The Conundrum of the Council of Jerusalem

One of the greatest particular perplexities in New Testament scholarship is the discrepancy
between Paul’s account of the conference in Jerusalem in Galatians 2:1-10 and the council of
Jerusalem in Acts 15:1-35.
The main similarities are as follows:
1) Paul and Acts both say that Paul and Barnabas went together to a meeting in
Jerusalem.
2) Paul and Acts both say that the major issue of discussion was whether male Gentile
Christians should be circumcised.
3) Paul and Acts both state that the controversy was provoked by Jewish Christians who
advocated that Gentile Christians must practice circumcision and adhere to the Torah.
Paul describes these as “false brothers secretly brought in,” and Acts describes them
as “some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees” who asserted that it
was necessary for Gentile Christians “to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of
Moses.”
4) Paul and Acts both acknowledge that the meeting was tense. Paul says, “we did not
submit to them [the false brothers secretly brought in] even for a moment,” and Acts,
while emphasizing the positive outcome of the meeting, acknowledges that the Christian
Pharisees, with whom Paul and Barnabas had previously had “no small dissension and
debate,” were present..
5) Paul says James, Cephas, and John “recognized the grace that had been given to me”
and gave “Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship.” Acts says that “the whole
assembly kept silence, and listened to Barnabas and Paul as they told of all the signs
and wonders that God had done through them among the Gentiles” and then James
made clear that the church in Jerusalem would affirm the mission to the Gentiles and not
require that Gentile males would have to be circumcised.
The key differences are as follows:
1) Paul portrays “a private meeting with the acknowledged leaders” of the church in
Jerusalem. Acts portrays an official council with “the apostles and the elders” who issued
a formal letter from the council to the churches in Antioch, the rest of Syria, and Cilicia.
2) Paul makes clear that the issue of contention was the circumcision of Gentile Christian
males. Acts portrays the council as primarily addressing the issue of circumcision,
but also states that the council decreed that Gentiles should “abstain only from things
polluted by idols and from fornication and from whatever has been strangled and from
blood.”
3) Paul says that the “leaders contributed nothing to me,” but later acknowledged that
“they asked only one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was
eager to do.” Acts says that, following the direction of James, the council agreed that
Gentile Christians should “abstain only from things polluted by idols and from fornication
and from whatever has been strangled and from blood,” which is a reference to the
requirements of the law of Moses in Leviticus 17-18 for “the aliens who reside among the
Israelites.”
4) Paul is clear that this meeting was his second visit to Jerusalem, but Acts portrays the
meeting as Paul’s third meeting. Both Paul and Acts state that Paul’s first visit was for
the purpose of Paul becoming acquainted with at least Peter [ a fifteen day meeting
when Paul was informed of the official traditions of the apostles concerning the story
and sayings of Jesus and the apostolic kerygma as indicated in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7].
However, Acts lists an additional visit by Paul to Jerusalem between the first meeting
and the council of Jerusalem: Acts 11:27-30 states that the church in Antioch sent an
offering of money to Jerusalem with Barnabas and Paul to relieve a famine.
It seems that Paul in Galatians 2 and Luke in Acts 15 are both discussing the same meeting.
Some of the differences between the two accounts are not significant.
Paul says that he took Titus with him to the meeting, but that Titus was not compelled to be
circumcised. Acts does not mention Titus. However, this is a detail from Paul’s memory which
was not necessary for Luke to mention.
Scholars often stress that Paul portrays a “private meeting” with “acknowledged leaders” and
only mentions specifically “James and Cephas and John,” but that Acts says that it was an
official council consisting of “the apostles and the elders” of the church of Jerusalem meeting
with Paul and Barnabas. However, if one reads between the lines of Paul’s letter to the
Galatians, it is evident that persons other than James, Peter (Cephas), and John were present,
for Paul’s singling out James, Peter, and John as “pillars” does not mean that there were not
other “acknowledged leaders” present, which is consistent with Luke’s characterization of “the
apostles and the elders” of the church of Jerusalem. Moreover, Paul also speaks of “false
brothers secretly brought in.” These would be identical with Luke’s mention of the presence
of “some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees.” Obviously, Paul implies that
he did not think that these “false brothers” should have been present, but he does in effect
acknowledge that there was a party at the meeting which Luke describes as “some believers
who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees” who were advocating that the Gentile Christians
should be “ordered” to obey the law of Moses.
Moreover, Paul’s description of a “private meeting” gives the connotation of a personal
conversation conducted by a few key leaders of the church, but it may be that the meeting
was intended to be a confidential meeting of officials and relevant parties rather than merely
a personal conversation between Paul and Barnabas and select leaders of the church in
Jerusalem. Paul’s polemical description of “false brothers secretly brought in” indicates that
Paul expected that he and Barnabas would discuss the issue of circumcision with the leaders in
Jerusalem in a confidential meeting without the presence of those who were the agitators. From
Act’s account, one could infer that the leaders in Jerusalem intended all along to include the
agitators since their presence would be necessary to bring resolution to the dispute regarding
the relation of Gentile believers to the law of Moses.
