E. The Council of Jerusalem (15:1–35)
The Council of Jerusalem1 is an event to which Luke attaches the highest importance; it is as epoch-making, in his eyes, as the conversion of Paul or the preaching of the gospel to Cornelius and his household. As he reports it, the Council was a meeting of the apostles and elders of the Jerusalem church convened to consider, primarily, the terms on which Gentile believers might be admitted to church membership (with special attention to the question whether they should be circumcised or not); in the second place, the means by which social intercourse, and especially table fellowship, might be promoted between Jewish and Gentile believers. Paul and Barnabas, with some representatives of the church of Antioch on the Orontes, were present at the meeting, where they were given an opportunity to relate their recent experiences in Cyprus and Asia Minor, but they took no part in making the decision; that was the responsibility of the Jerusalem leaders.
Luke’s account is straightforward: difficulties arise when the attempt is made to relate it to Paul’s account in Gal. 2:1–10 of a conference which he and Barnabas had in Jerusalem with the three “pillars” or leaders of the mother-church: James, Peter, and John. The great majority hold that Luke and Paul report the same occasion; indeed, one scholar declares that the identity of Paul and Barnabas’s Jerusalem visit of Gal. 2:1–10 with that of Acts 15:2–30 is “one of the assured results of Acts criticism.”2 But in biblical criticism no result is so “assured” that someone will not be found to question it, and there are sound reasons to question the identity of these two visits.3 The discussion reported by Paul in Gal. 2:1–10 centered around the demarcation of spheres of missionary activity (it was agreed that Paul and Barnabas should continue their work of Gentile evangelization, while the Jerusalem leaders should concentrate on the witness among Jews); circumcision receives only marginal mention (in terms which do not necessarily mean that it was discussed at the conference at all),4 and nothing is said about facilitating table fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians. Moreover, the conference of Gal. 2:1–10 is expressly said to have been a private one;5 the meeting of Acts 15 was held publicly, in the presence of the Jerusalem church.6 It could be argued that the private interview of Gal. 2:1–10 took place during the visit which also witnessed the public meeting;7 if so, it is difficult to understand why Paul told the Galatian Christians nothing of the decisions reached by the public meeting, since they were relevant to the Galatian controversy. Another suggestion is that in Acts 15 Luke combines into one narrative two originally separate meetings: one (recorded also in Gal. 2:1–10) at which Paul and Barnabas were present, and the other (which produced the decision of Acts 15:28–29) at which Paul and Barnabas were not present.8 It is simpler to conclude that the occasion reported by Paul and that described by Luke were not the same.
On the other hand, part of Paul’s autobiographical narrative in Galatians probably provides the background to Acts 15. In Gal. 2:11–14 Paul tells how (presumably sometime after the conference of Gal. 2:1–10)9 Peter visited Antioch and (in accordance with his convictions and general practice) shared meals freely with Gentile Christians there. But some people10 came from Jerusalem—“from James,” says Paul—and persuaded Peter to withdraw from table fellowship with Gentiles. What they said to Peter must be conjectured: probably they told him that news of his free and easy fraternizing with Gentiles was coming back to Jerusalem and causing embarrassment, and possibly danger, to the church leaders there.11 Peter was sufficiently impressed to withdraw (temporarily, at least) from common meals with Gentile Christians, and his example was followed by other Jewish Christians in Antioch, including “even Barnabas.” Peter and Barnabas might have pleaded that their action was undertaken out of consideration for weaker brothers, but Paul saw their action as a threat to gospel liberty for Gentiles, and he remonstrated publicly with Peter. Peter’s action, he said, amounted to forcing Gentiles to adopt the Jewish way of life.
