The Epistle to the Galatians

The Epistle to the Galatians is a short, sharply argued letter that Paul wrote in his own name to a group of churches he had founded in Galatia, in central Asia Minor. It is one of the seven "undisputed" letters — those accepted as genuinely Paul's composition by the overwhelming majority of critical scholars across confessional lines — and for the study of Paul's life it is the single most important of them all, because its first two chapters are the fullest autobiographical account Paul ever gives in his own hand. (Scholarship) Where the Acts of the Apostles narrates Paul's story from the outside, Galatians lets us hear him tell parts of it himself.

What it is

Galatians was written against rival teachers — often called "Judaizers" — who had come to Paul's Galatian congregations urging that gentile converts be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. Against them Paul mounts his most passionate defence of the claim that a person is set right with God through faith in Christ and not through "the works of the law": "knowing that man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 2:16, Douay-Rheims). (Scripture) The letter is famous for its vision of unity in Christ that dissolves the era's deepest social divisions: "There is neither Jew nor Greek: there is neither bond nor free: there is neither male nor female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28). (Scripture) Paul appears to have written or at least signed it himself: "See what a letter I have written to you with my own hand" (Galatians 6:11). (Scripture)

Authorship and dating

Paul's authorship of Galatians is not in serious dispute; the letter names him in its first line — "Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, but by Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:1) — and its style, argument and situation are thoroughly Pauline. (Scripture / Scholarship) The genuinely contested question is its date, and the debate turns on where in Asia Minor "Galatia" lies and which visit to Jerusalem Paul is describing in chapter 2.

On the "South Galatian" / early view, Paul is addressing the churches of the first missionary journey (Pisidian Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe), and the letter may have been written about AD 48, before the Council of Jerusalem — which would make Galatians the earliest surviving letter of Paul, and thus one of the earliest Christian documents of any kind. On the "North Galatian" / later view, Paul is addressing ethnic Galatians further north, and the letter belongs to the mid-50s. Scholars remain divided, and the honest summary is a range of roughly AD 48 to 55. (Scholarship) On its earliest possible dating it competes with 1 Thessalonians for the title of Paul's first letter.

What it tells us about Paul

In Galatians 1–2 Paul narrates, in the first person and under something like oath, the crucial early stretch of his life:

• His former life as a persecutor. "For you have heard of my conversation in time past in the Jews' religion: how that, beyond measure, I persecuted the church of God and wasted it. And I made progress in the Jews' religion above many of my equals in my own nation, being more abundantly zealous for the traditions of my fathers" (Galatians 1:13–14). (Scripture) This is Paul's own confirmation of what Acts reports about the persecutor, and it is one of the best-attested facts of his life precisely because his letters and Acts converge on it.

• His call, described as revelation, not instruction. Paul insists his gospel came "not according to man... but by the revelation of Jesus Christ" (Galatians 1:11–12), and that it pleased God, "who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles" (Galatians 1:15–16). (Scripture) He does not use the modern language of "conversion" but of a divine commissioning.

• His movements after the call — including Cilicia, the region of Tarsus. Paul is emphatic that he did not immediately consult the Jerusalem apostles: "Neither went I to Jerusalem, to the apostles who were before me: but I went into Arabia, and again I returned to Damascus" (Galatians 1:17). Only "after three years" did he go up to Jerusalem to see Cephas (Peter) for fifteen days and James "the brother of the Lord" (Galatians 1:18–19), after which "I came into the regions of Syria and Cilicia" (Galatians 1:21). (Scripture) Cilicia is the province of Tarsus, Paul's birthplace, so this line is Paul's own indirect witness to a return toward his home region — the stretch Acts fills in when it says the believers "sent him away to Tarsus" (Acts 9:30). It is worth noting that Galatians never names Tarsus; the city is named as Paul's birthplace only in Acts. You can read more about the Apostle himself in our reference on the Apostle Paul.

• The Jerusalem meeting and the clash at Antioch. In Galatians 2:1–10 Paul describes going up to Jerusalem "after fourteen years" with Barnabas and Titus, and reaching an understanding with "James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars" (2:9), that he should go to the gentiles. He then recounts, without softening it, his public confrontation with Peter at Antioch: "But when Cephas was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed" (Galatians 2:11). (Scripture)

Reading Galatians alongside Acts

The Jerusalem meeting of Galatians 2 is the classic test case for how Paul's letters and Acts relate. Many scholars identify it with the Council of Jerusalem of Acts 15, but the identification is debated, and the two accounts differ in detail on the number and purpose of Paul's Jerusalem visits. (Scholarship) The standard practice for a careful reference is to treat Paul's first-person testimony in Galatians as first-order evidence and to read the narrative of Acts critically where it diverges. This is why Galatians matters out of all proportion to its length.

For a broader account of how scholars weigh Paul's own letters against later narrative, see the entry on the Acts of the Apostles, and for short answers to common questions the questions and answers page. To understand why the city of Paul's birth is honoured today, see why Tarsus and our guide to where Tarsus is.

Where to read it

The Douay-Rheims (Challoner) text of Galatians quoted throughout this entry is available online; the public-domain World English Bible and King James Version are equally free to read and share.

The arc that Galatians preserves — a zealous persecutor turned apostle, called by revelation and sent back through Cilicia toward the region of his birth — is part of why Tarsus remains a place of pilgrimage. St Paul Global Week, organised by Funny Tourism, marks that story in the Apostle's birthplace on 28–30 June 2027, around the 29 June Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul. You are warmly invited to explore the programme and, for church and community leaders bringing a group, the Hosted Delegation Leaders programme, or simply to contact the organiser.