Furthermore, Acts portrays Paul and Barnabas as delegates of the church in Antioch whereas
Paul does not state that he attended the meeting as a delegate from Antioch. Instead, Paul says
that he went “in response to a revelation.” However, both the acknowledgement of Barnabas’
presence with him and his allusion to an incident at Antioch in Galatians 2:11ff. is consistent
with Acts’ claim that Paul and Barnabas had attended the meeting together as delegates from
the church in Antioch, the center of the Gentile mission that had a special relationship with the
church in Jerusalem. It is not clear exactly what Paul means by “a revelation.” It sounds as if
he went to the meeting on his own initiative as a response to guidance from the risen Lord or
the Holy Spirit, perhaps experienced by him in the form of a vision. However, Paul’s agenda
in Galatians is to establish his apostolic authority in the eyes of the Galatian readers, and this
agenda would cause him to emphasize his own motivation in attending the meeting rather than
his agreement to be sent by the church of Antioch as one of its delegates. Probably Paul is
not even referring to an inner prompting or vision he had received when he speaks of going to
the meeting “in response to a revelation,” but he is talking about how he went to the meeting
in order to explain and defend his mission to the Gentiles which he had received “through a
revelation of Jesus Christ” (Galatians 1:12).
There are enough striking similarities between Galatians 2 and Acts 15 to assume that they are
accounts of the same meeting in Jerusalem. Indeed, the different descriptions of the meeting
by Paul and Acts can be reconciled rather well when one takes into considerations the different
purposes of the writers. Paul is making a personal report to the Galatians in the interest of
defending his apostleship to the Gentiles commissioned by the risen Lord, and the author of
Acts is narrating an important event in the life of the early church which gives the perspective of
all the participants in the council.
The conundrum consists of the two major differences between Galatians and Acts: Paul never
mentions any decree made at the meeting regarding the dietary rules, etc., and he is emphatic
that this meeting was only his second visit to Jerusalem. In discussing his activities, Paul says in
Galatians 1:20. “In what I am writing to you, before God, I do not lie!” [Jesus forbade oaths, but
Paul swears oaths all the time in his epistles!]
The scholarly debate about this conundrum has sometimes been as contentious as the
controversy in the early church over circumcision of Gentiles! It would be constructive if
everyone would be willing to both recognize that Paul was telling the truth (“I do not lie!”)
and that Luke, the author of Acts, had good information about the church in Jerusalem. As
Bruce Metzger has said, it is probable that Luke had access to “the archives of the church
in Jerusalem.” Luke’s information that the church in Jerusalem had issued a decree asking
Gentile Christians to observe what the law of Moses requires of “aliens who resides among
the Israelites” is accurate since both Revelation 2:14, 20 and early second century tradition
attest that this teaching was present at least in the churches in Asia Minor. How then can the
conundrum be solved?
One of the solutions proposed by scholars of Acts such as F.F. Bruce, beginning with J.B.
Lightfoot, is that Paul and Barnabas had a private meeting with James, Peter, and John when,
according to Acts 11:27-30, Paul made his second visit to Jerusalem with Barnabas to deliver
an offering to assist the poor in the church in Jerusalem. In other words, it is a mistake to
assume that the conference Paul describes in Galatians 2 is equivalent to the council Luke
describes in Acts 15; instead, the conference Paul describes in Galatians 2 took place during
his visit to Jerusalem which is described in Acts 11. Of course, Acts 11 does not mention
that Paul and Barnabas discussed the issue of circumcision, but Luke may not have known
about the personal conversation that occurred. This would mean that the official council
described in Acts 15 was held later during a third visit by Paul to Jerusalem and that the letter
to the Galatians was written by Paul before the council of Jerusalem (thus explaining why, in
Galatians, Paul speaks of having made only two visits to Jerusalem). The clue that Galatians 2
should be coordinated with Acts 11 is the mention in Acts that Paul and Barnabas had gone to
Jerusalem to present an offering for the poor, an offering that is mentioned in Galatians 2. The
beauty of this solution, especially from the perspective of Acts scholars, is that it removes the
apparent contradiction between Paul’s assertion in Galatians that he had only made two visits
to Jerusalem and the overall report in Acts that Paul visited Jerusalem five times (not counting
Acts 12:25 which most scholars think should be translated from the alternate codices which
read “from Jerusalem” rather than “to Jerusalem”). In other words, Luke’s report that Paul made
five visits to Jerusalem can be accepted because the two visits Paul mentions in Galatians
would be understood as referring to the two visits in Acts 9:26-30 and 11:27-30.
While this proposal should be taken seriously since it has been advocated by some of the most
distinguished scholars, there are very serious problems with it.