Peter no doubt was distressed by the dismay which his action at Antioch had caused. Since that action had been prompted by a message from James, the problem must be sorted out with James. Accordingly a meeting of the Jerusalem leaders was held under the chairmanship of James. This meeting refused the demand voiced by some members of the Jerusalem church that Gentile converts should submit to circumcision and other requirements of the Mosaic law, and then turned to consider terms on which table fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians might become acceptable. When what seemed to be a satisfactory decision was reached, Peter, the bridge-builder among the apostles,12 must have been well pleased. The decision, which had to do largely with the avoidance of certain kinds of food by Gentile Christians, promised to prevent the recurrence of the awkwardness which had recently arisen at Antioch,13 and Peter, in the course of his more extended missionary journeys, probably recommended it to other churches.14
As for Paul, he took a different line. Where true religion and basic Christian ethics were involved, he was as peremptory as anyone could well be in directing his converts to avoid idolatry and fornication.15 But in matters (like food) which were religiously and ethically neutral, he refused to lay down the law. No food, he maintained, was “common or unclean” per se—not even if it had been forbidden by the law of Moses, not even if it came from an animal that had been sacrificed to a pagan divinity. It was human beings that mattered, not food; if a Christian was considering whether or not to eat this or that kind of food, the decision should depend on the effect which the taking or leaving it would have on the conscience of a fellow-Christian.16 When Paul was asked for a ruling on eating the flesh of animals which had been “sacrificed to idols” (cf. 1 Cor. 8:1–11:1), the last thing that would have occurred to him would be to quote a decision of the Jerusalem church as binding on Gentile Christians. When faced with such questions he argues from the order of creation and the ethical implications of a law-free gospel.
1. Judaizers Visit Antioch (15:1–2)
1Some people17 came down from Judaea and began instructing the brothers: “Unless you are circumcised18 according to the custom of Moses,” they said, “you cannot be saved.”
2Division resulted, and Paul and Barnabas held considerable debate with them.19 Then Paul and Barnabas were appointed20 to go up to the apostles and elders in Jerusalem about this question.
1 The people who came down from Judaea may have been those who, in Paul’s narrative, came to Antioch “from James” (Gal. 2:12). Whether they were so or not, they exceeded the terms of their commission, according to the apostolic letter in verse 24. Another possibility is that they were the “false brothers secretly brought in” of Gal. 2:4, if (as seems likely) Antioch was the place where these latter tried to “spy out” the freedom which Paul and the Gentile Christians enjoyed in their fellowship.21
The rapid progress of Gentile evangelization in Antioch and farther afield presented the more conservative Jewish believers with a serious problem. The apostles had acquiesced in Peter’s action in the house of Cornelius because it was attended by such evident marks of divine approval; but now a new situation confronted them. Before long there would be more Gentile Christians than Jewish Christians in the world. Many Jewish Christians no doubt feared that the influx of so many converts from paganism would bring about a weakening of the church’s moral standards, and the evidence of Paul’s letters shows that their misgivings were not unfounded. How was this new situation to be controlled?
Some members of the Jerusalem church had a simple answer. Since so many Jews had failed to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, they would have conceded the necessity of admitting Gentiles into the messianic community in order to make up the full complement. But those Gentiles should be admitted on terms similar to those required of proselytes to Judaism: they must be circumcised and assume the obligation to observe the Mosaic law.
But it seems clear that these conditions had not been insisted on. Cornelius and his household do not appear to have had the duty of circumcision pressed on them; and certainly the Gentile converts in the recently evangelized cities of South Galatia, like those in Antioch itself, had been welcomed into church fellowship without being circumcised. There were indeed some Jews in those days who thought that the outward rite of circumcision might be omitted, if only its spiritual significance was realized; but these formed a negligible minority.22 The vast majority, including such a hellenized Jew as Philo of Alexandria,23 insisted on circumcision as indispensable for all males in the commonwealth of Israel, whether they entered it by birth or by proselytization. This was probably the attitude of the rank and file in the Jerusalem church—“zealots for the law,” as they are called on a later occasion (21:20). For many of them the church was the righteous remnant of Judaism, embodying the ancestral hope which all Israel ought to have welcomed, preparing itself for the impending day of the Lord: to countenance any relaxation in the terms of the covenant with Abraham, sealed in the flesh by circumcision, would be to forfeit all claim to remnant righteousness, all title to salvation on the last day. If Paul and Barnabas neglected to bring the requirements of the law to the attention of Gentile members of the church of Antioch and her daughter-churches, there were those in the Jerusalem church who were ready to repair this omission, and they went to Antioch, the citadel of Gentile Christianity, to repair it there.
