Ratifying the Gentile Mission (15:1–35)

Ratifying the Gentile Mission (15:1–35)

RATIFYING THE GENTILE MISSION (15:1–35)

Historians recounting the origins of peoples often reported not only the stories of their founders but also major changes in their constitutions after the founders’ deaths.[1] A work documenting the earliest history of the Gentile mission would need to include the theological watershed for that mission that occurred at the Jerusalem Council (a decision the leaders seemed to uphold even when dissent was widespread, Acts 21:25).

In this section,[2] the church, led by God’s Spirit, ratifies the Gentile mission without the requirement of circumcision. The Jerusalem church previously affirmed the ministry to Cornelius’s household but now has to reckon both with the Gentile ministry’s dramatic spread (and perhaps some Jerusalemite complaints; cf. Gal 5:11; 6:12) and with miracle accounts suggesting that God is with this mission.

That circumcisionists after this meeting continued to cause Paul trouble, as attested in his letters, is less relevant for Luke’s narrative, which focuses on the Pauline mission and its continuity with the apostolic leadership of the Jerusalem church. In any case, by Luke’s day, the Gentile mission was too widespread and the remnants of the Jerusalem church too scattered for the circumcisionists to remain a primary potent threat for Luke’s Diaspora audience.[3] Luke thus reports a theological battle important in the historical development of the Gentile church of his day, but it was no longer a major battle in his day. Continuity with the church’s heritage, however, remained an important theological issue, making the events of the council a matter of continuing interest. The council’s decree can hardly be Luke’s fiction; it is a compromise solution that pacifies the circumcision party (by treating Gentile converts as God-fearers) rather than ratifies Gentile converts’ full status as members of God’s people. Nevertheless, it was a compromise that saved the day and prevented a major schism from forming.

1. Introduction

Historians of early Christianity are interested not only in Luke’s theological point but in the historical events that stand behind his report. How has Luke adapted his sources? Many historical questions involve the relevance of Gal 2:1–10. If that passage also reports the Jerusalem Council, we have a primary (albeit polemical) source reporting the same events from another vantage point and hence an opportunity to test Luke’s historiographic approach on points addressed by both sources. Where some points appear only in one source (particularly the decrees of Acts 15:20, 29), however, we should be cautious about inferring negative conclusions from silence. Even had Luke had Galatians in front of him (which is highly unlikely), he was under no obligation as a historian to include every point that appeared in all his sources. That is, given the undoubtedly much broader range of events that either writer could have reported, we should compare what our sources include, not what they omit.

a. The Relevance of Galatians 2:1–10

Scholars are divided as to whether Paul mentions this council in Gal 2:1–10; the majority view is that he does so. C. S. C. Williams, noting that this question represents the most difficult item to reconcile between Acts and Paul, summarizes five basic views (of which the first two are treated most fully here), to which we will add a sixth category:[4]

I. ARGUMENTS FAVORING GALATIANS 2:1–10 AS THE FAMINE VISIT OF ACTS 11:30

The second view on the list is the majority view (when some form of the sixth view is included), and it is also my own view. But I begin by discussing instead the first view, held by a respectable minority of scholars (including Williams himself)—namely, that Gal 2:1–10 corresponds to the earlier famine visit in Acts.[8] Arguments for this view include the following:

Many supporters of this position argue that Paul wrote Galatians in the heat of the conflict described in Acts 15:1–2 (hence the close correspondence of ideas) but before the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15 (hence without appealing to its decrees).[13]

II. AGAINST ARGUMENTS THAT GALATIANS 2:1–10 IS THE FAMINE VISIT

I will respond briefly to each of the arguments offered for the famine visit (cf. also my briefer discussion of some related points at Acts 11:30). First, Paul had no reason to record the famine visit in Galatians.[14] He is concisely surveying a large amount of time, and his point involves his independence from Jerusalem’s apostles.[15] If he delivered famine relief to the elders but did not meet with the apostles (who might have even been in hiding; cf. Acts 12:2–3, 17) or if any meeting was in passing and concerned only the famine relief, he has no reason to record this in Gal 2:1.[16]

Second, it is true that Paul nowhere mentions the decrees, but this is true not only in Galatians (whenever one dates it) but also in Romans and the Corinthian correspondence, which surely postdate the Jerusalem Council and where mention would also be helpful. If Paul must mention the decrees because he writes after them, the question to be asked is not the date of Galatians but the authenticity of Acts’ account (addressed below); or one must restrict the application of the decrees, in which case Galatia, too, is excluded: Acts specifies the decrees’ application only to Syria-Cilicia. Far away from Jerusalem and in churches started by the Antioch mission, an appeal to first principles would be more helpful than an appeal to Jerusalem’s authority—especially if the latter could appear to undermine Paul’s own vis-à-vis that of his opponents.[17] (Greeks’ democratic traditions would also diminish the appeal of foreign ecclesiastical authority.)

Third, discrepancies between Acts 11:30 and 12:25, on the one hand, and Gal 2:1–10, on the other, are greater, all told, than those between Acts 15 and the Galatians passage.[18] Acts 15 matches Gal 2 on numerous details whereas Luke’s descriptions of events in Acts 11:30 and 12:25 are so brief that arguments for parallels can be made only from silence, nothing in common being stated except that both occur in Jerusalem and that Barnabas was present (Gal 2:9)—correspondences that also appear with Acts 15. Further, a visit to bring famine relief seems an odd time for the Jerusalem leaders to ask Paul and Barnabas to remember the poor (Gal 2:10). By contrast, this detail could be omitted from the narrative in Acts 15 for the same reasons that Luke virtually omits mention of Paul’s collection (only 24:17 after 12:25).

Fourth, Paul’s revelation in Gal 2:2 need not refer to a prophetic word to the Antioch church by another prophet (though these certainly occurred; see Acts 13:1–2). In Gal 2:2 it seems closely related to Paul’s own gospel, and 1:12 and 16 confirm that he refers to his reception of Christ and his gospel as a revelation. Granted, this is not Paul’s only use of the terms “revelation” and “reveal” (1 Cor 2:10; 14:6, 26, 30; 2 Cor 12:1, 7), but it is his only usage in Galatians (cf. Gal 3:23).

Fifth, a date for Galatians before the Jerusalem Council is not likely;[19] it may be earlier than Romans (where the lines of thought seem more developed and less polemically driven), but it addresses the same sorts of issues and may derive from the same period in Paul’s life.[20] One could keep Galatians fairly early while allowing that it refers to the Jerusalem Council, if Paul wrote it during the time in Syrian Antioch after the council in 15:35; this remains as a genuine possibility, although it requires Paul’s circumcisionist detractors to follow his route into Phrygia almost immediately after they lost ground in Antioch.[21] Any date earlier than this, however, is in my opinion very unlikely. Immediately before the council in Jerusalem, Paul knew of the conflict in Antioch (Acts 14:26–15:1), but it had not yet had time to reach the Galatian churches that he had recently founded. Paul speaks in Galatians as if the circumcisionist teachers have already followed his itinerary and swayed the Galatians (Gal 1:7–9; 4:17; 5:7–8, 12; 6:12–13), yet Luke sounds as if Paul and Barnabas went to Jerusalem for the council when the issue came to a debate even in Antioch. Dating Galatians early creates more problems for connecting Luke’s record with Paul’s letters, not less.[22]

If Luke was composing freely, it would have served his purposes to make the council cover areas evangelized in Acts 13–15, but Acts 15 reports decrees sent only as far as Syria-Cilicia—that is, Antioch’s (and Tarsus’s) province (15:23, 41).[23] This limitation suggests that Luke accurately reports a period in which the “Judaizers” who are opposed in Paul’s letter to the Galatians have not yet reached Galatia. Thus the Jerusalem Council must precede, not follow, Paul’s letter to the Galatians.

Sixth, the suggestion that Acts 15 may revisit an arrangement made earlier in Acts 11, although it is a possible response to the shared theme in Acts 15 and Gal 2, is not the simplest (Occam’s razor) solution. Acts 11:30 and 12:25 mention nothing of the discussion, a discussion that would suit Luke’s purposes well (he prefigures the council’s decision elsewhere, e.g., 11:1–18). The discussion is read into these passages by means of Galatians, yet (on the famine-visit view) the passage in Acts that actually bears the closest similarity to the discussion in Gal 2 is counted a “revisiting” of the issue.

Seventh, it is conceivable that Luke would omit details reported by Gal 2:1–10 because they were not relevant to his narrative, but how plausible is it that this visit in Acts addresses an entirely different issue (the famine visit) yet the same issue that Galatians addresses is settled in a later but unrelated meeting in Acts (i.e., Acts 15)? Surely the content of the meeting should carry more weight than Paul’s summary mention of visits to Jerusalem’s apostles (which are not even numbered).[24]

Eighth, the argument that Paul must mention Timothy if he writes later is an argument from silence. The harsh tone of the letter may explain why Paul names no other coauthors (especially local ones). Paul also names no other coauthors in Romans (Rom 1:1), which we date to the same period in his ministry, and he adds no greetings from anyone in Galatians. Even if Paul’s failure to mention Timothy necessarily suggests that the latter was not yet his coworker, Timothy joined Paul sometime after the close of the council. If Paul writes after the circumcision controversy has become an issue in Antioch (Acts 15:1–2), which it apparently reached before Galatia, he could write the letter during the period that he “stayed” in Antioch for “a number of days”[25] after the council (15:35–36), just as easily as before going up to the council (15:2).[26]

The decrees are treated more fully below and also at Acts 15:20. In addition to my responses to arguments supporting the famine visit, Paul’s mention of Titus as someone known to the Galatians further weakens the possibility that the famine visit is in view.[27] Indeed, if the famine visit preceded Paul’s missionary journeys as Luke suggests (11:30; 12:25), it cannot be the event of Gal 2:1–10, if Titus (2:1–3) was a convert from Paul’s missionary journeys. Against this, Titus may be from Antioch rather than a Galatian convert; even in my view of the visit, some Antiochene Christians accompanied Paul for this occasion (Acts 15:2). But if he was from Antioch, why are the Galatians familiar with him (especially on the view that Paul has finished at most one missionary journey)? We have three options: Paul discussed Titus of Antioch with them during his visit; Titus was one of Paul’s (unmentioned)[28] traveling companions on the first journey; or he was from Galatia and returned with the apostles to Antioch. The first view is unlikely; in contrast to Paul’s having discussed James, Cephas, and John (Gal 1:18–19; 2:8–9, 11–12), who were part of the gospel story, Titus was not a figure in Jesus’s story. It is not impossible, since Paul apparently did recount stories of traveling companions to later churches that did not know them (1 Cor 9:6), but if Titus was a traveling companion, this brings us to the second option.[29]

The second option concerning Titus is possible, and it allows for identification of the famine visit with Gal 2, since Titus could have been part of the Jerusalem visit as well as the Phrygian mission. Luke’s silence about Titus on the first journey is not a decisive argument against his participation (although it is a likely one), since Luke elsewhere assumes others not part of the main action (Timothy, in Acts 17:14, is not mentioned in Philippi but must have been there [cf. Phil 1:1]) and for some reason never mentions Titus’s name even later in the work despite his closeness to Paul (2 Cor 2:13; 7:6, 13–14; 8:6, 16, 23; 12:18; cf. 2 Tim 4:10; Titus 1:4). This is not, however, the simplest solution.[30] Luke specifies that other believers traveled with Paul and Barnabas to the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15:2), yet he is silent about anyone helping Paul and Barnabas on the first Galatian mission once Mark has departed (13:13).[31]

The greatest potential weakness of the third view lies in the question of why Paul would bring a convert from his missionary journey back with him; we do, however, know that Paul took some intimate converts on missionary journeys (16:3). If we accept the third view, which I regard as most likely, it might still allow Galatians to be written before the council (though I believe a later date likelier); it would not, however, allow an easy identification of the famine visit with Gal 2:1–10.

The connection between the famine visit and Gal 2:1–10 is not impossible, but it requires more hypothetical assumptions lacking clear textual basis (as, e.g., the attribution of some Pauline letters to an “Ephesian imprisonment”) than does the more straightforward view that Paul’s and Luke’s accounts of a Jerusalem meeting addressing circumcision are two versions of the same event. (Some scholars also object that the famine visit does not chronologically fit the fourteen years of Gal 2:1,[32] especially if these are added to the three years of 1:18. But the status of this question depends on a number of antecedent questions not easily resolved.)[33]

III. OTHER ARGUMENTS FOR GALATIANS 2:1–10 AS THE JERUSALEM COUNCIL

Some of the arguments I have used above against the likelihood of identifying Gal 2:1–10 with Acts 11:27–30 support the identification of Gal 2:1–10 with Acts 15, but they are here supplemented with additional arguments.

