Acts 15:41

διήρχετο, see above on Acts 13:6. Συρίαν καὶ Κιλικίαν : as Barnabas had turned to Cyprus, the scene of his early labours in the Gospel, and perhaps also his own home, so Paul turned to Syria and Cilicia, not only because his home was in Cilicia, but also because he had worked there in his early Christian life and labours, Galatians 1:21; Galatians 1:23. It is a coincidence with the notice in Gal. that St. Luke here and in Acts 15:23 presupposes the existence of Churches in Syria and Cilicia, although nothing had been previously said of their foundation, whilst the presence of Saul at Tarsus is twice intimated, Acts 9:30; Acts 11:25. Moreover the commencement of the letter, Acts 15:22-23, indicates that these regions had been the centre of the teaching of the Judaisers, and St. Paul's presence, together with the fact that Silas, a prominent and leading member of the Jerusalem Church, was his colleague, would doubtless help to prevent further disquiet. On the addition to the verse in the Bezan text see critical note.

Additional note (1).

Amongst recent writers on the Acts, Mr. Rendall has stated that the evidence for the identification of Acts 15 with Galatians 2:1-10 is overwhelming, Appendix to Acts, pp. 357, 359. If we cannot fully endorse this, it is at all events noticeable that critics of widely different schools of thought have refused to regard the alleged differences between the two as irreconcilable; in this conservative writers like Lechler, Godet, Belser, Knabenbauer and Zahn, Einleitung, ii., 627, 628; scientific critics, as we may call them, like Reuss, B. Weiss; and still more advanced critics like Lipsius and H. Holtzmann are agreed. This general agreement is recognised and endorsed by Wendt, p. 255 (1899), see also K. Schmidt, “Apostelkonvent,” in Real-Encyclopädie für protest. Theol. (Hauck), p. 704 ff. Amongst English writers Lightfoot, Hort, Sanday, Salmon, Drummond, Turner may be quoted on the same side (so too McGiffert, Apostolic Age, p. 208), (see for the points of agreement, Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 123; Drummond, Galatians, p. 73 ff.; Salmon, “Galatians,” B.D. 2; Reuss, Geschichte des h.. des N. T., p. 60, sixth edition, and very fully in Belser, Die Selbstvertheidigung der h. Paulus im Galaterbriefe, p. 83 ff., 1896; for the difficulty in identifying Galatians 2 with any other visit of St. Paul to Jerusalem, cf. Salmon, Lightfoot, u. s., and Zahn, u. s., Felten, Introd. to Apostelgeschichte, p. 46). But the recent forcible attempt of Professor Ramsay to identify Galatians 2:1-10 with St. Paul's second visit to Jerusalem, Acts 11:30; Acts 12:25, and not with the third visit, Acts 15, has opened up the whole question again (see on the same identification recently proposed from a very different point of view by Völter, Witness of the Epistles, p. 231, and also by Spitta, Apostelgeschichte, p. 184). At first sight it is no doubt in favour of this conclusion that according to Acts the journey, Acts 11:30, is the second made by St. Paul to Jerusalem, and the journey in 15 the third, whilst Galatians 2:1 also describes a journey which the Apostle himself represents as his second to the mother-city. We cannot fairly solve this difficulty by cutting the knot with McGiffert, who regards Acts 11:30; Acts 11:15 as = Galatians 2:1-10, and thinks that Luke found two independent accounts of the same journey, and supposed them to refer to separate events (Apostolic Age, p. 171); or by concluding with Drummond, Galatians, p. 78, that the writer of Acts made a mistake in bringing St. Paul to Jerusalem at the time of the famine, so that Galatians 2 and Acts 15 both refer to his second visit (cf. to the same effect, Wendt, p. 218 (1899), who looks upon the visit described in Acts 11:25 as a mistake of the author, at all events as regards Paul). But McGiffert and Drummond are both right in emphasising one most important and, as it seems to us, crucial difficulty in the way of the view advocated by Ramsay; if he is correct, it is difficult to see any object in the visit described in Acts 15. After the decision already arrived at in Galatians 2:1-10 : Acts 11:30; Acts 12:25, the question then ex hypothesi at issue could scarcely have been raised again in the manner described in Acts 15. Moreover, whilst Ramsay admits that another purpose was achieved by the journey to Jerusalem described in Galatians 2:1-10, although only as a mere private piece of business, St. Paul, p. 57, he maintains that the special and primary object of the visit was to relieve the poor. But if the pillars of the Church were already aware, as ex hypothesi they must have been aware, that St. Paul came to Jerusalem bringing food and money for the poor (Acts 11:29-30), we may be pardoned for finding it difficult to believe that the “one charge alone” (Galatians 2:10) which they gave him was to do the very thing which he actually came for the purpose of doing. If, too, Barnabas and Saul had just been associated in helping the poor, and if the expression ὃ καὶ ἐσπούδασα, Galatians 2:10, refers, as Professor Ramsay holds, to this service, we should hardly have expected Paul to use the first person singular, but rather to have associated Barnabas with himself in his reference to their work of love and danger. Professor Ramsay emphasises the fact (Expositor, p. 183, March, 1896) that Luke pointedly records that the distribution was carried out to its completion by Barnabas and Saul in person (Acts 12:25). Why then does Paul only refer to his own zeal in remembering the poor in Acts 11:29; Acts 12:25 = Galatians 2:1-10 ? (On the force of the aorist as against Professor Ramsay's view, see Expositor, March, 1899, p. 221, Mr. Vernon Bartlet's note.) Galatians 2:10 should rather be read in the light of 1 Corinthians 16:1-3; if the first-named Epistle was also the first in point of time, then we can understand how, whilst it contains no specific and definite mention of a collection for the Church at Jerusalem, which is so emphasised in 1 Corinthians 16:1; 2 Corinthians 8:9, etc., yet the eager desire of the pillars of the Church that the poor in Judæa should be remembered, and the thought of a fund for supplying their needs, may well have been working in St. Paul's mind from the earlier time of the expression of that desire and need, Galatians 2:10, Expositor, November, 1893, “Pauline Collection for the Saints,' and April, 1894, “The Galatians of St. Paul,” Rendall Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 67.