2 It was not enough to indulge in dissension and questioning at Antioch: the whole issue had to be debated and decided at the highest level. Otherwise, there was grave danger of a complete cleavage between the churches of Jerusalem and Judaea on the one hand and the church of Antioch and her daughter-churches on the other. The church of Antioch therefore sent Paul, Barnabas, and a number of other responsible members to discuss the question with the leaders of the church of Jerusalem.24
2. Paul and Barnabas Go Up to Jerusalem (15:3–5)
3Being sent off by the church, then, they went through Phoenicia and Samaria, relating the conversion of the Gentiles, and brought great joy to all the brothers.
4On their arrival in Jerusalem, they were welcomed by the church, and by the apostles and elders, and reported all that God had done with them.25
5But some members of the party of the Pharisees, who were believers, stood up and said,26 “They27 must be circumcised, and charged to keep Moses’ law.”
3 Paul, Barnabas, and their companions had to pass through Phoenicia and Samaria on their way south to Jerusalem.28 They took the opportunity to visit the Christian groups in these regions and tell them of the su ccess of the Gentile mission. As the churches of Samaria and Phoenicia were themselves the fruit of the Hellenistic mission which followed the death of Stephen (8:5–25; 11:19), they would naturally rejoice at the news, without being troubled by the misgivings which were felt by so many of the believers in Jerusalem.
4 Even in Jerusalem the leaders and other members of the church listened with great interest to Paul and Barnabas’s account of “all that God had done with them,” but this interest by no means involved wholehearted satisfaction.
5 Dissatisfaction was voiced in particular by those members of the Jerusalem church who were associated with the Pharisaic party. Pharisees, as believers in the doctrine of the resurrection, could become Christians without relinquishing their distinctive beliefs: to what they already believed they could add the belief that Jesus had been raised from the dead and was thus divinely proclaimed to be Lord and Messiah. But if their Christianity did not amount to more than this, they remained legalists at heart—unlike their illustrious fellow-Pharisee Paul, whose whole outlook was totally reoriented by his Damascus-road experience: not only was Jesus revealed to him as the risen Lord but he was called to preach a law-free gospel in his name. The believing Pharisees in the Jerusalem church were naturally the leaders in insisting that Gentile converts should be instructed to submit to circumcision and the general obligation to keep the Mosaic law which circumcision carried with it.29
The repetitions in the textual tradition of verses 1–5 suggest that these verses are Luke’s composition, forming an editorial transition from the record of the Anatolian mission to that of the apostolic council.
6So the apostles and elders came together to see about this matter.30
6 How many of the apostles were still resident in Jerusalem is uncertain; probably those who were accessible were brought together for this consultation. Peter probably came back from his ministry among Jews of the dispersion in order to be present.31 While other members of the church were present at the meeting,32 the deliberation and decision rested with the responsible leaders. They evidently had no doubt of their competence to rule on matters affecting the Gentile mission as well as matters which were their personal responsibility.
7After long debate, Peter stood up33 and addressed them.34 “Brothers,” he said, “you know that a long time ago35 God chose us36 in order that from my lips the Gentiles should hear the message of the gospel and come to faith.
8God, who knows the heart, bore witness in their favor by giving37 them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us:
9he made no difference between us and them, but purified37 their hearts by faith.
10Now then, why do you try God’s patience (with the proposal) to place on those disciples’ necks a yoke which neither we nor our forefathers have been able to bear?
11No: it is by faith in the Lord Jesus that we are saved,38 just as they are.”39
7–9 Peter, as leader of the apostles, spoke out unambiguously in the interests of gospel liberty. He had maintained these interests with purpose of heart ever since his visit to Cornelius in Caesarea: he had no thought of putting them at risk when he made his tactical withdrawal from table fellowship with Gentiles at Antioch. “The figure of a Judaizing St. Peter is a figment of the Tübingen critics with no basis in history.”40
He now reminds the company that the fundamental principle which they were discussing had been settled when, several years before, he had been led by God to the house of Cornelius and Gentiles had heard the gospel from his lips. On that occasion God gave an evident token of his acceptance of Gentiles, for the Holy Spirit came on them as they listened to Peter, just as he had come on Peter and his fellow-apostles at the first Christian Pentecost. Cornelius and his household had not even made an oral confession of faith when the Holy Spirit took possession of them, but God, who reads the human heart, saw the faith within them. And if God accepted those Gentiles and cleansed them in heart and conscience by the impartation of his Spirit as soon as they believed the gospel,41 why should further conditions now be imposed on them—conditions which God himself plainly did not require?
