When was Galatians written?
Paul's letter to the churches of Galatia carries no date, no place of writing, and none of the personal greetings that help fix his other letters in time. Commentators reach different conclusions, and the honest answer is a range rather than a year.
Why the date is disputed
Of all Paul's letters, this one leaves the fewest handles for a chronologist, and the guesses run across the whole span of his ministry.
William KellyThe date of Galatians is the least ascertainable of all Paul's letters — some make it first, some last, and many view it as intermediate.
The missing element is the personal material Paul usually includes, and that absence pushes one writer to set a limit in one direction only:
Church HistoryFrom the absence of names and greetings, such as we have in the letter to the Romans, it is difficult to work out its date. But if it was not written at this particular time, we must place it earlier, not later. The apostle was surprised at their early departure from the truth.
The clue of Paul's two visits
Acts records Paul passing through Galatia twice, and the letter itself looks back on a warm first reception. Working from those markers, one reconstruction lands on the mid-50s:
Morrish Bible DictionaryThe date when this letter was written has been disputed more than that of any of the others, some placing it early, and others later. The events seem to fit best like this: on Paul's second missionary journey he went throughout Phrygia and the region of Galatia (Acts 16:6). We learn from Galatians 4:13-15 that he had preached the gospel to them, and that they had received him as an angel and would have torn out their own eyes for him. This visit would have been about A.D. 51. Then about 54 Paul visited them again... They may, sadly, have just as readily received the Judaising teachers, and when this reached Paul's ears, he wrote this letter to them.
Which Galatia? The question that moves the date
"Galatia" could mean the old homeland of the Galatian people in the north, or the wider Roman province that stretched further south. Settle that, and the date shifts with it.
Arend RemmersOne possibility is that the letter to the Galatians is addressed to assemblies in original Galatia, that is, in the north of the Roman province. Paul would then probably have been there on his second journey (about 51–54 AD) where people had come to believe in the Lord Jesus (Acts 16:6). A second visit would then have taken place on his third journey (Acts 18:23). The time of writing could then have been at the earliest during his third journey.
If instead the readers were in the southern towns Paul reached on his first journey, the letter can be pushed back several years:
Arend RemmersThe letter would then have been written much earlier — either around 51 AD from Antioch, before the start of his second journey, or during that journey, from Corinth, where Paul stayed for 18 months (around 52 AD).
Where was it sent from?
Some old manuscript notes attach the letter to Rome. Commentators differ on whether that tradition is worth anything: Kelly calls the Roman subscription in the common Bible legendary and sees no good reason to delay the letter that long, while another writer allows the possibility while admitting the whole question is open.
The Bible TreasuryIf not the earliest of all, it would come after 2 Thessalonians; but where everything is conjecture, tradition may have preserved the truth that it came from Rome, though there is no mention of any imprisonment.
A window, and a reason for the silence
One attempt to place it measures from Paul's conversion rather than from a calendar year, and treats the vagueness as deliberate on God's part:
J. N. DarbyThe letter to the GALATIANS was written between fourteen and twenty years after the call of the apostle, and after he had laboured for some time in Asia Minor, perhaps when he was staying at Ephesus, although it was not long after the founding of the assemblies of Galatia... it was not God's purpose to give us chronological dates: divine wisdom was not pleased to give this, but the moral order is quite clear.
What is fixed is the situation the letter answers — young churches turning back to law so quickly that Paul was astonished:
F. B. HoleThe assemblies of Galatia had not been converted for very long when Paul had to write to them in the severe tone that marks his letter.
Summary
- Undated. No greetings, no place-name, no year — Galatians is the least datable of Paul's letters, placed by different writers first, last, or somewhere between.
- Anchored. The fixed points are Paul's two passes through Galatia (Acts 16:6; 18:23) and his own memory of their first welcome in Galatians 4:13-15.
- Divided. Northern Galatia points to the third journey, possibly from Ephesus; the southern province view allows about 51 AD from Antioch or 52 AD from Corinth.
- Bounded. Because Paul is astonished at how soon they turned, the letter is pushed earlier rather than later; the Roman subscription is treated by some as legend, by others as possible tradition.
- Intentional. Scripture withholds the calendar and gives the moral order instead — the letter's urgency, not its date, is what God preserved for us.