That Gal 2:1–10 refers to the same meeting as Acts 15 seems to many scholars, including me, to be obvious.[34] Both meetings share the same basic object (Acts 15:5; Gal 2:4) and outcome (Acts 15:19–21, 28–29; Gal 2:5–6). In both, Paul’s mission is recognized (Acts 15:12; Gal 2:2), and leaders agree that Gentiles need not be circumcised (Acts 15:19–20; Gal 2:7–9).[35] The same primary leaders are involved (Peter and James appear in both whereas at least Peter may have been missing during the earlier famine visit [Acts 12:17, 25] and Luke mentions then only elders [11:30]).[36]

Commonalities

Acts 15:6–22

Gal 2:1–10

The same basic object

Acts 15:5

Gal 2:4

The same basic outcome

Acts 15:19–21, 28–29

Gal 2:5–6

Paul’s mission is recognized

Acts 15:12

Gal 2:2

Leaders agree that Gentiles need not be circumcised

Acts 15:19–20

Gal 2:7–9

Peter was involved

Acts 15:7–11

Gal 2:9

James was involved

Acts 15:13–21

Gal 2:9

The issue raised in Gal 2:1–5 was hardly resolved prior to Acts 15:1–2. That Paul was involved in two such meetings, the second repeating the first, is unlikely. That Paul reports only one of these meetings and Luke the other strains plausibility even further.

Luke does omit some details that Paul includes, such as agreement for Paul to care for the poor (presumably in Jerusalem, Gal 2:10).[37] But as noted above, he also omits Paul’s collection (except in Acts 24:17), about which he certainly knew. What is important, however, is that Luke’s focus in Acts 15 is also the main focus of the council in Gal 2:1–10, and he does not digress from it. Paul’s “private” meeting with the leaders in Gal 2:2 may correspond to the gathering of “apostles and elders” in Acts 15:6 (cf. 15:23; contrast the larger gathering in 15:4–5), though Luke does not demarcate the closing boundaries between the private and the public meetings as explicitly as we might like (the community apparently assents after the closed meeting, in 15:22; but cf. 15:23, the elders apparently representing the people).[38] Acts 15 also does not emphasize the affirmation of Paul found in Gal 2:7–9, though Luke implies approval (Acts 15:25). Perhaps it would be counterproductive for Luke to raise the issue that at that time Paul needed approval, whereas Paul, defending his gospel to the Galatians, has reason to mention it. Luke is more generous to speak of “Judeans” (Acts 15:1) or “Pharisees” (15:5), as compared with Paul’s “false brothers” (Gal 2:4); writing later, he can write somewhat more dispassionately than Paul, but this is hardly an argument against Luke’s historicity. Acts also omits mention of Titus or John (Gal 2:1, 3, 9), but it probably assumes John’s presence.

Presenting James as reconciler (Acts 15:13–21) differs from presenting him as provocateur (cf. Gal 2:12), as some note,[39] but it is, first, not clear that James himself is the cause of the conflict in Galatians (the letter seems clear that James himself was not present, though his messengers or partisans were), and more important, Luke and Paul probably viewed his influence differently at this point because of their differing emphases and rhetorical agendas (especially the question of whether the compromise of Acts 15:20 was positive or negative). Moreover, Gal 2:12 probably belongs to a period after the council of 2:1–10 and certainly (given the different venue) cannot be simultaneous with it. Even in Acts, despite Luke’s emphasis, the Jerusalem church grew more conservative; though not dishonoring a previous agreement about Gentiles, the leaders might well seek to avoid alienating the large right wing of their movement (Acts 21:20–24).

Some other proposed differences stem from reading Gal 2:11–14 as if it is a chronological, rather than simply topical, continuation of the same incident; if it is chronologically distinct (which its different venue demands), Luke’s silence about it in Acts 15 requires no explanation. Some scholars offer such contrasts—for example, Paul and Barnabas’s opposing Pharisees (15:1, 5) differs from Paul’s opposing Cephas and Barnabas (Gal 2:11–13).[40] Some go beyond the text, in any case; presenting Paul’s splitting from Barnabas over John Mark (Acts 15:36–40) as a conflict with Galatians’ portrayal of a theological dispute (Gal 2:13) presses too much into the details incidentally preserved, since Galatians does not, in fact, mention any long-term split.[41] Both these conflicts between Paul and Barnabas occur in Antioch (in my view, on different occasions), not Jerusalem.

The main differences between the accounts stem from their independence and the writers’ differing agendas: although both note what is at stake, Paul emphasizes the concluding agreement and Luke the “role of Peter and James,” who must have been vital there, as Paul himself hints (Gal 2:6, 9).[42] Though agreeing on basic points, Acts emphasizes continuity with the law whereas Paul, responding polemically to the critics that scholars often call Judaizers, emphasizes that circumcision was not enforced and that his collection would symbolize the church’s unity.[43] (The most significant specific difference is Paul’s omission of the decree, which is addressed below; but we should note here that this is an omission, not a contradiction.)

The many agreements, by contrast, challenge an argument from omissions; given the selective nature of all historiography and certainly the condensed character of Acts, arguments from omissions are arguments from silence. As Fitzmyer notes, none of the differences “is significant enough to undermine the substantial agreement of the two reports,” which in multiple ways attests the basic contours of the historical event.[44] The differences demonstrate that the sources are clearly independent; as Johnson, after highlighting potential differences, notes, “The divergence of sources on so many important details makes their agreement on other points the more impressive.”[45]

Comparison of the two independent accounts reveals that Luke is an accurate reporter by the standards of ancient historiography for events of recent decades. That he is tendentious, reporting what fits his emphasis, is not in dispute, but this was true of all ancient historians (including those who, like Polybius, denied it), and it is also true of Paul’s own report in Galatians.[46] Both early Christian accounts, in fact, reveal that Paul’s agenda differed from that of others; hence he may be fairly regarded as a partisan source on the matter.[47] (Although Plutarch is a tendentious biographer, we would not arbitrarily dismiss his reports about Cicero on the basis of the latter’s writings; Cicero is, as Plutarch points out, himself tendentious.)

b. The Decrees of Acts 15:20, 28–29

The most significant difference between Acts 15 and Gal 2:1–10 is Paul’s omission of the decrees of Acts 15:20, 28–29. Noting the usefulness of such decrees for Paul’s later letters (cf. even 16:4) and the consequent strangeness of their absence, some scholars who accept the historical event of the council doubt that the council issued such decrees.[48] One possible explanation is that Luke has conflated two events; although this proposal cannot be proven, it is among the plausible solutions.

I. NO DECREES IN PAUL’S LETTERS

Skepticism about the decrees demands too much information from very limited sources, however. Various proposals for Paul’s silence are offered (apart from the view that Paul in fact did presuppose the decree in one or more letters).[49] Some scholars doubt that Paul considered the decree as binding for himself.[50] That is, whereas some argue that Paul would never have accepted such strictures about foods as 15:20 reports,[51] he may have felt that the compromise was acceptable for maintaining peace in Jerusalem but that he could generally ignore it on the field. Because the decree probably concerned conditions not for salvation but for table fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians, it may play less of a role for Paul’s teaching than for Luke’s need for a narrative climax to the agreement.[52] (Even Luke, who reports the promotion of the decree in 16:4 in Galatia, where Paul later had conflicts with the churches, does not report its promulgation after that point; apparently it became less useful at further remove of time or distance from the Jerusalem Council.) Some have also suggested that the decrees were binding only for Syria (where the issues were at a head at that point, Acts 15:1–2; Gal 2:11), not Achaia.[53] The decrees explicitly address only this geographic area (Acts 15:23). It is also possible that by the time Paul writes these letters, the agreement was no longer considered relevant for various reasons (though cf. 21:25, at least concerning the Jerusalem leaders).

In Galatians, where Paul’s focus is circumcision and not immorality, it may be that he reports as much of the settlements as necessary;[54] further, appealing to a potentially ambiguous Jerusalem decree (on some matters of the law) might have undercut his own case if his opponents, who probably celebrated their ties to Jerusalem (2 Cor 11:22; cf. Gal 2:4), cited a conflicting version of sentiments at the council. (In some cultures that emphasize authorities’ honor, one best maintains peace and keeps all parties satisfied by reinterpreting or ignoring official decrees at a safe distance rather than by contesting them.)

Some scholars date Galatians before the council, but on the likelier view (given my reading of Gal 2:1–10) that Paul wrote sometime afterward, he may have had no need to mention the decrees if he had delivered them to this region previously (cf. Acts 16:4). If the churches already knew of this decree (16:4) yet it had not stopped his opponents, Paul must instead offer a stronger argument based on first principles. Paul might choose not to appeal again to Jerusalem’s teaching, which had not prevented Galatia’s believers from succumbing to circumcisionists earlier (and seemed still less effective now), preferring to argue from the gospel that they had affirmed when they became (and with which they had to agree to remain) Christians (cf. Gal 3:2). It is also possible (though I think it less likely) that Paul did not appeal to the decrees because subsequent events (some reported in Gal 2:11–14) suggested that the Jerusalem leaders were interpreting the compromise differently from how Paul had originally construed it.[55] Luke could report it as a theological step forward even if the Jerusalem church viewed it as merely one among several discussions; if Luke writes after 66 C.E., the Jerusalem church no longer has a strong, continuing, audible voice.

Paul’s letter addresses circumcision’s not being required (Gal 2:3) and his own mission to those who remain “uncircumcised” (2:7–9). Of the larger decision, this is the part with which he is occupied, and he is interested in citing the agreement of the top authorities recognizable to Diaspora hearers (who know the Jesus tradition) rather than just the church as a whole. It serves Paul’s purpose much less to appeal to a church decision focused on food laws and basic morality (Acts 15:20) when he is about to challenge the abuse of the law to require segregated eating (Gal 2:11–14).

II. WHY NOT IN 1 CORINTHIANS?

It seems more difficult to account for Paul’s silence in 1 Cor 8–10.[56] But Paul may have simply feared that Jerusalem’s decrees would alienate the Corinthian Christians, who valued their independence;[57] accepting Judaism’s Messiah and Bible did not mean that all were prepared to accept what they could well have viewed as foreign ecclesiastical domination.[58] Given the Corinthians’ eventual distrust even of himself, he may have been right to doubt that they would have appreciated an appeal to Jerusalem.[59] (Paul clearly wants to build positive relations with Jerusalem [1 Cor 16:1, 3; 2 Cor 8–9], but the Corinthians may be more apt to respond to his appeals because of their relationship with him than because of loyalty to Jerusalem [cf. 2 Cor 9:3–4].) Paul opposed sexual immorality and idol food for other reasons that he could readily communicate to the Corinthians (1 Cor 5–10);[60] in the final analysis, he opposes even food offered to idols for spiritual, not just ecclesiastical, reasons (10:4–22).

Another reason not to cite the decree was that the full decree would have been unsatisfying to either faction of the debate in Corinth (though perhaps no more than his synthesis proved to be). He appeals to sensitivity to Jewish or other Christians’ food customs (Rom 14:2–3, 6, 14–15, 21; 1 Cor 8:7–13), and if Paul did not believe that food choices were matters to fight about, he probably could have accommodated a decree if he could have construed it as a way of not offending more conservative cultural tastes. (Luke, after all, presents the decree as a way of regulating fellowship between Jewish and Gentile Christians, not as a salvific necessity, though he presents the salvation question as having been raised in Acts 15:1.)

Elsewhere Paul cites the custom of other churches fairly sparsely (and only where fairly unanimous even in the Diaspora, 1 Cor 11:16; 14:33). To argue that the decree did not exist because Paul does not cite it is to argue from silence; although some arguments from silence are more plausible than others (the less expected silence is, the more it may communicate), it does not appear compelling in this instance. (See further comment on Acts 15:20.)

III. DOES LUKE CONFLATE TWO EVENTS?

One of the most common proposals, however (view six in our opening summary of views), is that Luke has conflated two different real events—an original agreement with no explicit conditions and then a later decree (after Paul had left Jerusalem) stipulating conditions for full table fellowship.[61] Fitzmyer, usually a model of scholarly caution, offers some arguments here that appear as tenuous as most examples of the older radical versions of source criticism.[62] He begins first with the composite nature of the chapter, claiming that Acts 15:1–2 is a suture and that 15:34 is a textual addition; yet the suture is unclear, and elsewhere textual variants do not typically invite conflation theories for their contexts.

Second, Fitzmyer argues that because “Simeon” (15:14) is not Peter’s actual name in Acts, it reflects a different speaker in the source. Yet the mention of Simeon directly recalls the preceding speech, which in turn specifically recalls events in which only Peter was involved; Luke’s semitizing flourish for James’s speech does not recall a prior source and certainly does not reflect a source about a different Simeon.[63] Fitzmyer also maintains that Peter’s speech addresses circumcision and the law (15:7–11), but this does not fit the summary in James’s speech (15:14–21); yet both speeches do address the same issue for Luke—namely, the incorporation of Gentiles into God’s people.

A more compelling argument, however, would be that the compromise solution in 15:20, 28–29 seems less than what the rest of James’s speech leads us to expect. In response to this argument, however, I should point out that Luke offers only speeches supporting Paul; assuming that the opposition spoke more than the line given it in 15:5, a compromise of some sort may have been necessary to achieve at least a working consensus, at least on paper. From the standpoint of the Jerusalem church, these rules are quite minor compared with the major concession this church is offering the Gentiles.

Thus, if Jerusalem believers are fully accepting Gentiles even as members of God’s people without circumcision (i.e., if James’s speech presents them as proselytes and not God-fearers), a few prohibitions that resemble standard Jewish expectations for righteous Gentiles (see comment on Acts 15:20) are a small behavioral matter to prevent undue criticism from Jerusalem society. If they are not all endorsing them as members of God’s people but (as I think likelier) merely soliciting their practice of customs expected for God-fearers to pacify the circumcisionists, they have still failed to require circumcision or impose major obstacles to the new converts. Nor (so far as any extant sources suggest) are they regulating what Paul on the mission field will teach the Gentiles about their status. (Circumcision would not need to be mentioned in the decrees, even if it were an initial issue in 15:1, 5, if the circumcision party could agree to accept Gentile believers as God-fearers.)