10–11 Besides, the yoke which some were now proposing to place on the necks of Gentile Christians was one which they themselves and their forefathers had found too heavy. The term “yoke” is particularly appropriate in this context: a proselyte, by undertaking to keep the law of Moses, was said to “take up the yoke of the kingdom of heaven.”42
Not all Jews thought of the law as an intolerable burden. Some thought that God had honored Israel by giving them so many commandments.43 The author of Ps. 119 found them his delight; Philo declared that they were “not too numerous or too heavy for the strength of those who are able to make use of them.”44 But Peter spoke as a representative of the rank and file of Galilaean Jews. He knew enough to refuse nonkosher food and not to fraternize with Gentiles (10:14, 28), but he and people like him could not be expected to know or practise all the details of legal tradition. By contrast with those “heavy burdens, hard to bear” (Matt. 23:4), he and his associates had learned to rejoice in their Master’s easy yoke (Matt. 11:29–30). They recognized that their own salvation was due to the grace of Christ; were they to acknowledge a different and more burdensome principle of salvation for Gentile believers?
Peter now disappears from the narrative of Acts;45 so far as Luke is concerned, says Martin Hengel, “the legitimation of the mission to the Gentiles is virtually Peter’s last work.”46
5. Paul and Barnabas Address the Council (15:12)
12Then47 the whole congregation fell silent, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they related all the signs and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles.
12 During the silence which followed Peter’s appeal, Barnabas and Paul (who are named naturally in this order in a Jerusalem setting) added further evidence which could only support Peter’s argument. The mind of God in this matter, decisively shown in the house of Cornelius, had been further displayed in the blessing he had bestowed on Gentile believers in Antioch and in their recent mission in Cyprus and Asia Minor. But Barnabas and Paul spoke as witnesses, not as consultants or as participants in the debate; and in Jerusalem their words could carry nothing like the weight that Peter’s did. Even Peter’s words were not decisive, however; one voice remained to be heard.
6. James’s Summing Up (15:13–21)
13When they had finished speaking, James replied (to the debate): “Brothers, listen to me.
14Symeon48 has related how God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name.
15This is in keeping with the words of the prophets, as it is written:
16‘After this I will return
and build up David’s fallen tent:
I will build up its ruins and set them upright,
17that the remainder of humanity may seek the Lord,
even all the Gentiles over whom my name has been invoked,
18says the Lord who makes these things known from of old.’49
19Therefore my ruling is that we stop troubling those of the Gentiles who turn to God,
20but send them a letter bidding them abstain from idolatrous pollutions, from fornication, from strangled animals, and from blood.50
21After all, since generations long ago Moses has had his preachers in every city;51 he is read in the synagogues every sabbath day.”
13 The eyes of all now turned to James, the brother of the Lord, a man who enjoyed widespread respect and confidence.52 If the elders of the Jerusalem church were organized as a kind of Nazarene Sanhedrin, James was their president, primus inter pares. The church’s readiness to recognize his leadership was due more to his personal character and record than to his blood relationship to the Lord. (There were other brothers, but they were shadowy figures compared with James.) When he said “Listen to me,”53 they listened.
14 James began by summarizing Peter’s speech (referring to him as Symeon, the Hebrew or Aramaic form of his personal name). No mention is made of the report which Barnabas and Paul had just given. This indeed may have been politic: James wanted to carry a difficult audience with him, and it was the activity of Barnabas and Paul that had created the situation which roused such apprehension in the minds of the Jerusalem rank and file.
The English translation of the words, “God first visited the Gentiles to take from them a people for his name,” scarcely bring out the paradoxical force of the Greek. In the Old Testament the “nations” or “Gentiles” (Gk. ethnē) stand in contrast to the “people” (Gk. laos), that is to say, Israel. When Moses says to the Israelites in Deut. 14:2, “Yahweh has chosen you to be a people for his own possession, out of all the nations that are on the face of the earth,” the Greek version uses laos for “people” over against ethnē for “nations”; the two terms are opposed the one to the other.54 But when James uses the same two terms here, he does not speak of God’s taking a people in contrast to the Gentiles, but of his taking a people consisting of Gentiles—an “outstanding paradox,” as Bengel says.55 The Scofield Reference Bible, in its note on this text, had a point in calling it “dispensationally, … the most important passage in the NT.” What James states concisely here is implied throughout the New Testament: one example is 1 Pet. 2:9, where God’s description of the returning exiles of Judah, “the people whom I formed for myself, that they might declare my praise” (Isa. 43:21), is applied to Gentile converts to Christianity. Cf. also Tit. 2:14.
