This letter, like the letters to the Corinthians, was evoked by a particular crisis in the relations between Paul and one of the churches he had founded. Something had been going wrong for some time before the letter was written, and this was not the first time that Paul had intervened (4.13). There was pressure from outside the church and there were factions within it, and the atmosphere was such that charges of various kinds had been levelled at Paul. So much, at least, is evident from the letter; but since we have no other record of the various exchanges which took place, and since the narrative in Acts makes no mention of this crisis at all, a great deal remains mysterious and it is impossible to know exactly what was happening and what arguments and accusations Paul had to confront.

We cannot even be sure who the galatians were. Since the third century bce, when an invasion of Gauls from central Europe (in Greek: Galatai) had finally secured an area for settlement in the centre of Asia Minor, Galatia had been the name currently used for the territory of these invaders. But in 25 bce the Roman province of Galatia was created out of lands that included not only the original Galatian heartland but also (for political and administrative reasons) parts of Pisidia and Lycaonia to the south.