Note 137 — Chapter XI

The provinces of Asia Minor all retained their ancient languages at the time of St. Paul. Latin and Greek were the language of society, but the mass of the people all spoke the original language of the country. In the time of St. Jerome, four centuries after St. Paul, Celtic was still spoken in Galatia as well as in Gaul. St. Paul must then have heard a language identical with that of Wales and the western districts of Ireland and Scotland, as is shown by Bishop Lightfoot in his Galatians, pp. 240-44, by his analysis of the remains of the Galatian language which ancient writers have handed down to us. Texier, a modern French traveller, thought that he could even trace Celtic features in the present inhabitants of the district. Cf. Lightfoot's Galatians, p. 12. It is very probable that a careful study of the existing language of Galatia, when treated according to the methods of modern scientific philology, would disclose Celtic elements. When Celtic elements survived in England and France, it is not likely they died out in Galatia. We know at any rate that the other original languages of Asia Minor have not perished without leaving some traces behind. There is a learned Review published at Smyrna from time to time. It is called the Museum of the Evangelical School of Smyrna. In the volume published for 1880-84 there is an article of more than 200 pages treating of the ancient Cappadocian and Lycaonian dialects, and the traces of them which remain. On p. 71 there is a notice of the accuracy with which Acts xiv. 11 mentions the speech or dialect of the men of Lystra, which Mr. Hogarth, in the article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies, April 1890, p. 157, to which we have already referred, identifies with the Phrygian dialect spoken till the sixth century of our era. Mr. Hogarth copied several inscriptions in this ancient Lycaonian or Phrygian speech. See also an English article by Professor W. M. Ramsay in Kühn's Journal of Comparative Philology for 1887, where he treats of this Lycaonian speech, and avows his belief (p. 382) that Græco-Roman civilisation and language did not begin to affect the rural parts of Northern and Eastern Phrygia till A.D. 100, long after St. Paul's day. The mass of the people spoke nothing but the original Phrygian. The reader who wishes to investigate what I consider the bearing of this subject on the gift of tongues should consult another article in English by Professor Ramsay, styled Laodicea Combusta, in the Transactions of the German Archæological Institute, vol. xiii., p. 248 (Athens, 1888).