For reasons why St. Paul did not refer to his second visit to Jerusalem when writing to the Galatians see on Acts 11:30, and Salmon, “Galatians,” B.D. 2, p. 1111; Sanday, Expositor, February, 1896, p. 92; Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 61; “Acts of the Apostles,” p. 30, Hastings' B.D. and “Chron. of the N.T.,” ibid., p. 423; Zahn, Einleitung, ii., 629. Further: Dr. Sanday has emphasised the fact that at the time of St. Paul's second visit to Jerusalem the state of things which we find in Acts 15 (the third visit) did not exist; that a stage in the controversy as to the terms of admission of Gentile converts had been reached by the date of Acts 15 which had not been reached at the date of Acts 11:30; that at this latter date, e.g., there was no such clear demarcation of spheres between St. Peter and St. Paul, and that it is not until Acts 13:46 that the turning-point is actually reached: henceforth St. Paul assumes his true “Apostleship of the Gentiles,” and preaches a real “Gospel of the uncircumcision”; see especially Expositor, July, 1896, p. 62. Of course Professor Ramsay's theory obliges us to place Galatians 2:1-10 before the Apostolic Conference, and to suppose that when the events narrated in Galatians 2 took place, the journey of Acts 13:14 was still in the future. But is not the whole tone and attitude of St. Paul in Galatians 2:1-10, placing himself, e.g., before Barnabas in Acts 15:9 and evidently regarding himself as the foremost representative of one sphere of missionary work, as St. Peter was of the other, Acts 15:8, more easily explained if his first missionary journey was already an accomplished fact and not still in the future?