The proposal of conflation is certainly possible, even if it is not overwhelmingly demonstrable. Texts such as Acts 9:23 (cf. Gal 1:18) and 17:14–16 (cf. 1 Thess 3:1–2) reveal that Luke could conflate and skip intervening material (if in these instances he had this material); he was willing occasionally to even rearrange material for major scenes such as Luke 4:16–30 (cf. Mark 6:1–6), and Acts 15 is certainly a major scene. It is possible that James and his colleagues, in accepting Gentiles without circumcision, took for granted basic “traditional ground rules for association between Jews and Gentiles” (cf. Gal 2:12–13), which some of these Jerusalem leaders assumed would be followed but which were formalized only at a later date. Luke might then compress these two events together as he sometimes compresses events elsewhere.[64]

It should be emphasized, however, that the linking of events by omitting the duration between them is simply one hypothesis; the narrative of Acts 15 can stand apart from it. In logic, Occam’s razor invites the simplest solution; although some will feel (I myself not among them) that treating a historical decree as part of the council’s events creates such dissonance that this solution is less than 50 percent probable, the same complaint may be offered for each of the alternatives taken by itself. (If it is the best solution of a bad lot, this simply means that we do not have a better solution, not that other solutions are better.)

Further, most who resort to this hypothesis do so to explain Paul’s silence about the decree, but if (on this view) Paul did not know about the decree even when he wrote Galatians and 1 Corinthians,[65] Luke appears to have connected events more distant and disparate than we find him doing anywhere else where we can evaluate him. Moreover, Paul would have known of the decree no later than the end of his final visit to Jerusalem (Acts 21–26), a visit that he recognized beforehand might not play well with the saints there (Rom 15:31). His final visit is not long after the Corinthian correspondence and Paul’s letter to the believers in Rome. Simply relocating the problem to a later point in Paul’s ministry does not eliminate it.

If the decree happened historically after the conference of Gal 2:1–10, it may have happened when Paul and his colleagues were in Antioch, and the decree could have been delivered by those who came from James in 2:11–14 (that he reports no response to his challenge does not mean that none was offered). In that case, Paul might not mention the Jerusalem church’s decree because it would weaken his own argument against the “Judaizers,” in contrast to the earlier agreement in 2:7–9. But again, even such a relatively brief span between the council and the decree is purely hypothetical, considering the few lines with which Paul addresses the council. Paul has mentioned what he needed to and has no need to repeat his opponents’ supporting arguments.

That Luke knew the decree accurately is likely; we should not think that Gentile Christians in the Diaspora invented the prohibition against consuming blood. Further, historians regularly did find and cite documents; if it was circulated widely (cf. Acts 16:4), there is every reason to believe that the letter (15:23–29) is the part of the chapter that Luke reports with the greatest accuracy (though whether it is verbatim is a matter of dispute; see comment on Acts 15:23).[66]

c. The Significance of Acts 15

Acts 15 is significant to Luke’s overall picture; he presents it in a way useful for his audience, but this does not mean that he fabricated the council’s outcome. As scholars frequently emphasize, Luke is both historian and theologian.

I. SIGNIFICANCE FOR LUKE

Acts 15 appears close to the center of Acts in the book’s design[67] and also in the development of the book’s theology; most scholars view it as the turning point, though they naturally differ over what it turns to, on the basis of their respective appraisals of Luke’s theology.[68] Some others demur, arguing that Cornelius’s conversion settled the issue of welcoming Gentiles and so it is excessive to call this council a turning point;[69] we might also note that the transition to primary focus on the Pauline mission occurred in 12:25 (although Peter surfaces again here, and James both here and in 21:18–25). In a more important sense, the true literary division in the book lies between Peter/Jerusalem and Paul/the Gentile mission (Acts 1–12; 13–28); despite a long transition between the sections (Acts 6–12, esp. 9–12), the texture changes there, not in Acts 15.

In any case, this passage considerably advances the case for the uncircumcised Gentile mission, establishing a fuller theological framework for it. Here the original Jerusalem church officially ratifies the direction of the Gentile mission, stipulating only a few prohibitions that, for the most part, the Pauline movement would have observed anyway. In histories of peoples, cultural mixing was often an early problem,[70] and founders who were portrayed honorably typically emphasized the welcoming of foreigners.[71]

Chronologically, Acts 15 is past the center of Acts, but it is probably less than 60 percent of the way through the time spanned and probably just more than halfway from Paul’s conversion. If this passage represents the meeting of Gal 2:1–10 (and it is argued above that it very likely does), fourteen years have passed since Paul’s first Jerusalem visit of Acts 9:26–30 (the fifteen days of Gal 1:18).[72] Allowing for the events of Acts 1–8 before Paul’s conversion (including time for the church to grow and reach Damascus and for Paul’s persecution activity to become significant), Paul was not likely converted as early as 30 C.E. The chronology is somewhat loose, but it is easily enough consistent with the occurrence of the Jerusalem Council (of Acts 15 and Gal 2:1) around 48 C.E., allowing Paul to be in Corinth by 51–52 C.E.[73] The book closes twelve to fourteen years later, in 60–62 C.E. The council follows a pattern familiar from elsewhere in Acts (e.g., in Acts 6:1–7): a problem (6:1), a solution (6:2–6), and an ultimate advancement of the gospel beyond its previous state (6:7).[74]

II. DID LUKE INVENT CONSENSUS?

That Luke focuses his summary more on the church’s final consensus than on the undoubtedly harsh debates that preceded it is to be expected. That he simply fantasized that the church achieved at least a temporary measure of consensus, however, evokes the old Tübingen hypothesis. Though Luke lacked reason to emphasize long-settled (or dead) disagreements among figures he respected, neither did he simply eliminate all of them, as illustrated by the conflict that separates Paul and Barnabas later in the chapter (15:37–39). Ancient historians report division after some ancient debates, but on other occasions they report consensus.[75]

F. C. Baur’s Tübingen hypothesis originally focused on a second-century division in Christendom, but scholars shifted it back into the NT period.[76] Lightfoot and Zahn demonstrated that Baur’s Hegelian approach to the Clementine and Ignatian literature was inaccurate, which certainly rendered this approach’s value all the more vacuous for first-century sources.[77] Unfortunately, Baur’s views of the sharp division between Jewish and Gentile Christianity have persisted in NT scholarship.[78] I have argued elsewhere that at least some significant Christian movements by the end of the first century continued to view themselves as Jewish while welcoming (probably uncircumcised) Gentiles and that many Gentile Christians still saw themselves as converts to a Jewish faith.[79] Baur’s hypothesis, however, reflected the anti-Judaism of his contemporaries in the continental Christian scholarship of his era.[80]

Far from simply playing down differences, Luke does report serious conflict (15:5); indeed, the claim that circumcision was necessary for salvation (15:1) may be harsher than that of Paul’s actual rivals in Galatia. Luke mentions the Christian Pharisees (15:5) more respectfully than does Paul (for whom the critics were not genuinely brothers but simply unconverted infiltrators in disguise, Gal 2:4). Naturally Luke cannot match the tone of suspense offered by an affected participant about the council’s outcome (Gal 2:2), but Paul’s emotion in Gal 2:1–10 should hardly be assumed to make him more objective. Unlike Paul, Luke was not an eyewitness, and so he would hear and celebrate the outcome more than the process (though he reports speeches by two of the three characters Paul mentions, Gal 2:9).[81] If Luke mentions a compromise (Acts 15:20),[82] so does Paul (Gal 2:9–10); some scholars suppose that Paul would not endure the compromise reported by Luke, but it seems more likely (given Paul’s opposition to idol food, immorality, etc.) that he simply would not appeal to such a compromise in Galatians, where it might have made his case more ambiguous.

Nevertheless, Baur’s hypothesis was not entirely constructed from thin air. From the start, there was serious tension over the status of Gentile converts, reflected in both Paul (most sharply, but not at all exclusively, in Galatians) and Acts (emphasizing the church’s progress but not minimizing initial resistance, e.g., Acts 10:28). Baur also was correct that Acts revolves around the personalities of Peter and Paul; Luke’s narrative strategy in highlighting parallels between them is continuity, probably between the original apostolic mission and the Gentile mission (cf. a similar parallel in Gal 2:7–9).[83] If some human personalities tend to react against other perspectives and other personalities are more prone to synthesize them, Luke certainly synthesized various elements of Christian thought in his day, whether we describe this in terms of Hegelian dialectic or not.[84] In contrast to the usual approach, Luke probably believed that Paul would have appreciated his synthesis; but perhaps only a student of Paul who had not himself battled in the volatile debates of preceding decades could have objectively synthesized the common elements that at least the movement’s leaders had been able to agree on.[85] Josephus, as an apologetic historian, stressed Judaism’s “harmony” where possible, from Moses forward, without denying divisions; Luke has reason to do the same.[86]

The same primary texts that reveal division in the mainstream early church also show that it maintained unity, even if Luke has condensed a description of the difficult road to unity as he has condensed nearly all his other narrative material apart from “we” material surrounding Paul’s custody. Paul, who disagreed with the Jerusalem apostles and recognized their distinctive missions, still affirmed the validity of both missions (Gal 2:6–9); he attributed the demand for circumcision not to the Jerusalem leaders but to “false brethren” (2:4). Although Paul was uncertain beforehand of how he would be received (2:2),[87] he emphasized that the “pillars” agreed with him; no circumcision was imposed (2:3).[88]

Paul also affirmed that all preached the same gospel on the essentials of the Jesus story and its biblical basis (1 Cor 15:3–11, esp. 15:11). However strongly Paul portrays his challenge to Peter or (indirectly) Barnabas in a polemical context (Gal 2:11–14), he elsewhere uses them as models of ministry (1 Cor 9:5–6; Gal 2:7–9; cf. 1 Cor 15:5; Gal 1:18; 2:1; Col 4:10).[89] Paul even consults with them regarding his gospel (Gal 2:2) and accepts and speaks of their right hand of fellowship (2:9).[90] The meeting did not abolish a vocal group demanding that Gentiles be circumcised, nor did it ban them from the Jerusalem church and from influencing it; but this group did not win the debate led by the Jerusalem church leaders, who wanted unity among the factions but did not belong to this faction.

III. SHIFTING CONSENSUS?

The sort of debate that occurs in Acts 15 reflects broader questions, reported in other Hellenistic Jewish historians, about the status of Gentiles in early Judaism.[91] By the mid-40s, in the wake of Caligula’s policies and Agrippa’s attempts to accommodate nationalism, Judea experienced a revival of nationalistic militancy.[92] Under such circumstances, we need not expect that all members of the church always concurred with the consensus established at one significant meeting (thus, e.g., James may stand by his word while recognizing the need to accommodate certain contrary tendencies dominant among Jerusalem’s believers in 21:20–25). That the Jerusalem church may have grown increasingly conservative[93] during such national currents is what history leads us to expect from any religious movement whose members feel that they belong to a larger culture moving in such a direction.[94]

In subsequent history, believers have sometimes focused on the conclusions of Nicaea or some other church council despite the contentious debates that characterized the eras of those councils. Similarly, Luke and Paul may, in different ways, focus on one meeting in which Paul participated, whereas, for the local Jerusalem church, it was one important discussion session among others. That the church’s leaders later stood by their compromise agreement (21:25) we need not doubt, but at that same time, Paul himself, in Luke’s own account, seemed to recognize that the political situation in Jerusalem had changed and that it invited a “compromise” accommodation on his own part (21:24, 26).

2. Conflict over Circumcising Gentiles (15:1–5)

The opening verses of this section continue the geographic locale of the preceding context (the church in Antioch, in 14:26–15:3a), but they introduce a new question: the necessity of circumcision (15:1, 5) and the keeping of the law of Moses (15:5; cf. 15:20, 29). This sets the stage for the Jerusalem Council that follows (15:6–29).

a. Conflict at Antioch (15:1–2)

Antioch, the very center of the Gentile mission, is now troubled by the overflow of conservative politics from Judea. If circumcision is necessary (and presumably, most of Luke’s Diaspora Christian audience after 70 hopes that it is not), the Antioch Gentile mission in general and Paul’s Diaspora mission program in particular are in question.

I. SHIFTING POLITICS AFFECTS THE CHURCH (15:1)

Because of its special cultural sensitivity, the Antioch church had pioneered the Gentile mission (11:20–21; 13:1–4), as Luke has recently reminded his audience (14:26). The Jerusalem church had approved of their mission (11:22–23) especially because the Antioch church had continued to demonstrate faithfulness for the poor in Jerusalem (11:27–29; cf. Gal 2:10).[95] Growing cultural conservatism in Judea has now made this earlier agreement more difficult to observe (15:1). The large and influential Jewish population of Antioch, with which even Gentile Christians maintained contact in this era, made such problems in Judea pressing in Antioch as well.[96]

Now, as Barnabas once came from Jerusalem to evaluate Antioch’s new cross-cultural expansion (11:22), Antioch sends Barnabas and Paul back to Jerusalem for a reaffirmation of their previously accepted mission (15:2). The Antioch church clearly favors the side that Paul is sent to support (15:31; cf. Gal 2:12).[97] Nevertheless, approval from Jerusalem seems both uncertain and crucial. One gathers from Galatians that Paul felt his entire mission was at stake (Gal 2:2).