15–18 God’s initiative in thus “visiting the Gentiles” was shown when he sent his Spirit on Cornelius and his household as they listened to Peter’s preaching. But he had foretold his action through the prophets. To demonstrate this James quotes Amos 9:11–12.
This oracle of Amos is quoted in the main from the LXX version. The chief deviations from LXX are the replacement of “In that day” by “After this I will return” (Jer. 12:15) at the beginning of the quotation, and the replacement of “who does this” by “who makes these things known from of old” (cf. Isa. 45:21) at the end. More striking are the deviations of LXX from MT, especially in the rewording of the clause “that they may possess the remnant of Edom.” The primary sense of MT is that God will restore the fallen fortunes of the royal house of David, so that it will rule over all the territory which had once been included in David’s empire, not only what is left of the Edomites but also “all the nations who are called by my name.” The LXX rewording involves two variant readings,56 but the result is a complete spiritualization of the passage: “that they may possess the remnant of Edom” becomes “that the remainder of humanity may seek” (the object of “seek” is not expressed in LXX, but the implied object is clearly “me”—that is, “the Lord,” as James’s quotation makes plain). The LXX spiritualization is in line with Israel’s mission to bring the knowledge of the true God to the Gentiles. It thus paved the way for James’s application of the prophecy to the church’s Gentile mission.
It has already been emphasized in Acts that, by the resurrection and exaltation of Jesus, the Son of David, God has fulfilled his dynastic promises to David (cf. Peter’s argument in 2:25–36 and Paul’s in 13:23, 32–37). This may be what is understood here as the raising up of David’s fallen tent. But the promised extension of the sovereignty of the house of David over the Gentiles is taking place here and now, says James, through the Gentile mission: over a far wider area than David ever ruled, men and women of Gentile stock are making haste to yield willing and glad allegiance to great David’s greater Son. “The remainder of humanity” comprises the Gentiles—“all the Gentiles over whom my name has been invoked” (i.e., in baptism). Similar phraseology appears in Jas. 2:7, where the readers are reminded of “that honorable name by which you are called.”
The Gentile mission, then, is the work of God: he has made it known in advance “from of old” and now he has brought it to pass.
It may be asked if James is likely to have quoted the LXX version in such a setting. Perhaps not (the choice of LXX is more probably Luke’s); but it has been pointed out that “even our Massoretic Hebrew would have served the present purpose admirably, since it predicted that ‘the tabernacle of David’, i.e. the church of the Messiah, would gain possession of all the nations which are called by the name [of the God of Israel].”57
James’s speech has been recognized as taking the form known to the rabbis as a yəlamməḏēnû response, in which an appeal is made to scripture as confirming what has been said or done already and what is about to be decided.58
19 The quotation from Amos did not answer the question about circumcision: it might have been argued that the Gentiles over whom the name of the Lord was invoked should respond to that invocation by being circumcised. But James does not accept that argument. In fact, he does not mention circumcision, but when he rules that Jewish believers should “stop troubling”59 Gentile converts he repeats in different terms Peter’s protest against placing an intolerable yoke on those converts’ necks. The demand for their circumcision carried with it the obligation to assume such a yoke: James’s “stop troubling” means in effect “stop demanding circumcision.”60
20 There remained, however, a practical problem. In most cities Gentile believers had to live alongside Jewish believers, who had been brought up to observe the levitical food restrictions and to avoid contact with Gentiles as far as possible. If there was to be free association between these two groups, certain guidelines must be laid down, especially with regard to table fellowship. Members of the church of Jerusalem might have little experience of this social problem at home, but it disturbed them to hear of Jewish Christians elsewhere who associated with Gentile Christians in a totally relaxed manner, as though the time-honored food restrictions were no longer valid. Peter’s initial breach with convention in entering the house of Cornelius had been overlooked, since he acted under divine compulsion; but his sitting at table with Gentile Christians in Antioch caused grave scandal in Jerusalem. Readers of the New Testament today are familiar with Paul’s totally emancipated attitude in such matters, and may be tempted to suppose that it was generally shared; in fact, Paul was probably quite exceptional in this regard (as in several others) among Jewish believers.