In the two short references to Paul's second visit to Jerusalem, Acts 11:30; Acts 12:25, it is still “Barnabas and Saul,” so too in Acts 13:1-2; Acts 13:7; not till Acts 13:9 does the change come: henceforth Paul takes the lead, Acts 13:13; Acts 13:16; Acts 13:43; Acts 13:45; Acts 13:50, etc., with two exceptions as Professor Ramsay pointedly describes them (see above on Acts 13:9), and in the account of the Conference and all connected with it St. Luke and the Church at Antioch evidently regard Paul as the leader, Acts 15:2 (2), 22 (although the Church at Jerusalem places Barnabas first, Acts 15:12; Acts 15:25). But in Acts 11:30; Acts 12:25 the historian speaks of “Barnabas and Saul”. The whole position of St. Paul assigned to him by St. Luke in Acts 15 is in harmony with the Apostle's own claims and prominence in Galatians 2:1-10; it is not in harmony with the subordinate place which the same St. Luke assigns to him in the second visit to Jerusalem. In other words, if Galatians 2:1-10 = Acts 15, then St. Paul's claim to be an Apostle of the Gentiles is ratified by the Gentile Luke; but if Galatians 2:1-10 = Acts 11:30; Acts 12:25, then there is no hint in Acts that Luke as yet regarded Paul in any other light than a subordinate to the Hebrew Barnabas; he is still Saul, not Paul. For the points of discrepancy between Galatians 2:1-10 and Acts 15 see same authorities as above; one point upon which Ramsay strongly insists, viz., that a visit which is said to be “by revelation,” Galatians 2:2, cannot be identified with a visit which takes place by the appointment of the Church, Acts 15:2, is surely hypercritical; it would not be the first occasion on which the Spirit and the Church had spoken in harmony; in Acts 13:3-4 the Church ἀπέλυσαν sent away Paul and Barnabas, and yet in the next verse we read οἱ ἐκπεμφθέντες ὑπὸ τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος, see Lightfoot, Galatians,. 125; Drummond, Galatians,. 75; Turner, “Chronology of the N.T.,” Hastings' B.D., p. 424; cf. also Wendt, p. 258 (1899), and Zahn, Einleitung, ii., 632, who both point out that the statements referred to are by no means mutually exclusive. On the whole question see Wendt's 1899 edition, p. 255 ff., and Expositor, 1896 (February, March, April, July) for its full discussion by Dr. Sanday and Professor Ramsay.

A further question arises as to the position to be assigned to the incident in Galatians 2:11-14. Professor Ramsay, St. Paul, p. 157 ff., supposes that it took place before the Apostolic Conference, and finds a description of the occasion of the incident in Acts 15:1; Acts 15:24; Galatians 2:12, i.e., in the words of three authorities, St. Luke, the Apostles at Jerusalem, and St. Paul himself; the actual conflict between St. Peter and St. Paul took place after the latter's second visit to Jerusalem, but before his third visit. The issue of the conflict is not described by Paul, but it is implied in the events of the Jerusalem Conference, Acts 15:2; Acts 15:7. Barnabas had wavered, but had afterwards joined Paul; Peter had been rebuked, but had received the rebuke in such a way as to become a champion of freedom in the ensuing Conference, employing to others the argument which had convinced himself, cf. Acts 15:10; Galatians 2:14. Mr. Turner, “Chronology of the N.T.,” Hastings' B.D., i., 424, is inclined to adopt this view, which identifies the two Judaising missions from Jerusalem to Antioch, Galatians 2:12 and Acts 15:1, while he still maintains the ordinary view that Galatians 2:1-10 = Acts 15. This, as he points out, we may easily do, whilst Galatians 2:11-14 may be allowed to precede Galatians 2:1-10 in order of time, and in the absence of the ἔπειτα in Galatians 1:18; Galatians 1:21; Galatians 2:1 there is nothing to suggest that the chronological series is continued. It may be noted that Paley, Horæ Paulinæ, v., 9, had remarked that there is nothing to hinder us from supposing that the dispute at Antioch was prior to the Conference at Jerusalem. Moreover it may be fairly urged that this view puts a more favourable construction on the conduct of St. James and St. Peter in relation to the compact which they had made with Paul at the Jerusalem Conference. But on the attitude of St. James and the expression ἐλθεῖν τινὰς ἀπὸ Ἰακώβου, see Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 79; Lightfoot on Galatians 2:12; Drummond, Galatians, p. 85; and with regard to the conduct of St. Peter, see Hort, u. s., p. 76; Lightfoot on the collision at Antioch, Galatians, p. 125 ff.; and Salmon, “Galatians,” B.D. 2, p. 1114; Drummond, u. s., p. 78.

On Zahn's position that the dispute between Peter and Paul took place before the Apostolic Conference, when the former betook himself to Antioch after his liberation, Acts 12:5 ff, a view put forward also by Schneckenburger, Zweck der Apostelgeschichte, p. 109 ff., see Neue Kirchl. Zeitschr., p. 435 ff., 1894, and Belser's criticism, Die Selbstvertheidigung des h. Paulus im Galaterbriefe, p. 127 ff., 1896 (Biblische Studien).

Wendt, pp. 211, 212 (1899), while declining to attempt any explanation either psychological or moral of St. Peter's action in Galatians 2:11-14, points out with justice how perverse it is to argue that Peter could not have previously conducted himself with reference to Cornelius as Acts describes when we remember that in the incident before us Barnabas, who had been the constant companion of St. Paul in the Gentile mission, shared nevertheless in St. Peter's weakness.

Additional note (2), cf. Acts 15:29.

A further question arises as to why the particular prohibitions of the Decree are mentioned. According to a very common view they represented the Seven Precepts of Noah, six of which were said to have been given by God to Adam, while the seventh was given as an addition to Noah. The Seven Precepts were as follows: (1) against profanation of God's name; (2) against idolatry; (3) against fornication; (4) against murder; (5) against theft; (6) to obey those in authority; (7) against eating living flesh, i.e., flesh with the blood in it, see Schürer Jewish People, div. ii., vol. ii., p. 318, E.T.; Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 69. No doubt there are points of contact between these Precepts and the four Prohibitions of the Decree, but at the same time it would seem that there are certainly four of the Precepts to which there is nothing corresponding in the Decree. The Precepts were binding on every Gêr Toshav, a stranger sojourning in the land of Israel, but it has been erroneously supposed that the Gêr Toshav = σεβόμενος, and thus the conclusion is drawn that the idea of the four prohibitions was to place Gentiles on the footing of σεβόμενοι in the Christian community. Against this identification of the Gêr Toshav and the σεβόμενος Schürer's words are decisive, u. s., pp. 318, 319. But if this view was valid historically, the position of the Gentile Christians under such conditions would have been far from satisfactory, and we cannot suppose that Paul would have regarded any such result as a success; still circumcision and the keeping of the law would have been necessary to entitle a man to the full privilege of the Christian Church and name. Ritschl, who takes practically the same view as Wendt below, admits that in a certain degree the Gentile Christians would be regarded as in an inferior position to the Jewish Christians, Altkatholische Kirche, pp. 131, 133, second edition.

It seems even more difficult to trace the prohibitions of the Decree to the Levitical prohibitions, Leviticus 17, 18, which were binding on strangers or sojourners in Israel (LXX προσήλυτοι), since, if the written law was to be the source of the Jerusalem prohibitions, it is inexplicable that the variations from it both in matter and number should be so observable (Hort, u. s., p. 70); and although Wendt (so Ritschl, Overbeck, Lipsius, Zöckler, Holtzmann, and others; see on the other hand, Weiss, Biblische Theol., p. 145; Felten, Apostelgeschichte, p. 297; Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 306; Hilgenfeld, Zeitschrift für wissenschaft. Theol., i., 72, 73, 1896) adopts the view that in the four prohibitions of the Jerusalem Decree we have the form in which prohibitions binding upon proselytes in the wider sense, i.e., upon the uncircumcised φοβούμ. or σεβ. τὸν Θεόν, existed in the Apostolic days, he can only say that this is “very probable”: of direct historical evidence, as Zöckler admits, there is none. The difficulty is so great in supposing that Paul and Barnabas could have submitted to the distinction drawn between the Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians that it has led to doubts as to the historical character of the decree. Weizsäcker and McGiffert maintain that the decree was formulated after Paul's departure, when James had reconsidered the matter, and had determined that some restriction should be put upon the complete Gentile liberty which had been previously granted. But this view can only be maintained by the sacrifice of Acts 16:4, where Paul is distinctly said to have given the decrees to the Churches to keep.

Ramsay, agreeing with Lightfoot, calls the Decree a compromise, and although, as he points out, it seems impossible to suppose that St. Paul would have endorsed a decree which thus made mere points of ritual compulsory, it is probable, he thinks, that after the exordium in which the Jewish party had been so emphatically condemned, the concluding part of the Decree would be regarded as a strong recommendation that the four points should be observed in the interests of peace and amity (St. Paul, p. 172). In a previous passage, p. 167, he seems to take a very similar view to Wendt, who answers the question as to how the Precepts of the Decree were to be observed by the Gentile converts by maintaining that they were an attempt to make intercourse more feasible between the Jewish Christians and their Gentile brethren, p. 265 (1899).

We naturally ask why the Decree apparently fell so quickly into abeyance, and why it did not hold good over a wider area, since in writing to Corinth and Rome St. Paul never refers to it. But, to say nothing of the principle laid down in the reading of Codex [292] (see above on p. 323), St. Paul's language in 1 Corinthians 8:1-13; 1 Corinthians 10:14-22; Romans 14, may be fairly said to possess the spirit of the Decree, and to mark the discriminating wisdom of one eager to lead his disciples behind the rule to the principle; and there is no more reason to doubt the historical truth of the compact made in the Jerusalem Decree, because St. Paul never expressly refers to it, than there is to throw doubt upon his statement in Galatians 2:10, because he does not expressly refer to it as an additional motive for urging the Corinthians to join in the collection for the poor saints, 2 Corinthians 8:9. But further, there is a sufficient answer to the above question in the fact that the Decree was ordained for the Churches which are specifically mentioned, viz., those of Antioch (placed first as the centre of importance, not only as the local capital of Syria, but as the mother of the Gentile Churches, the Church from which the deputation had come), Syria and Cilicia. In these Churches Jewish prejudice had made itself felt, and in these Churches with their constant communication with Jerusalem the Decree would be maintained. The language of St. James in Acts 21:25 proves that some years later reference was naturally made to the Decree as a standard still regulating the intercourse between Jewish and Gentile Christians, at least in Jerusalem, and we may presume in the Churches neighbouring. St Paul's attitude towards the Decree is marked by loyal acceptance on the one hand, and on the other by a deepening recognition of his own special sphere among the Gentiles as the Apostle of the Gentiles, Galatians 2:9. Thus we find him delivering the Decrees to the Churches of his first missionary journey, Acts 16:4, although those Churches were not mentioned in the address of the Decree (no mention is made of the same action on his part towards the Churches in Syria and Cilicia, Acts 15:41, doubtless because they were already aware of the enactments prescribed). It may well be that St. Paul regarded himself as the missionary-Apostle of the Church at Antioch, sent forth from that Church for a special work, and that he would recognise that if the Antiochian Christians were to be loyal to the compact of Jerusalem, he as their representative and emissary must enforce the requirements of that compact in revisiting those regions in which the converts had been so instrumental in causing the Decree to be enacted.

[292] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.