II. GALATIANS AND THE ANTIOCH CONFLICT

It is possible that the conflict reported in Acts 15:1–2 corresponds to the conflict in Antioch reported in Gal 2:11–14.[98] On my view, this would reverse chronologically the sequence for Gal 2:1–10 and 2:11–14,[99] but such a reversal is not necessarily objectionable. It is more likely, however, that 2:11–14 does follow 2:1–10 and that Peter’s act undermines an agreement he has already accepted, in response to conservatives in the Jerusalem church gaining the upper hand (Paul’s position sounds more secure here than in Gal 2:2). In this case, the incident in Gal 2:11–14 would have occurred during the period reported in Acts 15:35–36a (Luke’s “certain days” in 15:36 can refer to a long period of time; cf. his “considerable days” in 9:23). As the home of the Gentile mission and as the Christian movement’s second—and notably successful—home, Antioch probably invited more dialogue with Jerusalem on the issue than did any other site. Even if we lacked Acts 15 when reading Gal 2:1–10, we would infer that Paul must have heard about the debate outside Jerusalem, since he planned to discuss the matter before he arrived (Gal 2:2), and travel from his home base in Antioch would be a reasonable guess.

Who were the “certain people” who came to Antioch? Although they could be agents of James (Gal 2:12) if we date 2:11–14 before 2:1–10,[100] they were more likely the “false brothers” of 2:4[101] or simply were among the sort of false teachers condemned in Galatians. The teachers were from Jerusalem (Acts 15:24)[102] but were not authorized by the apostles and elders of the Jerusalem church (15:24), at least not for the matters they were now teaching. They might have claimed otherwise, but the outcome of the council in both Galatians and Acts suggests that they never spoke officially for the Jerusalem church’s leadership. After their initial arrival in Antioch, however, they may have used their Jerusalemite provenance to good effect (cf. 2 Cor 11:22), and Paul may have had reason for concern (Gal 2:2). The Jerusalem church had sent agents before (Acts 8:14; 11:22),[103] as had Antioch (13:3), and so the implicit indication that they acted on the Jerusalem church’s official authority would seem plausible. Further, other authorities in Jerusalem could send agents to challenge the authority of Jewish leaders elsewhere who also had claimed their authorization (see Jos. Life 198). (That the church was networked in different regions should not surprise us, given what we read in Paul about such contacts.)[104]

Paul’s letters reveal that his later opponents were also mobile and following his efforts (Gal 4:17; 5:10–12; 6:12–13; cf. probably different opponents in 2 Cor 11:4–6, 12–15); this fits the general mobility of ancient urban society (cf. 2 John 10; 3 John 7).[105] To some degree, such itinerancy might reflect patterns established in Jesus’s ministry, both for Paul and for his opponents.[106]

III. CIRCUMCISION FOR SALVATION? (15:1)

These Judeans insisted on circumcision “according to the custom of Moses”—that is, the law (Luke 1:9; 2:42; Acts 6:14; 21:21)—as a condition of salvation (contrast salvation through grace in Acts 15:11). Did some really believe that circumcision was necessary for “salvation” (15:1; refuted in 15:11), and did most of the Jerusalem church once doubt that Gentiles could be saved without it (11:18)? Extant sources suggest that most Jews allowed that righteous Gentiles could be saved without full conversion to Judaism.[107] This tolerant position probably included most Pharisees, though their later, extant views on the matter may reflect only the more liberal Hillelites, the minority school in the pre-70 period. According to this manner of thinking, proselytism was necessary for full blessing as a member of Israel but not for salvation. That some Tannaitic sources preserve the stricter view (salvation only for proselytes) suggests that some other Pharisees held this narrower view, plausibly more often among the Shammaites.[108]

The rise of nationalism in this period, however, may have brought more conservative elements to the fore, obscuring moderate views more popular in other periods. Revolutionary sentiment had solidified considerably by the late 40s.[109] Thus, for example, some Judeans insisted on circumcising Gentile refugees as a condition for living among them (Jos. Life 113). Some Jerusalemite Christians, as members of a growing minority that had once been marginalized, may have also been inclined to express exceptional rigor to identify with the most nationalistic elements among their people (cf. Acts 21:20; Rom 15:31). Perhaps some less theologically nuanced or stricter Jerusalemites brought their teachings to Antioch[110] and, in the course of escalating argument, insisted that circumcision was necessary even for salvation. After the Jerusalem Council, advocates of circumcision may have advanced their case in Galatia in a more nuanced form.[111]

It is also possible that Luke has put the debate in his own words, serving the purpose of narrative cohesion but at the expense of later historical theologians’ attempts to reconcile his brief summary with more nuanced pictures in Paul and other early Jewish sources (see also comment on Acts 11:18). Luke trusts that salvation is by faith (Acts 15:11; 16:31; cf. 13:39),[112] leaving no room for other means (though cf. other elements in, e.g., Luke 3:10–11, 14; Acts 2:38). From my work in Matthew I think that Luke, though the more accurate historian in Greco-Roman terms, was sometimes less nuanced than Matthew in interpreting Jesus’s sayings because he lacked the more sophisticated knowledge of sages and other Palestinian Jewish tradition that Matthew possessed.[113] He may also present the conflict here in a more graphic and less nuanced way than one would gather from Galatians.

In fact, Luke may report how the debate was experienced (and hence often reported) among early Christians, most of whom perceived positions in less nuanced terms than did their most careful expositors. Thus, for some, anyone who did not impose circumcision was against it (Acts 21:21); likewise, Gentile Christians may have heard Jewish Christians who demanded circumcision for joining Israel as if they were demanding circumcision for salvation, and it is possible that some unduly zealous proponents of circumcision mingled the categories as well. Their numbers cannot, on any reading, have matched their long-range influence; ultimately both Luke and Paul portray these objectors as on the losing side on this occasion, Paul relegating them to a contingent of “false brothers” (Gal 2:4).

Those who find Gnosticism everywhere have suggested gnostic tendencies among Galatians’ Judaizers,[114] but the lack of distinctively gnostic traits in Paul’s depiction of his challengers has resulted in few adherents to this position.[115] Some scholars view the opponents as non-Christian Jews, such as in the form of pressure from the local synagogue communities; but while such pressure may have existed, it does not fit the opposition that Paul depicts—people who distort the gospel (Gal 1:6–9), fear external persecution (6:12), and simply want to add circumcision, not denounce Christ (cf. 4:17; 5:2–3, 11).[116]

Most scholars think that Paul’s opponents are not local Jews but rather Jewish Christian missionaries, like Paul.[117] They were likely not spokespersons for Jerusalem’s apostolic leaders but acting on their own.[118] Probably Paul’s primary opponents here are not the persecutors of Gal 4:29 but those who, unlike Paul, fear offending them (6:12; cf. 5:11)—namely, missionaries more beholden to their sending culture than to the needs of the converts (a temptation not limited to any single sending culture). Paul’s “Judaizers” as read in Galatians may be a “straw,” reductio ad absurdum construct for the purpose of his polemic rather than how his opponents would have presented themselves.[119] They need not be the same opponents as other Jewish opponents elsewhere—for example, in Corinth, where circumcision is not raised as an issue (2 Cor 11:22).[120] After all, most early Christian missionaries on both sides of the conflict were Jewish.

Many scholars plausibly argue that not even Paul’s opponents in Galatia made circumcision a requirement for salvation; the issue may instead be membership in the covenant (i.e., ecclesiology rather than soteriology).[121] For most Jews, righteous Gentiles could be saved, in any case, but to go further and become part of the people of God, a person needed to enter the covenant as Abraham did.[122] Yet once one concluded, as Paul did, that all who were saved were also children of Abraham (Gal 3:29), it was to be expected that the categories of salvation and status in Israel would be linked (and perhaps confused) as aspects of justification. Although Paul recognized the technical physical distinction imposed by circumcision, he rejected its soteriological significance (Rom 2:25–29; 3:30; 4:9–12). He was doubtless only one of those who addressed the issue,[123] but circumcision (Rom 2:25–29; 3:1; 4:9–12; 1 Cor 7:18–19; Gal 2:3, 12; 5:2–3, 6, 11; 6:12–15; Phil 3:2–3; Col 2:11; Titus 1:10) and the Gentile mission (e.g., Rom 1:5, 13–16; 10:12; 11:13; 15:9–18; 16:4; Gal 1:16; 2:8–9; 3:8, 14, 26–29; Eph 2:11–3:8; Col 1:27; 3:11; 1 Thess 2:16) were defining issues of his ministry; he often emphasizes his special call to the nations (Rom 1:5; 15:14; Gal 2:7–9; Eph 3:1–3). He was also known for this mission to outsiders, though it was probably often misrepresented (Acts 21:21; cf. Rom 3:8). See further discussion of early Jewish soteriology and Pauline soteriology in the excursus at Acts 13:39.[124]

Excursus: Circumcision

Given the importance and centrality of circumcision and the price many Jews had paid and continued to pay to maintain it in the Gentile world, any compromise of this sign would readily be perceived as betrayal and apostasy. To welcome God-fearers without circumcision was to affirm Gentile interest in Judaism; this welcome did not, however, make them members of the covenant for which Israel had long suffered.[125] From both Luke’s and Paul’s perspectives, however, the God who revealed himself to Abraham had continued to reveal himself and had confirmed the eschatological welcome of Gentiles into God’s community by their reception of the Spirit.[126] Though not wishing to scandalize his people, Paul was more concerned about following what he was convinced was God’s plan and leading into the covenant all the Gentiles whom God’s Spirit would embrace. The compromise solution of Acts 15:20, 29 does not resolve the theological difference between Paul and some of his detractors as to whether Gentile adherents now belong to God’s people; it does provide a practical, working basis for table fellowship by accepting them as at the least analogous to God-fearers attending Diaspora synagogues.

1. The Importance of Circumcision

Circumcision was one of Judaism’s most important practices, central to Jewish identity.[127] Other covenants had different signs (e.g., the bow in the sky, Gen 9:12–13, 17), but circumcision placed the mark of the covenant in one’s very flesh (17:11, 13).[128] Its centrality in regular Jewish life before Hadrian may be exemplified in the gathering of guests on the nights between a boy’s birth and his circumcision on the eighth day.[129] One pre-Christian work opined that the failure of some Jews—“children of Beliar”—to circumcise their children would bring wrath on all Israel for apostasy (Jub. 15:33–34).

Later rabbis praised circumcision, proclaiming, “Great is circumcision!”[130] They also had tales of heroes of history who were born circumcised.[131] Righteous Abraham became complete only when circumcised (t. Ned. 2:5);[132] circumcision equaled all other commandments (2:6); and the universe could not continue without circumcision (2:7; presumably meaning that the universe depended on the merit accrued by circumcision).[133]

The price Israel paid for maintaining circumcision would make the Jewish people all the more loyal to it. Israel faced ridicule for this mark,[134] for which reason some individual Jews had sought to efface it.[135] Some women had faced death to circumcise their children; one oppressor had them thrown from the city wall.[136] Because circumcision was the sign of Abraham’s covenant, it could be related to redemption by juxtaposing Exod 4:22–23 with 4:24–26. Later rabbis thus naturally spoke of the merit involved in circumcision.[137] As suggested above, failing to circumcise one’s children (Jub. 15:33) invited God’s wrath (15:34).[138]

Although some other peoples practiced circumcision (most notably, many Egyptians)[139] and they may have originally influenced the Hebrew practice,[140] it provided an important boundary marker between Jew and Gentile,[141] long since recognized by both. While denouncing Jewish people’s “hatred of humanity,” Tacitus notes that they practiced circumcision to separate themselves from all other peoples (Hist. 5.5).[142] One should not allow a Gentile to perform a Jewish infant’s circumcision, at least without proper Israelite supervision.[143] Naturally, the de-emphasis on circumcision in much of the Jesus movement’s Diaspora mission, partly under Paul’s influence, would appear threatening to Israel’s historic identity.[144]

Circumcision had long been part of conversion, since the act welcomed foreigners into Israel’s covenant.[145] Donaldson notes some Tannaitic texts—probably reflecting one view held by some Pharisees, possibly especially Shammaites—in which the only Gentiles to share the coming world would be those who converted to Judaism in this one.[146] A minority of Jews, when they had the power, were even ready to impose circumcision on Gentiles.[147]

2. Circumcision in a Missionary Setting

The issue of circumcision for Gentiles was bound to become a major issue in a missionary setting.[148] Diaspora Jews interested in building good relations with the Gentile community dared not be too strict in imposing circumcision on interested Gentiles, lest they alienate sympathizers.[149] Thus a range of views existed, though it was probably especially in the Diaspora that more liberal views (the need only to abandon idols and immorality) prevailed.[150]

One may compare Josephus’s account of two Jews with divergent perspectives courting the faith of a prominent ruler of Gentiles. After a Jewish merchant and another Jew brought both King Izates and his mother Helena to believe the truth of Judaism (Jos. Ant. 20.34–35), the king prepared to be circumcised (20.38). His mother and his tutor in Jewish faith urged him to avoid this, fearing the political fallout (20.39–42). Thus the Jewish merchant Ananias was happy to win people’s adherence to Judaism without making an issue of circumcision where this could prove problematic or risk provoking an anti-Jewish backlash.[151] True worship mattered more than circumcision, and God would understand if the king needed to forgo it.[152] A more conservative Jew, however, insisted that the king be circumcised if he wished to profess following the Jewish law (20.43–45). The king did accept it (20.46), and God protected him (20.48).

Some scholars suggest that some Jews may have regarded the king as a convert before circumcision;[153] most, however, would have accepted him only as a righteous God-fearer, not a member of God’s people.[154] On the other extreme, some nationalistic Jews wanted to forcibly circumcise foreigners among them; Josephus forbade this, emphasizing that circumcision must be a person’s choice.[155] Probably most Judean students of Torah would have insisted on circumcision for full converts; Diaspora Jews dealing more regularly with interested Gentiles may have often proved more lax, preferring to gain a little ground rather than risk a lot.[156]

Josephus’s moral in the story of King Izates may be that God rewards those who fulfill his commandments, but Josephus has the luxury of writing apologetic history after the fact; backlash against circumcisions in the Gentile world was a genuine danger. Jewish success at winning converts proved to be one of the chief Gentile complaints about Jewish people,[157] and some viewed circumcision as a form of castration.[158] Moreover, as the abundance of God-fearers proved, circumcision proved a barrier to the full participation of many; a form of Judaism that, like Paul’s movement, welcomed Gentiles into service to the one God without circumcision was bound to become eminently successful.

Uncircumcised Gentile adherents were common throughout the synagogues of the Diaspora (see comment on God-fearers at Acts 10:2). Acts suggests that this tolerance was greater in much of the Diaspora Jesus movement: perhaps utilizing the case of Cornelius as a precedent (Acts 11:3, 18), believers in Antioch began reaching Greeks (11:20). Because circumcision is not mentioned, it was presumably not an issue at that point; Gentiles were welcome as God-fearers, in any case. Whether they were considered full members of the covenant community is another question. In Galatians and Romans Paul offers a resounding affirmative. The Antiochene church seems to have preferred Paul’s view, even if it was less prepared to stand up to Jerusalem than was Paul (Gal 2:11–12).

Yet was it acceptable to abolish this biblical, divinely given requirement simply for the sake of missions strategy? A morally stringent monotheism would appeal to many Gentiles if stripped of its specifically ethnic component, but even Paul (who was no Marcionite) would not brook schism with Israel’s history and Scriptures. Still, neither was Paul merely welcoming Gentiles as God-fearers; without requiring them to change ethnically to join the Jewish people, he nevertheless treated his converts as full spiritual members of the covenant community.

To many observers, Paul’s approach must have seemed an unstable blending of the treatment for God-fearers and that for proselytes;[159] to many Jews, welcoming Gentiles as members of the covenant abandoned a basic pillar of Jewish religion—namely, Israel’s distinctiveness and covenant status with God. (Paul managed to preserve the distinctiveness of Israel’s covenant status but argued that it applied to the nation’s witness rather than to individual Jews’ salvation [cf. Rom 3:1–2; 9:4–8].)

Although Paul’s approach would make it easier to produce converts, the converts (and those who made them) could face other complications. In Galatians, Paul claims that “preaching circumcision” would prevent him from being persecuted (Gal 5:11), and he notes that the Jewish Christians seeking to circumcise his converts are doing so to avoid persecution (6:12).[160] Accommodating the expectations of other Jews would reduce the perception that Christians were lax and competing unethically with less sectarian Jewish approaches for Gentile converts. Given nationalistic sentiments rising in Jerusalem, it would reduce the pressure on the church there, and on Paul when he visited (Rom 15:31).

Circumcision would also ensure that the Gentile converts continued to be viewed as Jewish by the Romans, securing their status as an ethnic religion and reducing threats of persecution from the imperial authorities. Circumcisionist teaching continued to threaten some Diaspora churches in the Aegean (Phil 3:2; Titus 1:10–11, 14; 3:9; likely less relevantly, cf. 2 Cor 11:22). A significant problem, however, was that it also would reduce the range of potential converts, not all of whom cared for embracing a painful ritual or for becoming “Judeans.” Such ethnic conversion meant joining a group typically perceived as resident aliens, yet even when circumcised Christ-believers might not be welcome at some synagogues, in any event.[161]

Circumcision would probably be far less likely to reduce persecution from the Roman side, and hence be less of a temptation for Gentile Christians, after 70 C.E. Perhaps it became a temptation again when Christians needed cover from the imperial cult in Asia Minor in the 90s (especially when expelled from some synagogues),[162] but it does not appear in our sources from that period.

Luke’s interest in this issue is less pervasive in Acts (esp. in Acts 15:1, 5; not even mentioned in 15:6–29) than is Paul’s in his letters that most address it,[163] and the period in which he writes (as well as his audience) provides a plausible reason. If Luke writes to Diaspora churches with significant numbers of ethnic Gentiles after 70, circumcision is undoubtedly mainly a past issue; nevertheless, they will probably be willing to appreciate the price Paul and some others paid to maintain their freedom as Gentile converts to a messianic Jewish movement. This portrait of Paul (though historically confirmed in Galatians) would also appeal to Gentile readers in this period, as Josephus’s apologetic autobiography would have: “The Jews would have compelled them to be circumcised [τούτους περιτέμνεσθαι τῶν Ἰουδαίων ἀναγκαζόντων; cf. Gal 2:3; 6:12] as a condition of residence among them,” but Josephus insisted that they be welcomed without this requirement (Life 113 [LCL, 1:42, 44]).

3. Biblical Concerns

Several passages in Paul’s letters, notably Galatians, provide something of an outline concerning how Paul addressed circumcision theologically. It was a distinctive mark of the covenant for Jewish identity; but the blessings of Abraham, promised before his circumcision, were available to Gentiles who accepted Israel’s king (Jesus) and God, with or without circumcision (e.g., Rom 4:9–12; Gal 3:14).

Some others shared Paul’s understanding that circumcision’s value was primarily symbolic, sometimes going further than Paul (who did not object to circumcision for Jewish people, 1 Cor 7:18). Philo concurs that circumcision symbolizes removal of the passions,[164] but warns that we should not therefore neglect the physical ordinance (Migr. 92)—attesting that some of his more radical contemporaries did so (Migr. 90). Like Paul, the merchant Ananias (albeit for political reasons with a king), as already noted, argued that inward worship was more important than circumcision (Jos. Ant. 20.41; though there is no guarantee that he would have viewed such worship as joining Israel’s covenant). Most Jews, however, would have regarded views such as Paul’s as a threat to the preservation of Jewish identity’s uniqueness.[165] For proselytes and their status in Judaism, see comment on proselytes at Acts 6:5.

One can readily understand the logic of the circumcisionist faction;[166] Gen 17:10, 12–14, a foundational passage for the covenant, insisted that new members of Abraham’s household be circumcised.[167] It does not specify Gentile converts per se, but this seems to be assumed (34:14–17, 22) and becomes explicit under the law for sojourners (Exod 12:48) and later Jewish practice (Esth 8:17 LXX).[168]

Although Gentiles could (according to most views) be saved without circumcision (see comment on Acts 10:2), they could not join Israel without undertaking it.[169] Against this “old revelation, confirmed by centuries of history,” was “a new insight, given not through Jesus himself but in the course of an expanding, developing mission.”[170] Readers from religious traditions that stress unfolding tradition or progressive charismatic revelation might sympathize with those opposed to circumcision, but those from particularly bibliocentric traditions must sympathize with the difficulties faced by the circumcisionists here. What are the limits or standards for evaluating new revelation? And did not Jesus challenge more recent human traditions that had obscured the biblical message? Paul’s epistles provide a sophisticated response to this position (esp. Rom 4; 9; Gal 3–4), but his opponents undoubtedly mounted their case from texts such as those above.[171]

Paul ultimately opposed not circumcision (which remained appropriate for Jewish believers) but the imposition of circumcision on Gentile believers;[172] for Paul, the gift of the Spirit confirmed God’s acceptance of Gentiles into his covenant, obviating the need for a mere symbol of the covenant.[173] Paul’s experience of God giving Gentiles the Holy Spirit at their conversion (Gal 3:2) undoubtedly informed his reading of Scripture (here, cf. Acts 15:12). Paul’s opponents could counter Paul’s point without disagreeing with his experience; might not God offer this gift to encourage Gentile conversion, yet require them to be circumcised afterward to fulfill their conversion? For Paul, receiving God’s own Spirit was far more important than outward circumcision, a comparison no one could have questioned theologically; but as already noted, for Paul, the experience of the greater work of the Spirit, an inner circumcision (Rom 2:25–29; Phil 3:3; Col 2:11), obviates the need for that which merely symbolizes this goal (1 Cor 7:19; Gal 5:6; 6:15).[174] God had promised his people to set them apart by his Spirit in the end time;[175] that Paul’s Gentiles had received the Spirit without circumcision verified that they had already become part of God’s people.

The issue was probably small when Luke was writing after 70, but it certainly loomed large in earlier decades, and Luke’s own account gives us some insight into the depth of feelings on these issues. Circumcision was also the dividing point between Jew and Gentile in the controversy in Acts 11:2–3. Even Stephen accepted circumcision as the mark of the covenant (7:8), though it was invalid if the heart was uncircumcised (7:51) and the law disobeyed (7:53).

How would Jesus’s teaching come to bear on Gentiles being saved without circumcision? That the Jesus tradition nowhere expressly addresses the issue is one mark of the tradition’s careful preservation.[176] When Jesus spoke of the impossibility for a particular group to be saved, he spoke not of ethnic outsiders but of the economic elite (Luke 18:24–27). Yet without any gospel teaching to the contrary, most early Christians would probably assume that Jesus took the necessity of circumcision for granted, as did other Jews. (As already noted, however, affirming circumcision is not the same as mandating it for salvation.)

Jesus upheld the law’s permanent validity (Luke 16:17; cf. Matt 5:18). Paul did not attack the law (he obeyed it, contrary to false charges; Acts 21:24, 28), but he denied that it made one righteous before God (13:39), claiming that salvation came through the message of Christ (13:26). Jesus also taught that forgiveness depended on repentance through his name (Luke 24:47) and that people must receive the kingdom as a child would (18:17; cf. Mark 10:15).

IV. SEEKING RESOLUTION FROM JERUSALEM (15:2)

The account of controversy here would not surprise an ancient audience, but neither would the audience necessarily envision the strife as mild. Factions were an inevitable feature of public life, as is obvious, for example, in Cicero’s letters (e.g., Fam. 1.8.1–2). The followers of sages also competed in ancient cities, a competition often expressed in invective.[177] Greek and Roman urban society had long been litigious[178] and used judicial means to express personal enmity.[179] What makes the conflict significant here is not its character but its subject. Earlier in Luke-Acts, some conflicts arose for immature reasons (Luke 9:46, 49–50; 22:24); in this case, however, the gospel made conflict with the new teachers inevitable (cf. 12:51).

The decision to send Paul and Barnabas could have been influenced by prophecy, as is likely in Acts 13:2–3, but scholars who propose the influence of prophecy in the historical event behind 15:2 generally do so because of the “revelation” in Gal 2:2. There, however, Paul probably refers to the revelation of Christ to him resulting in his gospel (1:12, 16). More likely, the Antioch church sends Paul and Barnabas because they are former leaders of the Antioch church (Acts 13:1), have been at the forefront of the mission (Acts 13–14), and have shown themselves intellectually capable in the debate in 15:2. Others undoubtedly shared Paul’s concern for a circumcision-free mission, but Paul articulated its theology most forcefully.[180] Even in Luke’s portrayal, the uncircumcision gospel may have been practiced in Antioch before his arrival (11:20), and it had already received approval from the Jerusalem church, at least in the isolated case of Cornelius (11:3, 18).

Presumably, the “others” who accompanied Paul included, historically, Titus (Gal 2:1, 3), whether he was a Gentile convert from Paul’s travels or a long-term Antiochene (who had probably accompanied him on such travels). According to Paul, some of the Jerusalem church’s conservative faction (presumably those mentioned by Luke in Acts 15:5) wanted to circumcise Titus (Gal 2:1, 3). Historically, Paul and Barnabas together defended Paul’s gospel in Jerusalem (2:1, 9), with Paul as the dominant voice (2:2, 7).

Who were the “elders”? Some scholars propose that they replaced members of the Twelve as they left Jerusalem;[181] whatever the possible merit of such an idea on the historical level, Luke is emphatic in pairing the “apostles” and the “elders” here, probably as two distinct forms of leadership coexisting in the Jerusalem church.[182] It is plausible that the elders replaced the Seven when they were scattered (see comment on the elders at Acts 11:30 and esp. at 14:23). It is possible that the elders exercise local leadership (like elders in other locations) and the apostles exercise broader authority (cf. also “rulers and elders” in Acts 4:5, 8). The church knew that national and local leaders coexisted in Jerusalem in earlier times (2 Kgs 23:1; 2 Chr 34:8, 29) and in their own day (Luke 20:1; 22:52, 66). For reasons the leaders were called “elders,” see comment on Acts 14:23.

Whatever the specific relationship between the apostles and elders, the apostles did not exercise sole authority in the church; as in 6:2–6, 13:1, and 14:23, we see leadership spread out rather than limited to one group. One may compare the Dead Sea Scrolls, where priests ruled some matters, “overseers” ruled others, a council of twelve (or fifteen) leaders exercised authority, and the entire membership of the community could approve public decisions.[183] From a literary perspective, it is also significant that 15:2 follows 14:23 so closely; that Paul must answer to the elders in Jerusalem is ironic in that Paul has just been appointing elders for new localities in 14:23. That is, despite the opinions of some in the Jerusalem church, Paul was no less an authority (an “apostle,” 14:4, 14) than the Twelve.

This passage illustrates that until the Judean-Roman war,[184] Diaspora churches continued to respect the Jerusalem church as the mother church; this was clear in Paul’s appeals to the Jerusalem apostles (e.g., 1 Cor 9:5; 15:5, 7), the wide circulation of letters attributed to James and Jude, and Paul’s need to nuance the respect given them (Gal 2:2, 9, 11–14). Like Diaspora synagogues, the churches of the Diaspora would have been formally independent of any direct or hierarchical control from Jerusalem; nevertheless, the opinions of the leaders there mattered to the Diaspora churches.[185]

Jesus had commanded his “witnesses”—certainly including the Twelve, those whom Luke usually calls the “apostles”—to testify to the ends of the earth (Acts 1:2, 8; Luke 24:33, 47–48). That most of these apostles remain in Jerusalem in 48 C.E. may reflect their devotion to establishing Jerusalem first (cf. Acts 3:26). Luke does not denigrate this devotion but may envision a measure of misunderstanding on their part (see comment on Acts 1:8). Though Gerhardsson’s original presentation of the apostles as heads of a rabbinic school in Jerusalem is too rigid,[186] the apostles were guarantors of the Jesus tradition (cf. 1:8, 21–22), and their remaining at a centralized location made sense. After 70 C.E., however, Luke’s decentralizing message (cf. Acts 7) had the clear retrospective advantage.

b. Received by the Churches (15:3–4)

The delegates journey to Jerusalem; they are received joyfully among the other Diaspora churches and also received in Jerusalem. In both cases, they testify of what God has done, just as Peter did to persuade the Jerusalem church earlier (11:4–17) and as all of them will do more fully soon afterward (15:7–9, 12).

I. REPORTING IN PHOENICIA AND SAMARIA (15:3)

That the delegates were “sent forth” (προπεμφθέντες) by the church undoubtedly means that it provided for them on their journey. The term προπέμπω can refer to conducting on their way in some sense those departing (Acts 20:38; 21:5; cf. 1 Esd 4:47; 1 Macc 12:4), but often the term includes the component of financial support as well (Rom 15:24; 1 Cor 16:6, 11; 2 Cor 1:16; Titus 3:13; 3 John 6),[187] which makes more sense here. Given a journey of 250 miles ahead of the envoys, such a provision made good sense.[188] The Antioch church probably had done the same for Paul and Barnabas’s journey to Cyprus, though this is not explicitly stated (cf. Acts 13:3).

Phoenicia was on the way to Jerusalem, and Samaria could be as well if one chose to travel inland from Caesarea rather than along the coastal route followed in 8:40; 9:32–43 (from which one could journey southeast to Jerusalem at Joppa).[189] Jewish churches had been established in Phoenicia during the same wave of Hellenist emigration that founded the church in Antioch (11:19); by now, however, the churches in these cosmopolitan areas had undoubtedly evangelized Gentiles as well. Samaria, too, was evangelized very early (8:1, 5–25; 9:31) and included a mixed Samaritan and Gentile population, and Samaritans, once embraced by Jerusalem, may have felt concerned about rising ethnic tensions and increasing nationalism in the Jerusalem church. They would be happy to hear of the conversion (ἐπιστροφήν, 15:3) of the Gentiles—that is, the report of them “turning” (ἐπιστρέφειν, 14:15) to the Lord (cf. 9:35; 11:21; 15:19; 26:18–20), as Israel ought to (3:19). Traveling through Samaria would require accepting hospitality there, though Jews and Samaritans normally did not share free hospitality with one another (though lodging could be available; cf. Luke 9:56). Faith in Jesus had, however, created a common bond; the situation had moved a long way beyond the resistance and resentment reported in Luke 9:52–55.

Recounting God’s works is important within the narrative world of Luke-Acts and provides the model for Luke’s own recounting.[190] Storytelling—for example, of heroic exploits (Xen. Cyr. 1.2.1)—was a major form of informal traditioning; historically, such recounting of Paul’s mission probably provides much of Luke’s source for Paul’s ministry.

Luke’s use of ἐκδιηγέομαι, which occurs nowhere else in Luke-Acts (or in the NT or the Apostolic Fathers) except in Acts 13:41,[191] may offer an allusion to 13:41 by way of contrast: unbelievers did not believe when truth was narrated to them (13:41), but Paul’s audience (and Luke’s own ideal audience) would (15:3).[192] Whether or not Luke intends a stark contrast with 13:41, he clearly values the practice of recounting; note the cognate verb in Acts 9:27; 12:17; Luke 8:39; 9:10.

The responses to the reports portray the Diaspora churches as supportive of Paul and his mission[193] (though the support in Phoenicia and Samaria might not impress believers in Jerusalem); some intellectual members of Luke’s audience might also recall the Greek dictum that the unity of friendship offers happiness.[194] Luke often reports similar responses to God’s activity—namely, rejoicing or praising God (e.g., Luke 2:20; 5:25–26; 10:17, 21; 13:17; 18:43; 19:37; 24:52; Acts 8:8)—including to reports of his works (Acts 11:18; 21:20).[195] An emphatic phrase such as “rejoice greatly” or “great joy” is common enough,[196] but Luke uses it in describing the response to noteworthy divine activity (Luke 2:10; 24:52; cf. 10:21). Paul and Barnabas receive the same opportunity to share in Jerusalem (Acts 15:4), though there Luke can only report that they were greeted with (apparently respectful) silence (15:12) and an objection (15:5; though cf. earlier Gal 1:24).

II. REPORTING IN JERUSALEM (15:4)

Paul and Barnabas report what God has done through them, as they have in Antioch (14:27) and en route (15:3). Whereas Luke recounts a joyful response to their testimonies in Phoenicia and Samaria (15:3), however, his only specific narration of a response in Jerusalem to the report of God’s acts is some individuals’ vocal complaint (15:5; cf. better 15:12). In both 15:4 and 15:12 Luke emphasizes that they report about God’s confirming works, which can cast the objection of 15:5 as missing the point.

Paul recounts stories in the general assembly (15:4),[197] but a meeting with leaders alone may come afterward (15:6), where they will again report, perhaps with different examples or more fully (or perhaps to some who did not hear them in this venue earlier).

According to Gal 2:2, Paul met with the apostles and perhaps elders (perhaps corresponding to the smaller session in Acts 15:6; his goal even in Acts 15:2) and was uncertain what the outcome would be. Galatians 2 does not mention the participation of the entire church but seems to presuppose it at some point in addition to the private meeting of Gal 2:2; the apostles may be viewed as those merely with reputation (2:6 with 2:9), but they are certainly not the “false brothers” of 2:4.[198]

Acts is not quite clear when the session becomes private; perhaps the “private” session of Gal 2 occurs as part of their reception in Acts 15:4, providing Paul the assurance of the leaders’ support before the public meeting begins. Luke’s abbreviating technique makes it unclear where the transition takes place (or if the assembly is present, but not active in the discussion, throughout—assuming one place could hold them; cf. 15:12).[199] But 15:6 seems the likeliest point, since the church leaders gather there. The session of the leaders then may have been opened again to the entire assembly (15:22). We need not in any case postulate conflicting sources to explain the confusion; this would not be the only passage in which Luke sacrifices clarity for conciseness.

What is most important in the narrative’s structure is that the missionaries’ testimonies (15:4, 12) frame the debate and Peter’s speech (15:7–11). Because Peter’s speech depends on God’s direct acts in the Cornelius narrative (15:7–9), the supplementing of these new miracles attesting God’s favor on the Gentile mission drives home a common point: God has taken salvation history to a new level in Jesus and is confirming his acceptance of uncircumcised Gentiles through signs and wonders. This might be difficult to accept for those with biblical convictions about circumcising Gentiles;[200] but the same Bible taught them that God acts in history, and these testimonies came from the same Spirit they experienced, and from one of their chief leaders (Peter). The scriptural foundation will come afterward and clinch the case (15:15–20).

c. Insistence on Circumcision (15:5)

The stark terms in which Luke presents the Pharisaic believers’ insistence (δεῖ) may suggest an “escalation of tension” in the narrative[201] or at least escalation of a sense of what is at stake. That early members of the Christian movement had freedom to debate the issue need not surprise us. Neither the Sanhedrin (cf. 23:7) nor scribal schools (cf., e.g., rabbinic pericopes about the houses of Shammai and Hillel) achieved consensus on all points. Seneca the Younger often disagrees with fellow Stoics on minor issues (Ep. Lucil. 117.6), and another Stoic warns that students must examine what they are taught lest they inadvertently admit error (Mus. Ruf. 1, p. 36.6–7). Even some earlier Greek military sessions allowed all to express their views (though some, by planting supporters to speak out, might sway the outcome; Xen. Anab. 1.3.13).[202] At the same time, Luke’s portrayal of the orderly conduct of the meeting (there is no explicit mention of interruption here; contrast comment on Acts 2:37) gives it at least the semblance of the more restrained of ancient meetings. Readers of ancient orators will contrast the political rivalry, positioning, and mutual recriminations in the public assembly of classical Athens or the courts of Rome (or even other assemblies in Acts).[203]

Luke displays an intra-Jewish theological debate in which Pharisees offer “dominant Jewish culture rhetoric” while Luke counters with “Jewish contraculture rhetoric,” which claims to uphold Jewish values while challenging the dominant culture.[204] Rhetoricians were trained to be able to argue either side of an issue (e.g., Cic. Or. Brut. 14.46), and it is noteworthy that historians often provided opposing speeches to display their rhetorical skill. That rhetorical display is not, however, Luke’s primary concern is evident from the brief line afforded the opposition here.

I. PHARISAIC BELIEVERS

Describing the Pharisees as a “sect” (αἵρεσις) need not be pejorative (as in Acts 24:5, 14; 28:22; Gal 5:20; 2 Pet 2:1); it was an appropriate term for a philosophic school or movement (Epict. Diatr. 2.19.20; Macrob. Comm. 2.14.6; Hierocles p. 37.8, 10),[205] including Sadducees, Pharisees, and Essenes, and a revolutionary movement.[206] “Sect” might be closer in sense to a political party than to a modern denomination.[207] See further comment on Acts 5:17; 24:5. Their interest in the law of Moses, echoed here, was renowned.[208]

The inclusion of Pharisees in the movement indicates that the Jerusalem church had bridged a sociological hurdle, although the Pharisees remained a minority within the church (which, in Luke’s view of the movement’s size, outnumbered Josephus’s estimate of Pharisees, in any case). Aside from the different geographical bases of Pharisaism and the Nazarenes, the Pharisees seem to have been primarily an urban movement[209] whereas the Jesus movement started as a primarily rural movement that began to become urbanized shortly after the resurrection[210] and only later penetrated into the rural areas of the Diaspora.[211] The Pharisees were centered in Jerusalem rather than in Galilee;[212] their successors settled in Yavneh, which was also in Judea.

Luke is not denouncing Pharisees wholesale. In the common world of intra-Jewish polemic, many Jewish sources condemned the Pharisees,[213] and so, even apart from traditions of conflicts between Jesus and rival teachers, we should not be surprised to find such condemnations in many first-century Jewish Christian works.[214] Luke, however, has a far more nuanced portrayal of the Pharisees, with both positive and negative qualities. (Perhaps because he is removed from the world of Judean politics, they do not constitute a threat to his primary audience.) If the Christian Pharisees here are negative, Luke includes a much more positive Christian Pharisee in Acts 23:6 (even if this is the only place in Acts where Paul, who in most other texts is preaching in the Diaspora, embraces the title).