One major difficulty pertains to the portrayal of the offering. Luke only mentions an offering by
Paul to the church in Jerusalem in Acts 11:27-30, and he explains that it was an offering from
the church of Antioch to the church of Jerusalem to provide relief to the Christians in Jerusalem
suffering from a famine. However, It is very clear from Paul’s epistles that he engaged in a
specific major fund-raising venture among his Gentile churches to collect money to be used to
support the poor in the church in Jerusalem, and that he brought this offering with him on his
final visit to Jerusalem. Moreover, from Paul’s perspective, this offering was being collected
as a peace offering to bring healing between the churches of Paul’s apostolic mission to the
Gentiles and the Jewish Christian churches of Judea centered around the church in Jerusalem.
Moreover, it is probable that Galatians 2:10 refers not to a continuation of an offering Paul
was already making, but to an offering newly requested of him by the apostles in Jerusalem, a
request Paul says he was eager to accept. In other words, the offering of the church of Antioch
mentioned in Acts 11:27-30 is not the same thing as the offering mentioned in Galatians 2:10.
In fact, Luke does not even ever mention that the real purpose of Paul’s final visit to Jerusalem
was to present this large offering he had worked so hard to collect from the Gentile churches.
It is true that in Acts 24:17 Paul says that he had come to Jerusalem “to bring alms to my
nation and to make sacrifices,” but the meaning is that Paul had come to Jerusalem to present
a personal offering to the Temple treasury and to make sacrifices at the Temple. Upon close
examination, the meeting of Galatians 2 cannot be equated with the visit of Acts 11 on the
grounds of a mention of an offering in Acts 11.
The other major problem with equating the visit of Acts 11 with the meeting of Galatians 2 is that
this proposal requires that Paul wrote the letter to the Galatians before the council described in
Acts 15. This would seem to fit with Luke’s portrayal of the so-called three “missionary journeys”
of Paul. According to Acts, Paul had conducted missionary activity in southern Galatia in his
first missionary journey before the council of Jerusalem. However, the question is whether
there was an interference by the “Judaizers” during the period of Paul’s career before Paul
had conducted missionary activity in Macedonia and Achaia. According to Acts, Paul’s first
missions to Macedonia and Achaia occurred after the council. Acts never mentions any of
Paul’s letters and so it does not indicate when Paul wrote any of his letters to the churches. Yet
the evidence in the letters indicates that the “Judaizers” appeared only toward the end of Paul’s
career when he was active in Macedonia and Achaia. The only letters in which Paul mentions
the problem of the so-called “Judaizers” are Galatians, Philippians, and Romans. It is a common
agreement that Philippians and Romans are among the last letters Paul wrote (regardless of
scholarly opinions about the exact locations from which he wrote them or exactly what year(s)
he wrote them). Since Galatians has the same opponents in view as the letters of Philippians
and Romans, it is likely that Galatians was written at a time close to the time when Paul wrote
Philippians and Romans. These “Judaizers” are not in view in the Corinthians correspondence,
and therefore 1 Corinthians and 2 Corinthians were written before Galatians, Philippians, and
Romans. The “Judaizers” eventually arrived in Corinth, for Paul wrote Romans from Corinth,
but this indicates that they arrived after Paul had already written 1 Corinthians from Ephesus
and 2 Corinthians from Macedonia. Besides, we know that the letters to the Corinthians were
written before Romans on the basis of the information in all these letters about the progress
of the offering Paul was collecting from the churches. It should be remembered that Paul was
not reacting in these letters to general teaching, but to specific opponents–individuals who had
come from Judea to infiltrate Paul’s churches in a vigorous effort to denigrate Paul’s authority
and to require that Gentile Christians practice circumcision and submit to the law of Moses.
Therefore, it is not really plausible that Paul wrote Galatians before the council of Acts 15 since,
according to Acts, Paul had not even founded the churches in Macedonia (the location of the
church in Philippi to whom Paul wrote Philippians) or in Achaia (from where he wrote Romans in
Corinth). It is more plausible that Paul wrote Galatians after the council in Jerusalem which had
confirmed that Gentiles would not be required to be circumcised and that Paul was confirmed
as the apostle to the Gentiles and that it was written in response to the infiltration of “Judaizers”
near the latter phases of Paul’s missionary activity. In other words, those who advocate for the
accuracy of Luke’s portrayal of Paul’s missionary journeys in Acts and also claim that Paul must
have written Galatians before the council of Acts 15 do not present a credible picture of the
events which are described in the letters of Paul.
Moreover, there is such a similarity between Galatians 2 and Acts 15 that it strains credulity to
think that these two accounts are not about the same event.
Despite the pedigree of the scholars who have advocated that Galatians 2 should be equated
with Acts 11 (including the commentary on Acts in The New Interpreter’s Bible), this proposal
does not stand up to scrutiny, and it really represents special pleading for the chronology of
Acts. This proposal is not a solution of the conundrum, but an evasion of it.
