Council of Jerusalem

Icon of James the Just, whose judgment was adopted in the Apostolic Decree of Acts 15:19-29, c. 50 AD.

The Council of Jerusalem (or Apostolic Conference) is a name applied subsequently to a meeting described in Acts of the Apostles chapter 15 and probably referred to in Paul's letter to the Galatians chapter 2.[1] The events described there are generally dated to around the year 50, at the latest some time before the death of James the Just in 62, and before the First Roman-Jewish War and destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD. Paul himself described several meetings with the apostles in Jerusalem, though it is difficult to reconcile any of them fully with the account in Acts (see also Paul of Tarsus—Council of Jerusalem). Paul claims he "went up again to Jerusalem" (i.e., not the first time) with Barnabas and Titus "in response to a revelation", in order to "lay before them the gospel (he) proclaimed among the Gentiles" (Galatians 2:2); them being according to Paul "those who were supposed to be acknowledged leaders" (Galatians 2:6): James, Cephas and John. He describes this as a "private meeting" (not a public council) and notes that Titus, who was Greek, wasn't pressured to be circumcised (Galatians 2:3).[2] However, he refers to "false believers secretly brought in, who slipped in to spy on the freedom[3] we have in Christ Jesus, so that they might enslave us" (Galatians 2:4). Paul claims the "pillars" of the Church[1] had no differences with him. On the contrary, they gave him the "right hand of fellowship", he bound for the mission to "the uncircumcised" and they to "the circumcised", requesting only that he remember the "poor"[4]. Whether this was the same meeting as that described in Acts is not universally agreed.

Contents

Background

See also: Circumcision controversy in early Christianity#Jewish background

The Council of Jerusalem is generally dated to around the year 50, some sixteen years after the death of Jesus of Nazareth. It was the first known meeting of the new community's leaders. It took place before the First Roman-Jewish War, which broke out in 66 AD and the destruction of Herod's Temple in 70 AD. At the time, most followers of Jesus were Jewish by birth and even converts would have considered the early Christians as a part of Judaism. According to Alister McGrath, a proponent of Paleo-orthodoxy, the Jewish Christians affirmed every aspect of then contemporary (Second Temple) Judaism with the addition of the belief that Jesus was the Messiah.[2] The meeting was called because "certain persons" from Jerusalem and Judea, representing the Jerusalem Church, had come to Antioch, where Paul of Tarsus was preaching (Acts 15:1), and were telling prospective converts to the new religion that they could not be saved unless they underwent the Jewish ritual of circumcision. Having disputed fiercely[5] with the Judaean Christians to no effect, Paul, his fellow missionary Barnabas and others from Antioch travelled to Jerusalem to consult with "the apostles and elders" of the community. (Acts 15:2) [6]

The issues and outcome

The purpose of the meeting, according to Acts, was to resolve the disagreement in Antioch, which had wider implications than circumcision. Some of the Pharisees who had become believers demanded that it was "needful to circumcise them, and to command [them] to keep the law of Moses" (Acts 15:5).

The primary issue which was addressed related to the requirement of biblical circumcision, as the author of Acts relates, but other matters arose as well, as the Decree by James indicates. The dispute was between those, such as the followers of the "Pillars of the Church", led by James who believed the church must observe the rules of traditional Judaism,[7] and Paul of Tarsus, who believed there was no such necessity (see also Supersessionism, New Covenant, Antinomianism).

At the Council, following advice said to have been offered by Simon Peter (Acts 15:7–11), James, the leader of the Jerusalem Church, gave his decision (later known as the "Apostolic Decree"):

"Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God: But that we write unto them, that they abstain from pollutions of idols, and [from] fornication, and [from] things strangled, and [from] blood.[8] For Moses of old time hath in every city them that preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath day" (Acts 15:19–21).

The Western version of Acts (see Acts of the Apostles) adds the negative form of the Golden Rule ("and whatever things ye would not have done to yourselves, do not do to another").[9] This determined questions wider than that of circumcision, most particularly dietary questions but also fornication and idolatry, and also the application of biblical law to non-Jews, see also biblical law directed at non-Jews and Biblical law in Christianity.

Interpreting the Council's decision

See also: Circumcision controversy in early Christianity

James's Apostolic Decree was that most Jewish law, including the requirement for circumcision of males, was not obligatory for Gentile converts, possibly in order to make it easier for them to join the movement.[10] However, the Council did retain the prohibitions against Gentile converts eating meat containing blood, or meat of animals not properly slain. It also retained the prohibitions against "fornication" and idol worship. See also Old Testament Law directed at non-Jews. In effect, however, the Jerusalem Church created a double standard: one for Jewish Christians and one for Gentile converts (for the parallel in Judaism, see Convert to Judaism and Noahides). The Decree may be the first act of differentiation of the Church from its Jewish roots[3], depending on when Jewish Noachide law was developed[4], see also List of events in early Christianity. The decision created a category of persons who were members of the Christian community (which still considered itself to be part of the Jewish community) who, in certain situations, would be unacceptable to the wider Jewish community, because they were uncircumcised, besides other objections relating to the 613 mitzvot.

Determining what followed depends on how reliable one believes the various texts to be. Some scholars have taken a very skeptical view of the probity of Acts.[11] Moreover, Paul seems to have refused "to be tied down to particular patterns of behavior and practice."[12] For example, see 1 Corinthians 9:20-23. He does not engage in a dispute with those Corinthians who apparently feel quite free to eat anything offered to idols, never appealing or even mentioning the Jerusalem council. He rather attempts to persuade them by appealing to the care they should have for other believers who might not feel so free. His attitude towards circumcision varies between his outright hostility to what he calls "mutilation" in Philippians 3:2-3 to praise in Romans 3:1-2 and his willingness that Timothy be circumcised, recorded in Acts 16:1-3. However, such apparent discrepancies have led to a degree of skepticism about the reliability of Acts.[5]

From its position of dominance, due in part to its leadership by James, the Jerusalem Church suffered first persecution and eventual decline, but never total elimination (see for example Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem and Jerusalem in Christianity). The question of the relationship with Jews and Jewish Christians continued for some time, indeed it is still debated today.

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Issues
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Council of Jerusalem
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Pejoratives
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The Jewish Encyclopedia article on Saul of Tarsus states:

According to Acts, Paul began working along the traditional Jewish line of proselytizing in the various synagogues where the proselytes of the gate [a biblical term, for example see Exodus 20:10] and the Jews met; and only because he failed to win the Jews to his views, encountering strong opposition and persecution from them, did he turn to the Gentile world after he had agreed at a convention with the apostles at Jerusalem to admit the Gentiles into the Church only as proselytes of the gate, that is, after their acceptance of the Noachian laws (Acts 15:1–31).

Jewish Encyclopedia: New Testament — Spirit of Jewish Proselytism in Christianity states:

For great as was the success of Barnabas and Paul in the heathen world, the authorities in Jerusalem insisted upon circumcision as the condition of admission of members into the church, until, on the initiative of Peter, and of James, the head of the Jerusalem church, it was agreed that acceptance of the Noachian Laws — namely, regarding avoidance of idolatry, fornication, and the eating of flesh cut from a living animal — should be demanded of the heathen desirous of entering the Church.

Jewish Encyclopedia: Gentiles: Gentiles May Not Be Taught the Torah states:

R. Emden (), in a remarkable apology for Christianity contained in his appendix to "Seder 'Olam" (pp. 32b-34b, Hamburg, 1752), gives it as his opinion that the original intention of Jesus, and especially of Paul, was to convert only the Gentiles to the seven moral laws of Noah and to let the Jews follow the Mosaic law — which explains the apparent contradictions in the New Testament regarding the laws of Moses and the Sabbath.

The Catholic Encyclopedia article on Judaizers states:

Paul, on the other hand, not only did not object to the observance of the Mosaic Law, as long as it did not interfere with the liberty of the Gentiles, but he conformed to its prescriptions when occasion required (1Corinthians 9:20). Thus he shortly after circumcised Timothy (Acts 16:1–3), and he was in the very act of observing the Mosaic ritual when he was arrested at Jerusalem (Acts 21:26 sqq.)

Tim Hegg, a renowned Messianic teacher and apologist states in Do the Seven, Go to Heaven?:

We conclude, then, that interpreting the edict of the Jerusalem Council on the basis of the later Noachide Laws is both anachronistic and a misunderstanding of the function of the Noachide Laws in the post-destruction rabbinic literature. For not only did the formulation of the Noachide Laws await the post-destruction era, but even when they were formulated within the rabbinic theology of the later Centuries, they did not function as a separate body of laws given to Gentiles as a means of attaining a righteous status, nor even as an actual code of ethics for Gentiles. It is wrong, then, to conclude that the Jerusalem Council gave the gentile believers a minimal list of commandments, exempting them from the full expression of God's will in the Torah. Another explanation for the edict must be sought. Since all the prohibitions in the edict find a connection to practices in the pagan temples, it seems most likely that they were given to assure that the gentile believers had entirely distanced themselves from the idolatry of pagan worship.

