Acts 16:6

διελθόντες δὲ τὴν Φ. καὶ τὴν Γ. χώραν, see critical notes, and also additional note at the end of chap. 18. If we follow R.V. text and omit the second τὴν, and regard both Φ. and Γ. as adjectives with Ramsay and Lightfoot (so Weiss and Wendt, cf. adjective Πισιδίαν, Acts 13:14; but see also Acts 18:23), under the vinculum of the one article we have one district, “the Phrygo-Galatic country,” i.e., ethnically Phrygian, politically Galatian; see also Turner, “Chronology of the N.T.,” Hastings' B.D., i., 422, and “The Churches of Galatia,” Dr. Gifford, Expositor, July, 1894. But Zahn, Einleitung, i., 134, objects that if Ramsay sees in Acts 16:6 a recapitulation of the journey, and action in Acts 16:4-5, and includes under the term Phrygo-Galatia the places visited in the first missionary journey, we must include under the term not only Iconium and Antioch, but also Derbe and Lystra. But the two latter, according to Acts 14:6, are not Phrygian at all, but Lycaonian. Ramsay, however, sufficiently answers this objection by the distinction which he draws between the phrase before us in Acts 16:6 and the phrase used in Acts 18:23 : τὴν Γαλατικὴν χώραν καὶ Φρυγίαν. In the verse before us reference is made to the country traversed by Paul after he left Lystra, and so we have quite correctly the territory about Iconium and Antioch described as Phrygo-Galatic; but in Acts 18:23 Lystra and Derbe are also included, and therefore we might expect “Lycaono-Galatic and Phrygo-Galatic,” but to avoid this complicated phraseology the writer uses the simple phrase: “the Galatic country,” while Phrygia denotes either Phrygia Galatica or Phrygia Magna, or both, and see Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, pp. 77 and 91 93, and Expositor, August, 1898. Dr. Gifford, in his valuable contribution to the controversy between Prof. Ramsay and Dr. Chase, Expositor, July 1894, while rejecting the North-Galatian theory, would not limit the phrase “the Phrygian and Galatian region” to the country about Iconium and Antioch with Ramsay, but advocates an extension of its meaning to the borderlands of Phrygia and Galatia northward of Antioch. κωλυθέντες : a favourite word in St. Luke, both in Gospel and Acts, six times in each, cf. Acts 8:36; Acts 10:47. How the hindrance was effected we are not told, whether by inward monitions, or by prophetic intimations, or by some circumstances which were regarded as providential warnings: “wherefore they were forbidden he does not say, but that they were forbidden he does say teaching us to obey and not ask questions,” Chrys., Hom., xxxiv. On the construction of κωλυθ. with διῆλθον (see critical notes) cf. Ramsay, Church in the Roman Empire, p. 89; St. Paul, p. 211; Expositor (Epilogue), April, 1894, and Gifford, u. s., pp. 11 and 19. Both writers point out that the South Galatian theory need not depend upon this construction, whether we render it according to A.V. or R.V., see further Askwith, Epistle to the Galatians, p. 46, 1899.