Another solution to the conundrum is a proposal that Paul agreed to the decree of the council
of Jerusalem in Acts 15 regarding dietary rules for Gentile Christians, but he did not mention
it in Galatians 2. The assumption is that the decree regarding dietary rules was limited to the
church in Antioch, the other churches in Syria, and in Cilicia, but the decree was not intended
for the whole church or the whole Gentile mission. It is clear in Acts 15 that a letter was sent to
churches only in these regions. It could be argued that Paul would agree to these rules for the
church in Antioch and the regions in which it was active since he was a delegate of the church
of Antioch and wanted to preserve peace in the church. It would also have to be assumed that
Paul did not feel bound by this decree in his own missionary work in Macedonia, Achaia, and
Asia. If the incident of Galatians 2:11-14 is understood as having occurred after the council,
one might even argue that Paul considered the agreement of the council moot after Peter and
Barnabas withdrew from table fellowship (and the Lord’s Supper) with Gentile Christians at
Antioch. That is, subsequent breach of table fellowship by Peter based on a communication
from James in Jerusalem in effect violated the agreement that had been reached at the council.
Thus Paul could ignore the decree concerning dietary rules not only because its application
was limited to areas with ethnically mixed churches where Paul was no longer active, but also
because he may have considered the decree moot after the behavior of Peter and Barnabas at
Antioch following the council.
However, there are serious problems with this second proposal also. It is a fact that Paul never
mentions the decree about dietary rules in any of his epistles. There is not even a hint of it. The
most plausible explanation is that he knew nothing about it. Surely he would have mentioned
it since he discusses the issue of eating food that had been sacrificed to idols in 1 Corinthians
and Romans, but it is clear in those letters that Paul’s instructions to his churches were quite
distinct from that given by the council of Jerusalem. Would Paul really have ever agreed to the
decrees of the council, but if he did, would he really have felt free to ignore the council as he
conducted missionary activity beyond Syria and Cilicia? If Paul had agreed to the decree only
for the sake of peace between Antioch and Jerusalem, wouldn’t he have felt that he should
also honor the decree in the mainly Gentile churches he himself had founded in Macedonia and
Achaia? Moreover, while Paul mentions the incident of Galatians 2:11-14 after his discussion
of the conference in Jerusalem, it is probable that he was actually talking about an incident that
had occurred before the conference was held, and therefore the notion that Paul considered
the decree of the council moot as a result of this incident with Peter withdrawing from table
fellowship at Antioch is not very credible. Besides, there is no indication at all in Paul’s letters
that the conference he describes in Galatians 2 was anything other than successful. Of course,
Paul continued to have great anxiety about his relation to the church in Jerusalem, which is
why he put so much value on the difficult enterprise of raising money for the poor in Jerusalem
as a peace offering, but his offering was intended to seal a unity which had already been won
during the conference described in Galatians 2. (Because, in his letters, Paul presumes the
success of his conference with the Jerusalem apostles, the incident in Galatians 2:11-14 must
have occurred before the conference even though Paul mentions it after he has described the
conference. If the incident in Galatians 2:11-14 occurred after the council, Paul would have
considered his relationship with the church in Jerusalem to be broken and the whole church
divided. However, this was not the case at all.)
A third proposal made by Floyd Filson is a subtle but important variation of the second proposal.
Filson thinks that visits of Paul took place as Acts reports, but that, in Galatians, Paul did not
mention the visit of Acts 11:27-30 since the issue of the place of Gentiles in the church did
not arise during that visit. So then, Galatians 2 refers to same meeting as Acts 15. During
this meeting at Jerusalem, Paul agreed to the decree concerning dietary rules because it
was essentially the same kind of arrangement which he had led Gentile Christians to accept
from the beginning. Paul won the main victory at the council that Gentiles would not have to
be circumcised and keep the Mosaic law. But Paul could accept the other rules about diet
and say that the leaders in Jerusalem “added nothing to me” because he had always taught
Gentiles to practice “kosher” rules in their fellowship with Jewish Christians in order to maintain
peace in the church. Filson asks, “Did the Gentile Christians at once begin to eat pork and
other food revolting to Jews? Certainly not. Without thinking that any deep issue was involved,
the ethnically mixed church no doubt continued familiar Jewish practices as to food and daily
life, not with the idea that they were accepting the law and admitting that they must obey it to
be saved, but simply because it was common Jewish practice and also because it served to
separate the Gentile believers from surrounding paganism.” To explain why Paul never makes
any reference to the agreement reached at Jerusalem in his letters, Filson assumes that when
the “circumcision party” agitated in his churches for the keeping of the law by Gentile Christians
and “perhaps made a legalistic use of the Jerusalem agreement,” Paul made no further use of it.
Anyway, the agreement was directed to a limited region that was not his real mission field.
There is much that is attractive in this third proposal. Filson’s claim that the churches with
both Gentiles and Jews surely practiced “kosher” rules as a matter of course in order to have
table fellowship with one another is astute, and it surely applies to the church in Antioch
and its surrounding region where there were both many Jewish members as well as Gentile
members. On this basis it is conceivable that Paul could have agreed to the dietary rules as
a delegate from the Antioch church, especially since Filson also claims that the decree was
not an imposition of a law but a wise and necessary counsel. Furthermore, it would seem to
remove a disagreement between Luke and Paul regarding the number of visits Paul had made
to Jerusalem by the time the council was held.
As attractive as it is, there are still significant problems with Filson’s interpretation. It does
not quite adequately account for the brute fact that Paul never mentions the decree about
dietary practices in any of his letters. More importantly, it glosses over the fact that Paul says
that he visited Jerusalem for the council “after fourteen years”–which most scholars interpret
as meaning fourteen years since his first visit to Jerusalem, which had occurred three years
following his calling from the risen Lord. The tenor of Paul’s discussion of his visits indicates
that Paul means to say that he had made only two visits to Jerusalem. Yet, even if one allows
for the possibility that Paul had made another visit between these two visits, as Acts 11 reports,
and that Paul does not mention this extra visit only because it was not germane to the issue
of the place of the Gentiles in the church, frankly the “first missionary journey” reported in
Acts between Acts 11 and Acts 15 surely did not occupy fourteen years! His fourteen years
comprises the larger part of Paul’s career before his final visit to Jerusalem, and there is every
reason to assume that Paul spent this fourteen years conducting his mission all over the eastern
Roman Empire, including Macedonia and Achaia, when he founded the churches in Philippi,
Thessalonica, Athens, and Corinth. And if Paul’s experience with his Gentile mission was
already so deep and lengthy, it is difficult to imagine that he would have gone along with the
dietary rules even if they represented pastoral counsel rather than law. How could Paul in good
faith go along with the dietary rules knowing that he would need to explain them to, say, the
church in Corinth? Besides, the rationale given by James for the dietary rules are grounded
in the Torah, for James justifies the rules on the grounds that “Moses…has been read aloud
every sabbath in the synagogues” in every place. Perhaps, as a seasoned missionary to the
Gentiles, Paul could have gone along with the dietary rules to keep peace as long as the rules
were limited to Syria and Cilicia as a local agreement between the churches in Antioch and
Jerusalem, but it strains credulity to think that this was the case. If the rules were presented by
James on the grounds that the Torah is the basis of the life of the church, it is very, very hard to
imagine Paul agreeing with the rules as a matter of theological principle even if Paul considered
the rules as merely a local agreement between Jerusalem and Antioch that did not affect most
of his own mission.
A fourth proposal for a solution to the conundrum has been advanced by Joseph Fitzmyer and
others. It is that Luke conflated two events in his description of the council in Acts 15. In other
words, Luke combined the report about the council, which dealt only with the issue of whether
Gentile Christians should be required to obey the whole law of Moses, with a report about a
decree that the church of Jerusalem issued for the churches in Syria and Antioch. Is there any
evidence that Luke may have conflated two events in his account of the council in Acts 15?
There are two texts in Acts which provide significant evidence that Luke conflated the record of
a decision by a council held at the church in Jerusalem, which confirmed that Gentile Christians
did not have to submit to circumcision and adhere to the whole law of Moses, and the record
of a later decree by the church in Jerusalem to the churches under its influence that Gentile
Christians, while not required to observe the whole law of Moses, should practice the dietary
rules of the law as well as reject pagan idolatry and sexual practices.
One text is Acts 21:25. Acts 21:25 is a verse that occurs within the narrative of Paul’s meeting
with James and the other leaders of the church in Jerusalem after Paul arrives in Jerusalem in
his final visit to city. Acts 21:25 is a statement from the leaders (from the leaders under the
authority of James, the brother of the Lord). After expressing concern about how Paul will be
treated by the Jewish Christians who oppose Paul (21:20-21) and requesting that Paul join four
men who are taking a Nazirite vow in the Temple (21:22-24), the leaders say, “But as for the
Gentiles who have become believers, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should
abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and
from fornication” (21:25). It is odd that the leaders inform Paul of a letter sent to Gentile
Christians which contained information about a decree of the church of Jerusalem which is
exactly the same as the letter described in Acts 15:23-29–a letter which had been sent by the
earlier council of Jerusalem. The clear impression in Acts 21 is that the leaders are informing
Paul for the first time about a decision they had made about what the Jerusalem church should
say to the Gentile Christians, and that this letter was sent to the Gentile Christians in the
churches under the influence of the church in Jerusalem. Surely this is the same letter sent to
the churches in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia which is described in Acts 15:23-29. Acts 21:25 is a
strong clue that the decree of the church of Jerusalem, along with the letter which was sent,
was an action of the church of Jerusalem under James’ leadership that was done by that
church’s own initiative while Paul was away in Macedonia, Achaia, and Asia, and that Paul did
not know about it until he arrived in Jerusalem for the final time. Moreover, it appears that Paul
is being informed only of what the church in Jerusalem had decreed for the churches under its
influence, principally the church in Antioch with whom it had a close relationship and the
churches which had been established in Syria and Cilicia through the Gentile mission of the
church in Antioch. Paul is being informed of the way the church in Jerusalem is dealing with its
own very difficult problem of having in its membership many Christian Pharisees who are
insisting that Gentile Christians be required to obey the law of Moses and having responsibility
for churches within its sphere of influence whose membership consisted of both Jews and
Gentiles (unlike the predominantly Gentile churches which Paul founded in Macedonia and
Achaia). In effect, Paul is being told by James, “We have maintained our integrity with you by
not requiring the Gentiles to be circumcised, as we had agreed at our council earlier, but we
have asked that the Gentiles in our local churches to observe the dietary rules as well as, of
course, the moral commandments which the law prescribes for aliens who reside among
Israelites. By doing so, we are making it possible for Jews and Christians in these churches to
have table fellowship and the Lord’s Supper with one another (since the food will be ‘kosher”),
and we are hoping that this counsel will satisfy the members of our own church who are under
pressure from the converted Pharisees among us and also maintain peace in our ethnically
mixed churches.”