But the work upon which he had been specially sent forth from Antioch had been fulfilled, Acts 14:27; the Conference at Jerusalem had assigned a wider and a separate sphere to his labours; henceforth his Apostleship to the Gentiles εἰς τὰ ἔθνη was more definitely recognised, and more abundantly fulfilled; and in what may be called strictly Gentile Churches, in Churches not only further removed from Palestine, but in which his own Apostleship was adequate authority, he may well have felt that he was relieved from enforcing the Decree. In these Churches the stress laid upon such secondary matters as “things strangled and blood” would simply have been a cause of perplexity, a burden too heavy to bear, the source of a Christianity maimed by Jewish particularism, see Lightfoot, Galatians, pp. 127, 305; Hort, Ecclesia, pp. 88, 89; Judaistic Christianity, p. 74; Speaker's Commentary, Acts, p. 325; Zöckler, Apostelgeschichte, p. 254; “Apostelkonvent,” K. Schmidt in Real-Encyclopädie für protest. Theol. (Hauck), pp. 710, 711 (1896); Wendt, p. 269 (1899); and for the after-history of the Decree, K. Schmidt, u. s., Lightfoot, u. s., Plumptre, Felten, and cf. also Hooker's remarks, Eccles. Pol., iv., 11, 5 ff.

On the attempt to place the Apostolic Conference at Jerusalem before chaps. 13 and 14, see Apostelgeschichte, Wendt (1899), pp. 254, 255, and McGiffert, Apostolic Age, p. 181. Weizsäcker adopts this view because no mention is made in Galatians 1:21 of the missionary journey in Acts 13:14, and he therefore maintains that it could only have taken place after the Conference, but the Epistle does not require that Paul should give a complete account of all his missionary experiences outside Judæa; he is only concerned to show how far he was or was not likely to have received his Gospel from the older Apostles.

Moreover, it is very difficult to find a place for the close companionship of Paul and Barnabas, and their mutual labours in 13, 14 subsequent to the incident described in Galatians 2:13, whether that incident took place just before or just after the Jerusalem Conference; in either case a previous mutual association between Paul and Barnabas in mission work amongst the Gentiles, such as that described in Acts 13:14 accounts for the expectations Paul had evidently formed of Barnabas, Galatians 2:13, and also for the position which the latter holds in Galatians 2:1-10.

Space forbids us to make more than a very brief reference to the attempts to break up chap. 15 into various sources. Spitta, who places the whole section Acts 15:1-33 before chap. 13, refers Acts 15:1-4; Acts 15:13-33 to his inferior source, which the reviser has wrongly inserted here instead of in its proper place after Acts 12:24, and has added Acts 15:5-12. Clemen in the same section, which he regards as an interpolation, assigns Acts 15:1-4; Acts 15:13-18; Acts 15:20-22, to his Redactor Judaicus, and Acts 15:5-12; Acts 15:19; Acts 15:23-33 to Redactor Antijudaicus. Clemen, like Spitta, holds that Acts 15:34 simply takes up again Acts 14:28; further, he regards Acts 21:17-20 a as the source of Acts 15:1-4, but Jüngst cautiously remarks that there is nothing strange in the fact that an author should use similar expressions to describe similar situations (p. 146) a piece of advice which he might himself have remembered with advantage on other occasions. Hilgenfeld's “author to Theophilus” plays a large part in the representation of the negotiations at Jerusalem in respect to the Conference and the Decree, and this representation is based, according to Hilgenfeld, upon the narrative of the conversion of Cornelius which the same author had for merly embellished, although not without some connection with tradition (Zeitschrift für wissenschaft. Theol., p. 59 ff., 1896). Still more recently Wendt (1899) credits the author of Acts with a tolerably free revision of the tradition he had received, with a view of representing the harmony between Paul and the original Apostles in the clearest light: thus the speeches of Peter and James in 15 are essentially his composition; but Wendt concludes by asserting that it seems in his judgment impossible to separate exactly the additions made by the author of Acts from the tradition, another note of caution against hasty subjective conclusions.