The distinctive Christian belief in the resurrection comported well with Pharisaic eschatology; but whereas, for Paul, messianic Pharisaism invited a belief that a new era had dawned, with a new way of bringing in Gentiles, not all Christian Pharisees embraced the same full implications.[215] Luke’s portrayal of Pharisees in the Jerusalem church may be indirectly supported by Josephus’s probable portrait of Pharisaic sympathizers of James, the scrupulous leader of the Jerusalem church (21:18–20). When James was executed by the (Sadducean) high priest Ananus, it was those “meticulous in the laws” who protested (Jos. Ant. 20.200–201); Josephus elsewhere applies this description to the Pharisees (War 2.162; Life 191) and to scribes who were probably Pharisees (War 1.648; Ant. 19.332; 20.43).[216] Josephus does not directly testify to the existence of Christian Pharisees, but his reports do suggest that the barrier between the Christian and the Pharisaic movements was probably less serious under James than it had been in the accounts about Jesus preserved in gospel tradition.[217]

The Pharisees were not objecting to the content of the missionaries’ testimony (Acts 15:4), though there is no explicit report of joy in 15:4 as there was among Diaspora churches in 15:3 (possibly, though not certainly, suggesting some discomfort already with Paul’s work; cf. 21:21).[218] They had no problem acknowledging that God had brought Gentiles to the light, but they felt, on the basis of Scripture, that God now expected them to make these Christian “God-fearers” into full proselytes[219] (whether for salvation, as in 15:1, or simply to be full members of God’s people).[220]

The Pharisees may have accepted Cornelius as an exception clearly marked by the Holy Spirit (11:15–17); perhaps God made an exception for a centurion the way many allowed for foreign rulers (e.g., Jos. Ant. 20.17–95, esp. 20.18). But allowing an exception was not meant to create a precedent, much less a model (contrast Acts 15:7–9).[221] They may have considered themselves moderates, accepting a divine sign in Cornelius’s case (which their non-Christian colleagues would have rejected) but not willing to suspend biblical requirements in other cases.[222] These Pharisees in the church have adopted some of the same attitudes as the Pharisees often showed in the Gospel—ambiguously open to Jesus (more so, certainly, than in Matthew or John) but often imperceptive with regard to God’s truth.[223]

II. ARGUMENTS AND POWER

The insistence of these Pharisees highlights the problem of centralization (cf. 7:2–3, 9–10, 33); to what degree should the vote of the local church in Jerusalem, influenced by local concerns, shape the future of other local churches struggling with different, often conflicting concerns? Did the mother church define the basis for unity? For Luke’s emphasis on continuity, the approval of the mother church is important.[224] In God’s sovereign plan,[225] however, the consensus of the Jerusalem church also proved pleasing to the Spirit (15:28), preserving the basic unity and continuity of the church (from Luke’s perspective on the final consensus) until Jerusalem’s destruction.

Conservative rhetoric has an advantage where nationalism is emphasized as a virtue (as liberal rhetoric has an advantage where the prime virtue is tolerance). This was normally the situation during international hostilities; for example, revolting mercenaries claimed that anyone failing to take a hard line against Carthage was not an ally, and they portrayed those favoring a different position as traitors (Polyb. 1.80.3–4).[226] Under these circumstances, those who pleaded that the Carthaginian prisoners be spared were themselves stoned to death as traitors (1.80.9–10). Such conservatism was growing in Jerusalem under corrupt Roman administrations (as well as exploitation by Rome’s aristocratic mediators).

Luke’s addition to the circumcision requirement, “command them to obey the Mosaic law,” was probably implicit in the acceptance of circumcision but is also spelled out in some of the ancient Jewish sources regarding proselytism.[227] Shammaites in particular may have been expected to stress law keeping for proselytes up front (later tradition, at least, claims that Hillel allowed a more indirect and gradual approach to winning proselytes).[228]

3. Peter and the Missionaries Invoke God’s Acts (15:6–12)

After the apostles and the elders have debated the question of circumcising Gentiles (Acts 15:6–7a), Peter recounts the incident with Cornelius, where God welcomed Gentiles without circumcision (15:7–11). Paul and Barnabas follow this reminder by demonstrating that God is continuing to welcome Gentiles, confirming this welcome, as he did in the case of Cornelius, with signs and wonders (15:12).[229]

a. Leaders’ Discussion (15:6–7a)

Although we have placed 15:6 with the following context (15:7–11) because it belongs to that scene, it is also part of the setting of the discussion proper (and hence related to 15:1–5). Whether or not others could listen in (cf. Gal 2:2), the level of debate moved from the church as a whole to its leadership in Acts 15:6.

The Pharisees’ question in 15:5 went beyond the testimonies and addressed the root of the debate that had brought the Antiochene delegation to begin with (15:1–2). The public question required public resolution.[230] Questions were addressed differently in antiquity according to the constitution followed (e.g., monarchy or oligarchy). In Hellenistic cities that followed the Athenian democratic model, such conflicts had to be addressed by a gathering of the ἐκκλησία, the civic assembly. Speakers would then argue the case from their various perspectives, employing deliberative speeches to persuade the audience, ideally in the end silencing στάσις (discord) with concord or harmony (see comment on Acts 15:25).[231] Such assemblies would hear witnesses and official documents, as here. Luke thus portrays the church “as a self-governing entity, a subculture in the Roman Empire”[232]—that is, acting as one would expect for a community of resident aliens (such as a synagogue community) with permission to follow their own laws so long as they did not conflict with Roman law. Luke’s apologetic here is positive: the church follows their own customs, but their “procedures [are] not unlike those recognized in the larger culture to be proper.”[233] In the Greek and sometimes Roman ideal, everyone should be allowed to be heard; when someone liked by the crowds was forcibly thrust aside rather than allowed to speak, this could anger the crowds (Livy 3.45.5–6).

Whatever time for speaking belonged to the entire assembly (Acts 15:4–5, 23), however, the leaders play the primary role in 15:6, perhaps corresponding to Paul’s private meeting of Gal 2:2. The “apostles” and the “elders” function together as leaders of the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:2, 4, 6, 22–23; 16:4), probably with different but complementary forms of authority (see comment on Acts 15:2).[234] Here they probably function as the decision-making body of the larger assembly (the church, apostles, and elders of 15:4, 23).[235]

The “apostles” need not appear after this passage (15:6, 22–23; except in a retrospective note in 16:4), because they have fulfilled their primary literary function for Luke’s narrative; “their role in securing the new movement’s link to the past was more or less complete.”[236] Although Luke emphasizes the “apostles” here, it is not necessary to assume that all the Twelve remained in Jerusalem at this point. Paul mentions only Peter, James, and John (Gal 2:9), but we have precisely the same difference of focus in the meeting depicted in Gal 1:18–19 and Acts 9:27. Paul probably focused on the primary leaders whereas Luke generalized to the entire body for which the same leaders stood.

b. Peter Invokes God’s Example (15:7b–11)

Like James (15:13), Peter was a speaker whose character was known and trusted by the Jerusalem assembly.[237] Citizen assemblies were predisposed to hear speakers who would uphold the citizen body’s common concerns (τὰ κοινά, Aeschines Tim. 29). Paul, conversely, offers more eyewitness testimony than argument in this passage (though, historically, he was probably forced to do more than this, Gal 2:5–6); first-time speakers before an assembly (and those who spoke too frequently) could stir prejudice against their own positions (Rhet. Alex. 29, 1437a.35–38), requiring defensive explanations (1437b.11–13).

Various leaders in an assembly could step forward to offer opinions (e.g., Philost. Hrk. 30.2–3), though recognizing one in supreme command prevented confusion (30.3). A speech summary as brief as this one defies complete rhetorical analysis, but the requisite components remain. Peter begins by establishing his ēthos, or credibility; rhetors could use this approach as a reminder even to a favorably disposed audience. In Acts 15:7–9 we find mixed narrative (narratio) and proofs (probatio).[238] In 15:10 Peter resorts to comparison, also a standard rhetorical technique. Rhetorical critics recognize the speech to be deliberative,[239] as expected for a “town assembly.”

Peter’s advocacy would have been particularly helpful at the council, considering his historical association with the Israel mission (Gal 2:8) and Lukan association with the Twelve, whose base had remained in Jerusalem.[240] It was good rhetorical technique to emphasize the support of unexpected voices, which carried more weight because they were considered more objective.[241] The support of Peter and James would thus carry weight both with the Jerusalem church and with Luke’s audience.[242]

Some ancients also wrote of notable reconciliations between famous men as a rhetorical topic (Aul. Gel. 12.8). Thus in Acts the leader of the Jerusalem apostles goes to the Gentiles before Paul does (Acts 10–11), and 15:7–11 displays elements known to cohere with Pauline theology.[243] Peter’s speech here is also consistent with Luke’s description of his defense of the “uncircumcised” earlier (11:3); anything that could undermine the decision of 11:18 would challenge Peter’s testimony and honor (though probably few would have wished to charge this explicitly). “Cleansing” (15:9) does allude back to Peter’s vision within the story world (10:15). His portrayal is thus useful to Luke theologically.[244]

I. TRADITION?

Granted that Peter’s advocacy proves useful theologically, would Peter historically have taken a stand for the Gentiles? On one historical occasion reported by Paul, Peter plainly supported the Gentiles personally but was unwilling to stand for them publicly (Gal 2:12).[245] At the council, too, Paul probably had to carry more of the argument than one would guess merely from Luke’s emphasis (cf. 2:6), though ultimately both Peter and James did affirm Paul and Barnabas’s Gentile mission (2:9). But Paul regarded Peter’s later compliance with the conservative faction as a hypocritical reversal of his earlier commitment (2:9–12), suggesting that Peter had made such a commitment and that Paul had counted on it. If the Antioch Gentiles were not observing the food customs agreed on in Acts 15:20 or if those who came from James held themselves to a more rigorous personal standard of culinary “holiness,”[246] the breech over table fellowship in Gal 2:12 is understandable, as is Peter’s attempt to keep peace with the Jerusalem church. Paul had what he believed was a higher agenda (and in this case, history turned out on Paul’s side in terms of the future direction of the church).

In this passage, Peter’s soteriology sounds like Paul’s letters in speaking of salvation by faith,[247] though it also bears resemblance to another public advocate of peace.[248] Proper prosopopoeia demanded representing each writer’s own style,[249] and we might have expected Luke to conform this speech more to earlier Petrine speeches (cf. Acts 2:38) than to Paul (13:38–39).[250] Our only external source for Petrine theology, however, also mentions faith fairly frequently (1 Pet 1:5, 7, 8, 9, 21; 2:6, 7; 5:9; cf. 2 Pet 1:1, 5), including for salvation (1 Pet 1:9) and in a text also used by Paul (1 Pet 2:6; Rom 9:33; 10:11).[251] Some themes may have been more common in early Christianity than scholarly tradition typically recognizes. Historians commonly repeated speeches at major events, often fleshing out themes known or believed to have been treated on those occasions.[252] Luke has certainly not fleshed out this speech for his one-volume monograph; it is quite short by ancient standards for influential speeches given in assemblies.[253] Whatever his precise historical sources, Luke’s portrayal is strategic from a literary and theological perspective.

II. RECALLING THE CORNELIUS INCIDENT (15:7–9)

On “men,” see comment on Acts 2:14; on “brothers,” see comment on Acts 9:17. In Acts 15:7–9, Peter alludes back to the Cornelius story,[254] just as Jewish and Gentile teachers and lawyers often made arguments based on precedent.[255] They could make arguments from their own example,[256] though here Peter argues from God’s works rather than his own; appeals to eyewitness testimony were also effective rhetorically (1:8). For “you know,” cf. also 10:38. Peter’s use of ἀρχαίων need not mean the movement’s very beginning (which Cornelius’s version was not) but simply years earlier (though, historically, probably less than ten years, potentially as recent as four) than the present speech.[257]

Peter appeals to God’s having made a choice among them (15:7); such choices (likewise 1:2, 24) stemmed not from the called person’s personal merit.[258] Peter emphasizes this choice because being the chosen agent makes him a reliable and firsthand witness to the events he has already defended (11:4–17). “By my mouth” is idiomatic (with the Semitic emphasis on identifying the body part),[259] but it may allude specifically to Luke’s wording in 10:34, where Peter began his speech by “opening his mouth.” God speaking “through” one’s mouth placed one among the prophets (1:16; 3:18, 21; 4:25).

The tradition, referred to here (15:8), that the Holy Spirit’s involvement revealed the inclusion of Gentiles in Christ’s family also appears elsewhere in early Christian theology, though sometimes with a different emphasis.[260] The particular incident in view here, however, is the Gentiles receiving the gift of the Spirit (10:44). That God gave some Gentiles the Holy Spirit “just as with us” (15:8) implies that Peter alludes to their experience accompanied by praise in unknown languages (2:4), as in earlier comparisons (10:45–47; 11:15).[261]

That God alone knew human hearts (15:8) was a commonplace (see comment on Acts 1:24, another occasion of divine choice). From this follows the conviction that God alone can arbitrate hidden matters (1 Sam 16:7; Philo Spec. Laws 3.52); God could “testify” to people’s hearts (as in Acts 13:22). This meant that God could testify that the Gentile converts had faith and that he had cleansed their “hearts” (15:9); the gift of the Holy Spirit conclusively demonstrated this (11:15–18). They received the Spirit the same way that the Jewish believers had (10:46–47; cf. 2:4).