Joseph Fitzmyer[6] disputes the claim that the Apostolic Decree is based on Noahide Law (Gen 9) and instead proposes Lev 17-18 as the basis, see also Leviticus 18.

See also

Footnotes

  1. Catholic Encyclopedia: St. James the Less: "Then we lose sight of James till St. Paul, three years after his conversion (A.D. 37), went up to Jerusalem. ... On the same occasion, the "pillars" of the Church, James, Peter, and John "gave to me (Paul) and Barnabas the right hands of fellowship; that we should go unto the Gentiles, and they unto the circumcision" (Galatians 2:9)."
  2. McGrath, Alister E., Christianity: An Introduction. Blackwell Publishing (2006). ISBN 1405108991. Page 174: "In effect, they [Jewish Christians] seemed to regard Christianity as an affirmation of every aspect of contemporary Judaism, with the addition of one extra belief — that Jesus was the Messiah. Unless males were circumcised, they could not be saved (Acts 15:1)."
  3. Jewish Encyclopedia: Baptism: "According to rabbinical teachings, which dominated even during the existence of the Temple (Pes. viii. 8), Baptism, next to circumcision and sacrifice, was an absolutely necessary condition to be fulfilled by a proselyte to Judaism (Yeb. 46b, 47b; Ker. 9a; 'Ab. Zarah 57a; Shab. 135a; Yer. Kid. iii. 14, 64d). Circumcision, however, was much more important, and, like baptism, was called a "seal" (Schlatter, "Die Kirche Jerusalems," 1898, p. 70). But as circumcision was discarded by Christianity, and the sacrifices had ceased, Baptism remained the sole condition for initiation into religious life. The next ceremony, adopted shortly after the others, was the imposition of hands, which, it is known, was the usage of the Jews at the ordination of a rabbi. Anointing with oil, which at first also accompanied the act of Baptism, and was analogous to the anointment of priests among the Jews, was not a necessary condition."
  4. An early form of Noachide Law may appear in the Book of Jubilees which is generally dated to the 2nd century BC: Jubilees 7:20-28: "And in the twenty-eighth jubilee [1324-1372 A.M.] Noah began to enjoin upon his sons' sons the ordinances and commandments, and all the judgments that he knew, and he exhorted his sons to observe righteousness, and to cover the shame of their flesh, and to bless their Creator, and honour father and mother, and love their neighbour, and guard their souls from fornication and uncleanness and all iniquity. For owing to these three things came the flood upon the earth ... For whoso sheddeth man's blood, and whoso eateth the blood of any flesh, shall all be destroyed from the earth." The earliest clear reference is found in Tosefta Avodah Zarah 8.4, dated circa 300.
  5. For example, see Catholic Encyclopedia (1907-1914): Acts of the Apostles: OBJECTIONS AGAINST THE AUTHENTICITY: "Nevertheless this well-proved truth has been contradicted. Baur, Schwanbeck, De Wette, Davidson, Mayerhoff, Schleiermacher, Bleek, Krenkel, and others have opposed the authenticity of the Acts. An objection is drawn from the discrepancy between Acts ix, 19-28 and Gal., i, 17, 19. In the Epistle to the Galatians, i, 17, 18, St. Paul declares that, immediately after his conversion, he went away into Arabia, and again returned to Damascus. "Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to visit Cephas." In Acts no mention is made of St. Paul's journey into Arabia; and the journey to Jerusalem is placed immediately after the notice of Paul's preaching in the synagogues. Hilgenfeld, Wendt, Weizäcker, Weiss, and others allege here a contradiction between the writer of the Acts and St. Paul." Note that the Catholic Encyclopedia considers the authenticity of Acts to be a "well-proved truth" but nonetheless notes that other scholars disagree.
  6. The Acts of the Apostles (The Anchor Yale Bible Commentaries), Yale University Press (December 2, 1998), ISBN 0300139829, chapter V

External links

Further reading