The other text is the letter described in Acts 15:23-29. It may be assumed that Luke copied this
letter from the archives of the church in Jerusalem and that it is not Luke’s own composition.
The letter says, “The brothers, both the apostles and the elders, to the believers of Gentile origin
in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia, greetings. Since we have heard that certain persons who have
gone out from us, though with no instructions from us, have said things to disturb you and have
unsettled your minds, we have decided unanimously to choose representatives [‘men’] and
send them to you, along with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the
sake of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who themselves will tell
you the same things by word of mouth. For it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to
impose on you no further burden than these essentials: that you abstain from what has been
sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled and from fornication. If you keep
yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell.”
The reader of Acts has an impression that the “men” being sent by the church in Jerusalem to
deliver the letter include Barnabas and Paul. Indeed, in Luke’s own introduction to the text of the
letter, Luke makes it clear that Barnabas and Paul would be among those who are sent to
deliver the letter and to explain its contents. In Acts 15:22-23 a, Luke writes, “Then the apostles
and the elders, with the consent of the whole church, decided to choose men from among their
members and to send them to Antioch with Paul and Barnabas. They sent Judas called
Barsabbas, and Silas, leaders among the brothers, with the following letter….” However, it is
very clear in the text of the letter itself that the representatives of the church of Jerusalem are
actually only Judas and Silas. On close inspection of the text of the letter, one would not
assume that Paul and Barnabas are the representatives being sent to the Gentiles from the
Jerusalem church. Fitzmyer notes that, in the letter itself, the prepositional phrase, “along with”
(syn) can modify “you” so that Barnabas and Paul are listed as formal recipients of the letter
along with the Gentiles to whom it is written. It is only when the letter is read in the context of
the council described in Acts 15 and following Luke’s own introduction to the letter in Acts 15:22-
23a that readers of Acts assume that the mention of Paul in the letter means that Paul is a
representative of the council who is delivering the letter to the Gentiles in the churches of
Antioch, the rest of Syria, and Cilicia. However, the text of the letter itself shows that Barnabas
and Paul were not the senders of the letter, but they were recipients of the letter being sent to
Gentiles since they are the leading apostles to the Gentiles known and respected by the
churches in the region. Acts 15:25-26 should be understood as meaning “we have decided
unanimously to choose representatives [“men”] and send them to you and also to our beloved
Barnabas and Paul, who have risked their lives for the sake of our Lord Jesus Christ.” In other
words, Barnabas and Paul are being notified of the decree of the church of Jerusalem by letter
and personally, if possible, because of their prominent role as the apostles who had
evangelized the Gentiles in the regions of Syria and Cilicia. One would have to assume that
Paul never received his copy of the letter because he was working and traveling across a wide
area that ranged from Asia to Achaia at the time it was written.
The idea that this letter was sent at a time later than the council also fits the information derived
from Paul’s letters to the churches in Galatia, Philippi, and Rome. In other words, the letter from
the church in Jerusalem was written to the Gentiles in the churches under the influence of the
mother church in Jerusalem at the time when the “Judaizers” were also actively interfering with
Paul’s mission in Galatia, Macedonia, and Achaia (and threatening to also penetrate the church
in Rome).
Why would Luke conflate two events when he narrates the story of the council of Jerusalem in
Acts 15?
One possibility that should be taken seriously is that Luke conflated the decision of the earlier
council that Christian Gentile males did not have to be circumcised with a later decree by the
church of Jerusalem that certain essentials would be expected of Gentile Christians in the
churches under its authority when Luke was conducting his research in Jerusalem. Luke found
the letter requiring that the Gentiles should observe certain essential rules in the archives of
the church of Jerusalem. He assumed that this letter was an action of the council rather than
a separate later action of the church of Jerusalem. On that assumption, he interpreted the
grammar of a sentence in the letter that contained the prepositional phrase syn as meaning
that Barnabas and Paul were among the deliverers of the letter rather than its recipients, and
so he constructed an introduction of the letter to convey that meaning. In other words, Luke
understood the grammar according to the context of the presumed occasion of the letter rather
than according to the context of the text of the letter itself. However, the right interpretation of
the grammar is that syn modifies “you” rather than “send” so that the meaning is that the letter
is being sent to “you,” i.e. “the believers of Gentile origin,” and also to Barnabas and Paul, the
apostles to the Gentiles known to them and revered for the sacrifices they had made on the
Gentiles’ behalf. If this is what happened, then the conflation of two events might have been
triggered by Luke’s discovery of the letter in the archives of the church of Jerusalem on the
assumption that this letter was a part of the action of the council. If this occurred, then one must
assume that Luke’s memory of the communication of James and the other leaders to Paul upon
his arrival in Jerusalem in Acts 21:25 is a report of what was indeed said at the time, but that his
later discovery of the letter in the archives led him to conclude that the letter had been part of
the deliberations of the council. The assumption here is that Luke was present with Paul when
he arrived in Jerusalem for his final visit based on the fact that the “we” sections of Acts indicate
Luke’s presence with Paul on his journey to Jerusalem. This is not an implausible scenario, for
it is quite understandable that someone writing a history of the early church for the first time
is faced with the difficult task of constructing an account which is based on information from a
variety of sources–the memories of others, artifacts from archives, and also his own memory of
events in which he was personally involved.
Moreover, the conflation of two events fits Luke’s own purposes in writing Acts. Luke is telling
a grand story, and the narration of the council occurs right in the middle of Acts as the turning
point in the grand story. Acts 15 is the point when the narrative of Acts shifts from the story of
the church in Jerusalem and the church in Antioch to the story of Paul’s own mission to the
Gentiles in the farthest reaches of the eastern Roman Empire–thus fitting the scheme of the
story of the church proclaiming the gospel from Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria to the
ends of the earth. Even if Luke had not conflated the events as a result of his discovery of the
letter in the archives and his judgment that it ought to be ascribed to the actions of the council,
it would have made sense for Luke to bring in the later decree of the church of Jerusalem at
this point in the narrative since this would be an apropos and economical way of including
information about all of the actions of the Jerusalem church pertaining to the issue of Gentile
Christians.
If the proposal that Luke conflated two events in his narration in Acts 15 is correct, then the
conundrum is basically solved. At least, once Luke’s narrative about the council is adjusted to
take into account his conflation of the council with a later decree by the church in Jerusalem,
both Paul’s account and Luke’s account of what occurred during the council would be
consistent. The only disagreement between the two accounts that would remain would be
the matter of how many visits Paul made to Jerusalem. Luke says five, but Paul says only
three. However, in this case, Paul’s account should be preferred over Luke’s since Paul knows
how many visits he made (based on what Paul says both in Galatians 1:18, 2:1 and also in 1
Corinthians 16:1-4 and Romans 15:25). This is a problem only for those who do not want to
admit that Luke may be in error about the number of visits Paul made. But those who realize
that Luke is not writing a history of Paul’s career but telling a bigger, simpler story of the
church’s life and mission take into account both that Luke was not exactly sure how often Paul
visited Jerusalem (he knew only that he had visited several times) and that it suited Luke’s
narrative to show Paul returning to Jerusalem after each of his “missionary journeys” since Luke
wants to emphasize that Jerusalem is the center of the church and that its mission expanded
in discrete phases from Jerusalem to Antioch and then to the farthest reaches of the eastern
Roman Empire and finally to Rome itself. It is more plausible to assume that Luke, writing years
after the events, had uncertain knowledge of the movements of Paul which occurred a long
time prior to Luke’s association with Paul rather than Paul himself was inaccurate about his own
movements when he was writing to the church in Galatia. The idea that Luke wrote Acts after
Paul’s death rather than while they were together in Rome is disputed, but most scholars think
that Luke indicates in his Gospel that he was writing after the fall of Jerusalem in A.D. 70 (based
on the way he describes the woes of Jerusalem in Luke 21:20 ff. in comparison with Mark 13:14
ff.).
I think the proposal that Luke conflated two different actions by the church of Jerusalem when
he narrated the story of the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 is the right way to understand how
Paul’s account in Galatians is similar yet different from Acts 15. It makes the most sense of
all the evidence we have, and it alone takes into account the textual evidence of Acts in the
letter and the communication of the leaders of the Jerusalem church to Paul at the time of his
arrival in the city. I may be mistaken, but I think this proposal is far superior to the other major
interpretations on offer.
However one attempts to solve the conundrum of the different accounts of the historical meeting
reported in Acts and Galatians, the different theological positions regarding the law of Moses
among the early Christians are clear. All Christians knew that Jesus of Nazareth had been an
observant Jew who announced the coming of the kingdom of God and whose death had been
the means by which God had instituted a new covenant in the history of God’s relationship with
God’s people. All Christians accepted that God’s people now includes Gentiles as well as Jews.