The “cleansing” and lack of distinction (15:9) provide an allusion to unclean foods in Peter’s vision (10:14–15); as grounds for “clean” table fellowship proved an issue in that setting (11:3), they do so here as well (cf. 15:20). If God had scuttled Leviticus’s distinctions regarding food in Peter’s vision, God had thereby also abolished the distinction between ethnically clean and unclean peoples that those lines were meant to uphold (Lev 11:44–45; 20:26).[262] The new means of cleansing was by faith (Acts 15:9; cf. 26:18; for moral cleanness, also 18:6; 20:26), which had come through Peter’s message (15:7).[263]

Concepts of ritual purity were widespread in the ancient Mediterranean world (see comment on Acts 2:38), but teaching about spiritual purification would not have been unintelligible (see comment on Acts 10:15–16).[264] Educated members of Luke’s audience would have appreciated the idea of spiritual cleansing (though not everyone who affirmed spiritual cleansing saw it as entailing a denial of ritual purification). Greek philosophers used similar expressions for moral purity or purification[265] (also for the purity of the heavenly deities and the soul).[266] People’s souls are “purified” (ἐκκεκαθαρμένοις) by philosophy (Xen. Symp. 1.4). One could “purify” oneself from moral faults.[267] Greeks who practiced cultic purity sometimes also acknowledged links with moral purity of a sort.[268]

The idea of purifying the heart is implied already in Israel’s Scriptures (note the “pure heart” in Ps 51:10 [LXX 50:12]; cf. Ezek 36:25–26); sometimes it appears in exhortation (Sir 38:10; cf. 2 Cor 7:1; Jas 4:8), but at other times only God could accomplish it (cf. Ps 51:10; Prov 20:9; Heb 9:14).[269] In Jewish circles, martyrs who served as a “propitiation” for Israel helped “purify” the holy land (4 Macc 17:21–22).[270] Appealing to an audience with a good Hellenistic education, Josephus includes in the Essene initiation oath the promise to keep one’s soul pure (ψυχήν . . . καθαράν) from desiring unholy gain (War 2.141); the Qumran scrolls themselves[271] expect purification from sin by the eschatological holy spirit, compared to purifying water (1QS IV, 20–22). For some Jewish thinkers, spiritual, inward purity mattered more than the physical variety (Ps.-Phoc. 228). Peter might contrast here the mere external purification involved in traditional Jewish proselyte baptism (on which see comment on Acts 2:38). That “faith” is the cause of the Gentiles’ cleansing fits some other early Christian theology; as in Paul’s letters (cf. Rom 1:5; 3:9, 29; 9:30; Gal 2:15–17; 3:8, 14; Eph 2:8–11; possibly 1 Pet 2:6–10), justification by faith appears especially in the context of Gentiles’ access to Israel’s God (Acts 15:7–8; cf. 13:46–48).

III. TESTING GOD BY YOKING GENTILES (15:10)

Since God has revealed his own view toward Gentiles being converted without circumcision (Acts 15:7–9), God’s people ought to embrace these converted Gentiles as well. Because Jewish law recognized the category of concessions to sinfulness,[272] it was understood that God had accommodated human weakness even in the law, and often settled for less than the ideal. Thus, for example, a well-known second-century sage declared that people ought to forgo meat and wine, in view of the temple’s destruction, “but we must not impose decrees on the congregation, or even on ourselves, which the majority could not endure.”[273]

“Testing” a deity (15:10) expressed unbelief (Xen. Cyr. 7.2.17).[274] God refused to discriminate spiritually between Jews and Gentiles (Acts 15:9), and if Jewish Christians rebelled against God’s revealed will, they would be “testing” God as their ancestors in the wilderness had. In the LXX, testing God is no small crime but involves unbelief and rebellion.[275] In Acts 15, it also implies a dramatic sin, recalling the behavior of Ananias and Sapphira; by falsely claiming wholehearted commitment, they tested God to see if he really knew human hearts (5:9). Here, too, Jerusalem believers test God by false commitment because they themselves broke the law (cf. their ancestors in the generation of the law, 7:39, 41–43, 53). This was the charge of hypocrisy (cf. Gal 2:13), of laying on others a burden one cannot or will not lift by oneself (Luke 11:46).[276] The infinitive ἐπιθεῖναι is epexegetic, showing that their placing a yoke on Gentiles is how they are putting God to the test.[277] If, by pouring out his Spirit on Cornelius’s household (Acts 15:7–9; and perhaps also by other signs; cf. 15:4, 12), God has already revealed his plan to embrace the Gentiles, the believers rebel against his will by hindering this purpose.[278]

Peter thus addresses believers here the way Jesus in the Gospel addressed the law teachers: some weighed others down with burdens they could not bear themselves (Luke 11:46).[279] When two oxen pulled a plow, the normal plowbeam was extended by another pole linked to their yoke.[280] Sometimes people bore yokes,[281] though yokes are more commonly associated with animals. A yoke around the neck[282] symbolizes servitude,[283] often in the political sense,[284] following the metaphor of an animal’s labor.[285] When defeated Roman soldiers were forced to pass under a yoke, some regarded this humiliation as more severe than death (Appian Hist. rom. 3.4.6).[286] Sometimes the image applied to Israel’s subjugation to the nations (1 En. 103:11), which would be relevant if some in Jerusalem interpret Gentiles’ conversion through the grid of their subjugation (Isaiah includes both sorts of images).

Although much of our Jewish evidence postdates Luke’s era, its coherence in those sources (and with Luke’s usage) suggests that it reflects widespread earlier opinion. Jewish texts often speak of the divine yoke,[287] including the “yoke of the law” or “of the commandments,”[288] of God’s yoke (his discipline and rule, Pss. Sol. 7:9), and of the yoke of his kingdom, often in relation to the commandments.[289] (Perhaps relevant here, later rabbis spoke of Gentile converts accepting the yoke of the commandments.)[290] Although yokes could represent difficult burdens (e.g., Sir 40:1), they could also be a positive image: Jewish people embraced the law as God’s gift (see comment on Acts 2:38), and the “yoke” of Torah was generally viewed as a pleasant exemption from worldly cares rather than as a burden.[291] By itself, “yoke” is not negative; Peter’s mention of an “unbearable burden,” however, is.[292] A Gentile would, of course, normally be welcome to take on more commandments than were required;[293] but a Gentile convert might find the array of Jewish laws more difficult than someone who had grown up with them.[294]

Given Acts 15’s evocation of themes that also figure heavily in Galatians, it may be that both 15:10 and Gal 5:1 refer to the law when applied as a legalistic standard; it is possible that a contrast with this abuse of the law also applies to Matt 11:29–30.[295] Christians of following generations spoke of the yoke of Christ’s grace (1 Clem. 16.7) and of bearing as much as possible of the Lord’s yoke (Did. 6.2) as well as of the new law of Christ freeing one from compulsion (Barn. 2.6). Perhaps the problem was human inability to keep law (as in the “unbearable burden” for Gentiles here) until written in their hearts (Jer 31:32–33; cf. Rom 8:2–4). For Luke, this new covenant written on the heart has undoubtedly begun in Christ (Luke 22:20), but as for Paul, a new covenant written on the heart may be expressed differently than its predecessor (2 Cor 3:3) without abrogating God’s covenant with Israel (Luke 1:72; Acts 3:25).

When used figuratively, slavery usually entailed subjection to negative elements.[296] Subjection to tyrants[297] or other peoples constituted political “slavery.”[298] Greek thinkers quite often warned against being enslaved by false ideologies[299] or passions.[300] Those who submit to human rather than divine law are under a yoke of slavery (Dio Chrys. Or. 80.7). Jewish writers influenced by Hellenism repeated the demand that people avoid slavery to passions;[301] other Jewish thinkers also recognized that one should not be enslaved to sin or the evil impulse.[302] Readers of Paul’s letters are familiar with his teaching of freedom from sin (Rom 6:18, 22) and from the law’s condemnation (7:3; 8:2; Gal 4:30–5:1; 5:13).[303]

IV. SAVED THE SAME WAY (15:11)

Peter appears to argue that since Jewish believers could not carry the full yoke, why should they expect Gentile believers to do so (Acts 15:10)? Comparison was a standard rhetorical technique.[304] One could use such comparisons to place one’s jurors on the same moral level as oneself (Rhet. Alex. 4, 1427a.37–40, esp. 39) or to invite hearers to examine their own hearts vis-à-vis those they thought most wicked.[305] The question also functions like a rhetorical objection,[306] a common form in oral and even written argument.[307]

Johnson reads χάριτος as “gift,” and the following genitive as epexegetic, hence, the “gift that is the Lord Jesus.”[308] Although it is pointless to quibble over grammatical nuances that Koine speakers may not have distinguished, Luke does know the use of the term “grace” most familiar to modern readers from the Pauline epistles (Acts 13:43; 14:3; 18:27; especially in Paul’s teaching in 20:24, 32);[309] it also appears in non-Pauline literature (Heb 2:9; 4:16; 12:15; 13:9; Jude 4; probably John 1:14, 16–17), including 1 Peter (1:10, 13).[310] That Luke shared much of Paul’s perspective about grace is clear in some of the special Lukan parables (Luke 15:21–24; 18:9–14) and probably implicit in some material he also borrows from the common tradition (18:17; Mark 10:15).

In secular classical and Hellenistic Greek, χάρις frequently or even especially involves benefactions in relationships[311] and hence benefactors’ “generosity”;[312] indeed, “by the first century AD χάρις had become the central motif of the Hellenistic reciprocity system.”[313] Philo’s use of the term also reflects Hellenistic benefaction language,[314] as does Josephus’s.[315] Here salvation is by God’s generosity or gift (cf. also Acts 13:43; 18:27; 20:24, 32). Perhaps more relevant than the epigraphic use by itself is the LXX use, generally to translate the Hebrew חן.[316] If early Christian writers thought of the cognate verb χαρίζομαι,[317] its nuances of giving something as a gracious favor, or forgiving a debt or a wrong, would also be relevant.

The language here sounds Pauline, but it was likely used more broadly in the early church.[318] Whatever Luke’s source for the precise words, Paul does presuppose Peter’s knowledge and approval of his view (Gal 2:7, 9, 14; and, if spoken on the occasion, perhaps 2:15–16). It is only shared table fellowship (which Paul regards as a consistent implication of the teaching), when such a practice could cause others to stumble (a Pauline concern on other issues, Rom 14:13; 1 Cor 8:9), where they explicitly differed (and we know even this only for a single occasion, not necessarily on a regular basis; Gal 2:12–14).

c. Paul and Barnabas Recount Signs (15:12)

That Paul would have appealed to signs in his ministry to validate the Gentile mission, as here, fits what we know from Paul’s own letters (Gal 3:5; esp. Rom 15:18–19).[319] Paul’s own account of the Jerusalem Council suggests that he had to carry the brunt of the debate on his side (Gal 2:5–6), but his wording there also suits his emphasis (i.e., that the gospel dare not be compromised, 1:8–10). Acts 15 emphasizes more the role of the leaders of the Jerusalem church (providing continuity and affirmation from the less-expected quarter), but even in Acts 15 we read of Paul’s fierce debating in Antioch (15:2) and that Peter and James spoke up sometime after him (15:4–21), and it is possible that he also participated in the debate mentioned briefly in 15:7a.

Paul also reports that the leading apostles at the council recognized the “grace” (perhaps including signs, as here) given him and Barnabas and affirmed their ministry (Gal 2:9). For Luke, signs confirm the truth of God’s message (Acts 14:3);[320] although not all signs did so (8:11; 13:8), true apostolic signs would.[321] If later rabbinic traditions are relevant here, the Pharisees (15:5) might not accept evidence from miracles against their halakic position;[322] the following exegetical argument by James (15:13–18) will eliminate this difficulty.[323] Luke’s Diaspora audience will also appreciate the cumulative effect of a variety of arguments (cf. 1 Cor 11:2–16).[324]

Luke’s brief mention of the subject of Paul and Barnabas’s speech fits his pattern of summary statements of speeches elsewhere (cf. Acts 2:40; 28:23; Luke 24:27).[325] Although ἐξηγέομαι can refer to any sort of exposition or narration in detail,[326] Luke always applies it to recounting firsthand testimony of God’s works (Luke 24:35; Acts 10:8; 15:12, 14; 21:19);[327] that the verb applies also to Peter’s account in this context (Acts 15:14) shows how much of the argument against imposing circumcision hinges on clear indications of God’s favor on this new approach.[328] Just as the behavior of sages could sometimes be used to justify halakah,[329] James may afterward draw a halakic “inference” from the Cornelius incident.[330]

Barnabas is here mentioned first, in contrast to Luke’s usual arrangement (except in 14:12, 14, and in all cases of Barnabas and “Saul,” 11:30; 12:25; 13:1–2, 7).[331] Barnabas may have taken the lead here for strategic reasons in Jerusalem, where he was better known personally and more respected. Their recounting of miracles follows the pattern they established in Antioch (14:27), Phoenicia, and Samaria (15:3); missionary testimonies were probably significant in the missionaries’ reports to churches (perhaps 20:7). Even in Acts 21, where the situation is more difficult, the Jerusalem elders respond well to Paul’s reports (21:19–20).

The term πλῆθος carries different senses in different passages (cf., e.g., 14:1, 4). If it refers to the “apostles and elders” of 15:6 (probably a sizable group), Luke’s narrative makes sense as referring to a smaller session in 15:6–21, with the church’s participation or ratification welcomed again in 15:22. If it refers to the entire assembly,[332] then the assembly was present while the leaders debated (15:6), or 15:6 mentions only the leaders but does not exclude the assembly, or Luke’s condensing technique has obscured the point at which the multitude is reintroduced.[333]

That the multitude kept quiet may not be as promising as clear signs of joy (15:3), but it is favorable.[334] Often hearers interrupted speeches with questions or heckling;[335] here they listen respectfully. Silence can display attentiveness (12:17); here they are at least not objecting.[336] Falling silent was sometimes a sign of respect (e.g., Pliny Ep. 2.18.2); those who were shamed in a public assembly might also remain silent (Neh 5:8). A philosopher impatient with mere applause argues that those who truly admire a message will be silent (Mus. Ruf. frg. 49, p. 142.19–21).[337] (For further discussion of silence, see comment on Acts 11:18.)

↑ Back to top