city of Gordion, archeologists have unearthed the remains of a Celtic settlement. Gordion is better known s the city of King Midas, and as the city where Alexander the Great cut the Gordion knot. 

That these people were Gauls (and not Germans as has sometimes been suggested) is also proved by the testimony of Greek and Latin writers, by their retention of the Gallic language till the fifth century, and by their personal and place names. St. Jerome, who visited Ancyra around 400 AD, noted in his writings that the people still spoke a language much like that of Gaul and that they followed customs much like those of Gaul. St. Jerome's report seems to be the last historical writings about the Galatians.

By the 12th century the Turks had swept through the region and theOttoman Empire had likely absorbed the Celts of the Galatians. Regardless of who the Galatians were, it is well known that they were amongst the first non-Jewish converts to Christianity, and there is a high probability that these were the first Celtic Christians.

References:

Galatia, St. Paul, Epistle to the Galatians, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galatia

Epistle to the Galatians, Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06336a.htm

YOU FOOLISH GALATIANS, Celtic League, http://www.celticleague.org/history_8-02.html

Galatia, Classic Encyclopedia, http://www.1911encyclopedia.org/Galatia

St James Bible, Galatians, Acts

Galatia, Ancient Worlds, http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Places/Place/325168

Celtic Cannibalism, Digging Up the Past http://www.diggingsonline.com/pages/rese/magaz1ne/samp32.htm

The Celts, Clann Chaomhánach http://www.kavanaghfamily.com/articles/2005/20050621a.htm

Archaeologists Find Celts in Unlikely Spot: Central Turkey
New York Times | 12/25/2001 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD