Acts 15:1-5

The Question of Circumcision at Antioch and at Jerusalem. If. The custom of Moses (cf. Acts 6:14) is the law of Moses as practised. Circumcision was no doubt the most important question to be settled; to exact it would have prevented the spread of the Church among the Gentiles; but there were other points.

Acts 15:2. After with them Codex D reads: for Paul said that they should remain as they were when they believed, and was vehement to this effect, but those who had come from Jerusalem enjoined them, Paul and Barnabas and some others, to go up. The church at any rate resolved that this should be done.

Acts 15:3 speaks of a leisurely and indirect journey, as if the envoys had no urgent commission to discharge at the capital, and the reception on the way of their tidings of the conversion of the Gentiles does not point to any urgency. The same is the case at Jerusalem, where their report of their successes is in the same words as are used in Acts 14:27. But this peaceful state of matters is interrupted by certain Pharisees, who raise the question of circumcision and adherence to the Law, as if it had not been raised before. In Galatians 2 Paul says he and Barnabas went to Jerusalem by revelation, taking Titus with them, who is not mentioned here, and the false brethren (Galatians 2:4 *) may well be the Pharisees of our passage.