will which gave him the inheritance, his freedom commenced not upon the

making of the will, nor even immediately upon the death of the testator,

but from the moment when he took certain legal steps, which were described

as "entering upon the inheritance".  This is "the ransoming accomplished

by act of taking possession".  In the last words of the passage, "to the

praise of His glory", there is an allusion to a well-known Roman custom.

The emancipated slaves who attended the funeral of their emancipator were

the praise of his glory.  Testamentary emancipation was so fashionable a

form of posthumous ostentation, the desire to be followed to the grave by

a crowd of freedmen wearing the "cap of liberty" was so strong, that very

shortly before the time when St. Paul wrote, the legislature had expressly

limited the number of slaves that an owner might manumit by will' (W.E.

In all these things there is necessarily more than one aspect to be

remembered.  The bearing of the Old Testament teaching of the Kinsman-Redeemer

and of the Hebrew law must never be forgotten, but for the moment we are

limiting ourselves to the laws in force during the period covered by the Acts.

Many passages like Romans 8 and Galatians 3 and 4 are given a much fuller

meaning when we are able to understand the allusions to customs and procedure

that were everywhere in vogue at the time they were written.

No modern writer has greater first-hand knowledge of this term than Sir

William Ramsay, and in order to acquaint ourselves with its usage in Galatia, we

will first of all quote from Sir William's A Historical Commentary on St. Paul's

Epistle to the Galatians (2nd. ed. 1900, pp. 337-354):

`The idea that they who follow the principle of Faith are sons of Abraham,

whatever family they belonged to by nature, would certainly be understood

by the Galatians as referring to the legal process called Adoption,

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`Adoption was ... a kind of embryo Will: the adopted son became the owner

of the property, and the property could pass to a person that was

naturally outside of the family only through his being adopted.  The

adoption was a sort of Will-making; and this ancient form of Will was

irrevocable and public.

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`... the terms "Son" and "Heir" are interchangeable.

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`An illustration from the ordinary facts of society, as it existed in the

Galatian cities, is here stated: "I speak after the manner of men".  The

Will (diatheke) of a human being is irrevocable when once duly executed.

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`But if Paul is speaking about a Will, how can he say that, after it is

once made, it is irrevocable?

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`Such irrevocability was a characteristic feature of Greek law, according

to which an heir outside the family must be adopted into the family; and

the adoption was the Will-making ... The testator, after adopting his

heir, could not subsequently take away from him his share in the

inheritance or impose new conditions on his succession.

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`The Roman-Syrian Law-Book ... will illustrate this passage of the

Epistle.  It actually lays down the principle that a man can never put

away an adopted son, and that he cannot put away a real son without good