40 Fun Facts About Book of Galatians

Galatians 5:22 lists love, joy, peace and six more qualities as the what of the Spirit?

Fruit is singular in Paul's Greek, a single crop of nine qualities, set against the much longer list of acts of the flesh just before it.

Which proverb about consequences comes from Galatians 6:7, where Paul warns that God is not mocked?

You reap what you sow is the modern form of Paul's line, which he applies at once: sowing to the flesh brings destruction, sowing to the Spirit eternal life.

Paul's Galatians took their name from which European people who migrated east in the 270s BC?

Celts gave the region its name, and their descendants still kept Gaulish features of culture and language in Paul's day.

After calling the Galatians foolish in Galatians 3:1, Paul asks who has done what to them?

Bewitched is his charge, and he follows it with a pointed question: did they receive the Spirit by works of the law or by hearing with faith?

Galatians 4:15 says the Galatians would once have torn out what and given them to Paul?

Their eyes is how Paul measures the Galatians' early devotion, just before asking whether telling them the truth has now made him their enemy.

In Galatians 5:4, Paul says those trying to be justified by the law have fallen away from what?

Grace is what they have fallen from, the same wording as the everyday idiom for a loss of status, which first alluded to losing God's favour.

In which city does Galatians 2 say Paul opposed Cephas to his face for leaving Gentile tables?

Antioch was the scene: Cephas ate with Gentiles there until certain visitors arrived, then drew back for fear of the circumcision group.

In Galatians 6:11, what does Paul point out about the closing lines he writes with his own hand?

Their large letters mark the point where Paul takes the pen from his scribe, a normal feature when ancient senders added a few words themselves.

In Galatians 4:6 the Spirit in believers' hearts cries which Aramaic word Jesus used in Gethsemane?

Abba means father, and it appears only three times in the Greek New Testament, each time followed at once by its translation.

In Galatians 5:12, what does Paul wish the agitators pressing circumcision would go on to do?

Emasculate themselves is the barbed wish, and in the very next verse Paul turns to telling readers to serve one another in love.

Galatians 1:8 curses anyone preaching a contrary gospel, even Paul himself or which messenger?

An angel from heaven would not be exempt, and Paul thinks the point worth making twice, repeating the curse in the very next verse.

Galatians 1:17 says that after his calling Paul went into Arabia and later returned to which city?

Damascus is where he returned, and he stresses that three years passed before he went up to Jerusalem to meet the earlier apostles.

Galatians 1:19 says the only apostle Paul saw besides Cephas was which man, the Lord's brother?

James is the one he names, during a fifteen-day stay with Cephas that Paul swears before God he is describing truthfully.

Galatians 2:3 says which Greek companion of Paul was not compelled to be circumcised in Jerusalem?

Titus was taken along when Paul went up again after fourteen years, and Paul says he did not yield to the false brothers for a moment.

Galatians 2:13 says even which companion of Paul was led astray when Cephas shunned Gentile meals?

Barnabas had gone up to Jerusalem beside Paul, which makes his slip sting: the other Jewish believers had already joined in the hypocrisy.

Galatians 2:9 says three Jerusalem leaders who shook hands with Paul were reputed to be what?

Pillars is the reputation Paul reports, and he says the three agreed that he should go to the Gentiles while they went to the circumcised.

In Galatians 2:10, the Jerusalem leaders asked only that Paul and his mission remember which group?

The poor were their single request, and Paul adds that this was the very thing he was already eager to do.

Galatia, whose churches received Galatians, lay in the central highlands of which modern country?

Turkey covers the old region, which roughly matches the provinces of Ankara and Eskişehir and had ancient Ancyra as its capital.

Which reformer's belief in justification by faith was shaped in great part by his reading of Galatians?

Martin Luther put the distinction between law and gospel at the heart of his Lectures on Galatians, a theme that shaped Protestant readings of Paul for centuries.

Which manuscript from about AD 200 is the earliest reasonably complete surviving copy of Galatians?

Papyrus 46 was copied roughly 150 years after Paul wrote, and its leaves are now split between the Chester Beatty Papyri and the University of Michigan.