James therefore gave it as his considered judgment that Gentile Christians should be directed to avoid food which had idolatrous associations and the flesh of animals from which the blood had not been completely drained, and that they should conform to the Jewish code of relations between the sexes instead of remaining content with the pagan standards to which they had been accustomed.
It is natural that, when the stumbling block of circumcision had been removed, an effort should have been made to provide a practical modus vivendi for two groups of people drawn from such different ways of life. The modus vivendi was probably similar to the terms on which Jews of the dispersion found it possible to have a measure of fellowship with God-fearing Gentiles. The prohibition against eating flesh with the blood still in it (including the flesh of strangled animals) was based on the “Noachian decree” of Gen. 9:4.61 At a later time, when the issue dealt with by the apostolic council was no longer a live one, the provisions moved by James and adopted by the other leaders were modified so as to become purely ethical injunctions; thus the Western text makes James propose that Gentile converts “abstain from idolatry, from fornication and from bloodshed,62 and from doing to others what they would not like done to themselves.”63
21 This policy, James urged, would not work to the detriment of Israel’s mission in the Gentile world; there was still ample opportunity for Gentiles to learn the law of Moses, for it was read publicly every sabbath in synagogues throughout the civilized world. But with regard to Gentile converts to Christianity, “Moses, so to speak, would suffer no loss, in failing to obtain the allegiance of those who had never been his.”64 This observation was perhaps intended to calm the apprehensions of the believing Pharisees, in whose eyes it was specially important that the whole Torah should be taught among the Gentiles; this, said James, was being attended to already by the synagogues.
7. The Apostolic Letter to Gentile Christians (15:22–29)
22Then the apostles and elders, with the whole church, resolved to select men from their ranks and send them to Antioch in the company of Paul and Barnabas—Judas (who was called Barsabbas) and Silas, leading men among the brothers.
23By them they wrote a letter as follows: “The apostles and elders, your brothers,65 to the brothers of Gentile birth at Antioch and in Syria and Cilicia: greetings.
24We have heard that some of our people have confused you with their arguments, upsetting66 your minds,67 although we gave them no such directions;
25we have resolved therefore, having reached one mind in the matter, to select men and send them to you in the company of our dear friends Barnabas and Paul,
26who have endangered their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.68
27The men whom we are sending are Judas and Silas, and they will give you the same message by word of mouth.
28The Holy Spirit and we ourselves have resolved to impose no further burden on you than this: it is necessary69
29to abstain from food that has been sacrificed to idols, from blood, from strangled meat, and from fornication.70 If you guard yourselves from these things, you will do well.71 Farewell.”
22 James’s proposal commended itself to his colleagues, and appears to have won at least the acquiescence of the Jerusalem church as a whole. The leaders of the church then selected two of their number to go to Antioch and carry the findings of the council to the church of that city. Of these two messengers, Judas—who had the same surname as the Joseph mentioned in 1:23—does not appear outside this context. The other, Silas, continues to figure in the narrative of Acts as a companion of Paul in the evangelization of Philippi, Thessalonica, and Corinth. He is plainly identical with the Silvanus of Paul’s letters (2 Cor. 1:19; 1 Thess. 1:1; 2 Thess. 1:1); his relation to the Silvanus of 1 Pet. 5:12 is uncertain. It is preposterous exegesis to identify Judas and Silas with the troublesome emissaries from James mentioned by Paul in Gal. 2:12.72
23 Judas and Silas were not only to communicate the council’s findings to the church of Antioch by word of mouth, but also to carry a letter from the apostles and elders at Jerusalem. The senders call themselves “the apostles and elders, your brothers” (so NIV; similarly RSV). The rendering “the apostles and elder brothers” might commend itself as more natural, but since “elder brothers” (in a religious sense) is a locution unparalleled in the New Testament, it may be better to take “brothers” here as being in apposition to “apostles and elders.”73 The letter is addressed to the Gentile Christians of Antioch and of the united province of Syria-Cilicia, of which Antioch was the capital. The recently founded churches in South Galatia may have been envisaged as coming within the scope of the letter, but they are not mentioned.
