Save the Galatians!

Philip

Donor
The second problem can be solved with Galatian language revival, the Galatian church consider Greek Language to be too influenced by Imperial Church, start using Galatian language as liturgical language, then encourage it spread among lay member.
Why would Greek speaking Christians all of the sudden decide to speak Galatian? Maybe Aramaic.

The first problem is the one that difficult to solve. Galatian successfully converted enough people to establishing strong Galatian Kingdom in Anatolia ? other heretic sect, Paulician, managed to establish independent state for several years.
The Paulicians were on the fringe of a weakened Empire faced with the rise of Islam. The Galatians have neither of these to help them.

Maybe if the Third Century Crisis is never resolved, Galatia could be established as a buffer state between Rome and Palmyra. Even then, I don't know if this saves the language.
 
Last edited:
Are you sure there weren't OTL? By late 5th Century, there were at Greek, Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Armenian, and Gothic (among others) versions. I expect that the Ghassanids and Lakhmids would have had Arabic versions by the mid 7th Century.

If they had, no evidence I'm aware of has ever come to us, and I should know.
Pre-Islamic Arabic is quite poorly documented, except for later copies of allegedly pre-Islamic poetry, mostly by Pagans, whose autenticity has been questioned. There are some inscriptions, and not much more.
Some parts of Christian scripture may well have circulated on papyri, but there is no evidence whatsoever of anything resembling an Arabic version of the Bible, or even a single a book of it, circulating significantly. Undoubtedly, other Christian texts (mostly Syriac ones, but some may have well been translated) were known in Arabia.
From what I gather, Lakhmids and Ghassanids should have used some form of Aramaic or Greek as liturgical languages.
The Qur'an itself seems to offer argument against. It insists pretty much on its being a Scripture in Arabic, that may be easily support the concept that no prior scripture in Arabic was around.
I'm not saying that it is impossible that such a version had existed in either or both states, but if it did, it left almost no trace, that is surprising. I would expect that knowledge of such a thing would be rather apparent through early Islamic sources. They do not show any hint of that, to my knowledge. For me personally, it is a pity: if such a book existed and were known to us, it would shed considerable light on our understanding of early Islamic theology.
 
Top