The differences among Christians pertained to their understanding of the role of the Torah
in the life of the new people of God, the church. Was the covenant instituted by God through
Jesus Christ a renewed covenant that revivified the older covenants on the grounds of the
forgiveness of sins through the death of the Messiah and the power to live as God’s people by
the resurrection of the Messiah and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, but that the relationship of
the people of God to God is still ordered according to the law of Moses in the Torah; or, was it
an entirely new covenant that fulfilled and superseded the covenant God had made with Moses
so that the relationship of the people of God to God is based only on the obedience of faith in
Jesus the Messiah rather than according to obedience to the law of Moses in the Torah? While
the covenant now established through Jesus the Messiah was called “new,” the meaning of its
newness was understood differently in two primary senses.
Some Jewish Christians thought that the Torah is still the basis of the people of God who
confess Jesus as the Messiah of Israel and the Lord of the world, and they thought that both
Gentiles and Jews should be obedient to the law of Moses as if the Gentile members of God’s
people were now Jews.
James, the eventual leader of the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem, taught that the Torah is still
the basis of the church and that the church should include Gentiles the same way ancient Israel
included “residents who live among the Israelites,” namely, that they should not be required to
obey the Torah as Jews, but they should obey the Torah as Gentiles by forsaking idolatry and
sexual immorality and by observing the Jewish food laws in order that Jews and Gentiles may
have table fellowship with one another.
Paul’s teaching was more complex and radical. He viewed the Torah as the witness to God’s
revelation. However, he interpreted the Torah as teaching that God’s promise to Abraham to
be the father of many nations, i.e. Gentiles, was fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus
the Messiah. As a result, in Paul’s view, the law of Moses given to Israel later in time after the
promise made to Abraham, has now been superseded for the church. However, this does not
mean that the church is without any law; its law is “the law of Christ,” which is fulfilled through
faith by the power of the Holy Spirit. This “law of Christ” is defined by the teaching of Jesus,
the Lord, and by his example. In a deeper sense, this “law of Christ” is the response of faith to
the righteousness of God that has been revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus the
Messiah. Paul was in full agreement with all other Christians that the teaching of the Torah
regarding idolatry and sexual morality has not been abrogated by the new covenant instituted
through Jesus Christ because it is the revelation of God’s will grounded in creation as taught
by Jesus himself. Yet Paul did not agree with James that the dietary laws of Jews should be
imposed on Gentile Christians since Paul thought that the basis of the church’s life is not the
law of Moses in the Torah (which has been superseded for Christians), but the salvation of God
accomplished through Jesus Christ. Paul was not opposed to Jewish Christians continuing
to keep the law of Moses, but he viewed this as more a matter of custom than a theological
imperative.
Peter seems to have been a mediator among all the parties who was respected by all. Peter
was basically on Paul’s side, but he appreciated the wisdom of James’ position as the leader of
the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. Peter was more sensitive than Paul regarding the political
challenges faced by James in Jerusalem. This is evident by Peter’s behavior in the incident at
Antioch reported by Paul in Galatians 2:11-14. Paul publicly denounced Peter for withdrawing
from table fellowship with the Gentiles in Antioch as a violation of the integrity of the gospel.
Paul claimed that Peter and “even Barnabas” were “led astray” into “hypocrisy” when “certain
people came from James” to the church at Antioch. While Paul was correct in principle, we are
not told Peter’s point of view in Galatians. It is probable that Peter himself did not think he was
being hypocritical, but that he was only being prudent at the moment. Apparently, James had
sent a communication from Jerusalem which expressed concern about Jews being in table
fellowship with Gentiles because James was afraid of the explosion in the whole church that
would occur as a result of the passions of the Torah observant Christian Jews at Jerusalem.
James wished to bring a halt to the table fellowship among Gentiles and Jews at Antioch until
he and the other leaders of the church in Jerusalem could settle things down. Peter, being
acutely aware of the issues in Jerusalem, knew this was an explosive situation at present and
temporarily withdrew from table fellowship until the crisis could be resolved. Galatians 2:11-14
is the most important text for illumining the raw tensions in the early church in the A.D. 40’s, but,
if one reads between the lines and takes into account the concerns of all parties rather than just
Paul’s convictions, one may perceive how Peter was in the most difficult position of anyone in
trying to affirm Paul’s mission to the Gentiles while also supporting James’ delicate handling of
his problems with the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem. (These same tensions at Jerusalem are
also evident in Acts 21:20-21.)
Selected Sources:
F.F. Bruce, Commentary on the Book of Acts (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing
Co., 1971).
Richard J. Dillon and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “Acts of the Apostles,” The Jerome Biblical
Commentary (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968).
Floyd V. Filson, A New Testament History (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1964).
Bruce M. Metzger, The New Testament: Its Background, Growth, & Content (Nashville:
Abingdon Press, 2003).