24–27 Since trouble had been caused by the unauthorized activity of previous Jerusalem visitors to Antioch (v. 1), it was necessary to emphasize that the present delegates, whose business it was to undo the damage caused by those earlier visitors, were fully accredited by the Jerusalem church. A conciliatory note was added by the pointedly friendly references to Barnabas and Paul and to the hazards they had undergone in their work of evangelization.
28 The words “it has been resolved by the Holy Spirit and ourselves,” with which the terms of the council’s decision are introduced, stress the church’s role as the vehicle of the Spirit. “There is no parallel,” says Wilfred Knox, “for such a phrase to pronounce a corporate decision by a deliberate body.”74 So conscious were the church leaders of being possessed and controlled by the Spirit that he was given prior mention as chief author of their decision.
Significance has been attached to the fact that none of the Greek verbs of commanding is used when the council’s directives are conveyed.75 But the form of words that is used, “it has been resolved,” is authoritative enough: it was a form widely used in the wording of imperial and other government decrees. Moreover, the four abstentions prescribed are said to be “necessary,” not optional. Apart from them, however, no further burden was to be imposed on the Gentiles: that would include circumcision and other legal obligations, part of the “yoke” which Peter said they should not be required to bear.
29 The four abstentions are those indicated by James in his summing up. His more general “idolatrous pollutions” is replaced by the more specific “food that has been sacrificed to idols.” Food of various kinds might be offered to idols, but the flesh of animal sacrifices is in view here: “an animal would constitute the only offering of sufficient size that a saleable portion would be left over following the sacrifice.”76 Such flesh (which would be of prime quality) was freely exposed for sale on the butchers’ stalls of pagan cities, since the temples received more than they could use; the question of eating it (whether its origin was known or unknown) was a matter of conscience for some Gentile Christians, as Paul’s Corinthian correspondence shows.77 The Jerusalem decree forbids it outright. It also forbids eating the meat of strangled animals, or the eating of blood in any form.
The prohibition of fornication, understood generally, is an ethical prohibition in all forms of the text (Western or otherwise), but the word may be used here in a more specialized sense, of marriage within degrees of blood relationship or affinity forbidden by the legislation of Lev. 18:6–18. It is used in this sense in 1 Cor. 5:1 and also possibly in the “excepting clauses” of Matt. 5:32 and 19:9.78 Ordinary fornication, like ordinary idol-worship, was ruled out by the most elementary principles of Christian instruction.
The decree is regarded as binding in the letters to the seven churches of proconsular Asia (Rev. 2:14, 20). Toward the end of the second century it was observed by the churches of the Rhone valley (which had close links with those of Asia) and of the province of Africa.79 Toward the end of the ninth century the terms of the decree, together with the negative Golden Rule, were included by the English king Alfred in the preamble to his law-code.
8. The Church of Antioch Receives the Apostolic Letter (15:30–35)
30They were sent off, then, and came down to Antioch. There they gathered the congregation together and handed over the letter.
31When the Antiochenes read it, they rejoiced at the encouragement.
32Judas and Silas, who were also prophets themselves,80 gave the brothers much encouragement by word of mouth, and strengthened them.
33When they had spent some time there, the brothers sent them back with a salutation of peace81 to those who had commissioned them.82
35But Paul and Barnabas stayed on in Antioch, teaching and preaching the word of God together with many others.
30–35 The news from Jerusalem brought great relief to the Gentile Christians of Antioch. Probably the restrictions laid down in the letter did not seem too burdensome; in any case, they were a small price to pay for the prevention of any recurrence of the embarrassing situation occasioned by previous visitors from James. On the terms prescribed, table fellowship between Jewish and Gentile believers could now be resumed. (What Paul thought about it may be inferred from his letters rather than from Luke’s record.) Over and above the encouragement contained in the apostolic letter, the church received further encouragement from the prophetic ministry of Judas and Silas,83 who spent some time in Antioch before returning to Jerusalem. When they set off on their homeward journey, it was with the Antiochenes’ farewell “Peace be with you!” sounding in their ears. After their departure, Paul and Barnabas stayed on in Antioch a little longer, serving the Lord in the church together with their colleagues in the ministry. (Verse 35 repeats more fully the statement of 14:28.)