Galatians 3:28 names three pairs made one in Christ: Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, and which third?

Male nor female completes the trio, in a verse still argued over: some read it as being about standing before God, others as about how people treat each other now.

Galatians 3:24 pictures the law as which household figure, in charge only until faith came?

Guardian is Paul's image for the law's temporary job, and he adds that before faith came people were held in custody, locked up until it was revealed.

Galatians 3:13 quotes Deuteronomy's line that a curse rests on everyone who meets which fate?

Hung on a tree is the phrase Paul borrows to argue that Christ redeemed people from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for them.

Galatians 3:16 argues that the promises to Abraham name a single what, meaning Christ, not many?

Seed is singular in the promise, Paul argues, so it points to one person, and he adds that the law arrived 430 years later without cancelling it.

Galatians 3:11 quotes the line that the righteous will live by faith from which minor prophet?

Habakkuk supplies the line, which the Bible's later books quote twice more, at Romans 1:17 and Hebrews 10:38.

Galatians 4:7 says a believer is no longer a slave but a son, and so is also what?

An heir is the conclusion of Paul's picture of a child who, until the date set by the father, lives no differently from a slave.

Galatians 4:13 says what personal trouble first led Paul to preach the gospel to the Galatians?

An illness brought him, and though it was a trial to them, Paul recalls that the Galatians welcomed him as if he were Christ Jesus himself.

In Galatians 4:19, Paul compares his anguish over the Galatians to the pains of which ordeal?

Childbirth is the startling image, with Paul cast as a woman in labour until Christ is formed in his readers, whom he calls his children.

In Galatians 4, which slave woman who bore Abraham a son stands for a covenant of slavery?

Hagar is one half of Paul's allegory of two covenants, and he sets her against the free woman, whom the chapter never mentions by name.

Galatians 4:28 calls believers children of promise like which Genesis figure, born to a free woman?

Isaac was born through the promise rather than in the ordinary way, and Paul says the other son persecuted him, just as was happening in Galatia.

Galatians 6:2 says believers fulfil the law of Christ by carrying one another's what?

Burdens are to be shared, yet three verses later Paul adds the other side: each one should carry his own load.

Galatians 6 says Paul's rivals want to boast in the Galatians' flesh; in what alone does Paul boast?

The cross of Christ is his one boast, and he charges that the rivals press circumcision only to avoid being persecuted for it.

The unnamed free woman of Galatians 4 is which Genesis matriarch, who laughed at news of a son?

Sarah goes unnamed in Galatians, yet Paul quotes her own words from Genesis: the demand that the slave woman and her son be sent away.

In Galatians 5:9, Paul likens the persuasion misleading the Galatians to a little of which ingredient?

Leaven is the image: a little works through the whole batch of dough, a sentence Paul repeats word for word in 1 Corinthians 5:6.

Galatians 6:15 says circumcision and uncircumcision mean nothing; what counts is a new what?

Creation is what counts, echoing Galatians 5:6, where Paul says the same of circumcision and names faith expressed through love as all that matters.

Which religious term is Paul's Greek word in Galatians 6:17 for the marks of Jesus on his body?

Stigmata meant marks on the skin, such as brands, and the word later named wounds like those of the crucifixion; Francis of Assisi is widely considered the first recorded case.

Galatians 5:15 warns readers they will be consumed if they keep on doing what to one another?

Biting and devouring is the wild-animal picture Paul sets right after quoting the command to love your neighbor as yourself.

Galatians goes straight from greeting to rebuke, skipping which section Paul usually writes next?

A thanksgiving for the readers normally follows Paul's greeting, but here he says at once that he is amazed how quickly they are deserting the one who called them.

Galatians 4:27 quotes which prophet's call for a barren woman to rejoice over her many children?

Isaiah 54 is the source, and Paul applies its promise to the Jerusalem above, which he calls free and the mother of believers.

Galatians 1:21 says Paul next went to the regions of Syria and which other, where Tarsus lay?

Cilicia kept him out of sight: Paul says the churches of Judea did not know him personally and only heard that their old persecutor now preached the faith.