Acts 15:17-18

Acts 15:17-18 tau/ta gnwsta. avpV aivw/noj {B}

Since the quotation from Amos 9:12 ends with tau/ta, the concluding words are James’s comment. The reading gnwsta. avpV aivw/noj, however, is so elliptical an expression that copyists made various attempts to recast the phrase, rounding it out as an independent sentence.

Acts 15:20, Acts 15:29; Acts 21:25

The text of the Apostolic Decree, as it is called, is given at Acts 15:29; it is referred to proleptically in Acts 15:20 and retrospectively in Acts 21:25. The three verses contain many problems concerning text and exegesis: (1) Are Gentiles commanded to abstain from four things (food offered to idols, blood, strangled meat, and unchastity) or from three (omitting either strangled meat or unchastity); and (2) are the three or four prohibitions entirely ceremonial, or entirely ethical, or a combination of both kinds?

(a) The Alexandrian text, as well as most other witnesses, has four items of prohibition.

(b) The Western text omits “what is strangled” and adds a negative form of the Golden Rule in Acts 15:20 and Acts 15:29.

(c) Several witnesses omit “unchastity” from Acts 15:20 (so î⁴⁵ [which unfortunately is not extant for Acts 15:29 or Acts 21:25] and eth) and from Acts 15:29 (so Origen, contra Celsum, VIII:29, as well as vg^ms Vigilius and Gaudentius).

The occasion for issuing the Apostolic Decree, it should be observed, was to settle the question whether Gentile converts to Christianity should be required to submit to the rite of circumcision and fulfill other Mosaic statutes. The Council decided that such observance was not required for salvation; at the same time, however, in order to avoid giving unnecessary offense to Jewish Christians (and to Jews contemplating becoming Christians), the Council asked Gentile converts to make certain concessions for prudential reasons, abstaining from those acts that would offend Jewish scruples and hinder social intercourse, including joint participation in the Lord’s Supper.

As concerns transcriptional probabilities, th/j pornei,aj may have been omitted because this item seemed, superficially, to be out of place in what otherwise appeared to be a food law. Although such a consideration may well account for its absence, it is possible that what was intended by the Jerusalem Council was to warn the Gentile believers to avoid either marriage within the prohibited Levitical degrees ( Leviticus 18:6-18), which the rabbis described as “forbidden for pornei,a,” or mixed marriages with pagans ( Numbers 25:1; also compare 2 Corinthians 6:14), or participation in pagan worship, which had long been described by Old Testament prophets as spiritual adultery and which, in fact, offered opportunity in many temples for religious prostitution.

Another way to make sure that the list deals entirely with ritual prohibitions is to remove pornei,aj by emending the text. Bentley, ²⁹⁵ for example, conjectured that the Apostolic Decree was an injunction to abstain “from pollutions of idols and swine’s flesh (coirei,aj) and things strangled and from blood.” A similar conjecture, intended to produce the same dietetic interpretation, is to read porkei,aj ²⁹⁶ instead of pornei,aj. But there is no known example of such a word in Greek, and if an example were found it would be an abstract noun (from po,rkoj) meaning “piggishness.” ²⁹⁷

Concerning (b), it is obvious that the threefold prohibition (lacking tou/ pniktou/) refers to moral injunctions to refrain from idolatry, unchastity, and blood-shedding (or murder), to which is added the negative Golden Rule. But this reading can scarcely be original, for it implies that a special warning had to be given to Gentile converts against such sins as murder, and that this was expressed in the form of asking them to “abstain” from it — which is slightly absurd!

It therefore appears to be more likely that an original ritual prohibition against eating foods offered to idols, things strangled and blood, and against pornei,a (however this latter is to be interpreted) was altered into a moral law by dropping the reference to pniktou/ and by adding the negative Golden Rule, than to suppose that an original moral law was transformed into a food law.

The alternative to accepting the fourfold decree is to argue, as P. H. Menoud has done, ²⁹⁸ that the original text involved a twofold prohibition, namely to abstain from pollutions of idols and from blood, and that to this basic decree respecting kosher foods, î⁴⁵ al added “and from what is strangled,” thus extending the food-law concerning blood to all flesh improperly slaughtered. In the Western tradition the twofold decree was understood to be a moral injunction relating to idolatry and murder, and these witnesses added the prohibition against another major sin, unchastity. Subsequently the injunction concerning the negative Golden Rule was appended to the Western text, which thus extends the moral application far beyond the three basic prohibitions. Finally, the text of the great mass of witnesses represents a conflation of several Western expansions of the basic twofold decree.

Attractive though this theory is on the surface, the textual evidence is not really susceptible of such an interpretation. First, there is no manuscript evidence for the hypothetical twofold decree. Menoud does indeed shrink from pressing his conjecture concerning the twofold decree, and is prepared, with Lagrange, to adopt the reading of î⁴⁵ as the original text. ²⁹⁹ But such an alternative proposal leaves the text critic with exactly the same problems that confronted him before, namely, how to explain the deletion as well as the addition of certain items in the decree.

Secondly, the fact that in Acts 15:20 pniktou/ precedes kai. tou/ ai[matoj is hardly compatible with the theory that it was added in order to clarify and extend the meaning of ai[matoj.

In conclusion, therefore, it appears that the least unsatisfactory solution of the complicated textual and exegetical problems of the Apostolic Decree is to regard the fourfold decree as original (foods offered to idols, strangled meat, eating blood, and unchastity — whether ritual or moral), and to explain the two forms of the threefold decree in some such way as those suggested above. ³⁰⁰

An extensive literature exists on the text and exegesis of the Apostolic Decree. For what can be said in support of the Western text see, e.g., A. Hilgenfeld, “Das Apostel-Concil nach seinem ursprünglichen Wortlaut,” Zeitschrift für wissenschaftliche Theologie, XLII (1899), pp. 138—149; Gotthold Resch, Das Aposteldecret nach seiner ausserkanonischen Textgestalt (Texte und Untersuchungen, N.F. XIII, 3; Leipzig, 1905); A. von Harnack, Beiträge zur Einleitung in das Neue Testament, III (1908), pp. 188—198, and IV (1911), The Acts of the Apostles (London, 1909), pp. 248—263; K. Lake, The Earlier Epistles of St. Paul, their Motive and Origin (London, 1911), pp. 48—60; idem, The Beginnings of Christianity, vol. v, pp. 205—209; J. H. Ropes, The Text of Acts, pp. 265—269; A. C. Clark, The Acts of the Apostles, pp. 360—361; Thorleif Boman, “Das textkritische Problem des sogenannten Aposteldekrets,” Novum Testamentum, VII (1964), pp. 26—36.

Those who have argued in support of the fourfold decree ³⁰¹ include Theodor Zahn, Introduction to the New Testament, III (Edinburgh, 1909), pp. 18—22; idem, Die Apostelgeschichte des Lucas (Leipzig and Erlangen, 1921), pp. 523 ff.; William Sanday, “The Apostolic Decree (Acts XV. 20—29),” Theologische Studien Theodor Zahn…dargebracht (Leipzig, 1908), pp. 317—338; idem, “The Text of the Apostolic Decree (Acts XV:29),” Expositor, Eighth Series, VI (1913), pp. 289—305; E. Jacquier, Les Actes des Apôtres (Paris, 1926), pp. 455—458; Hans Lietzmann, “Der Sinn des Aposteldekretes und seine Textwandlung,” in Amicitiae corolla, a Volume of Essays Presented to James Rendel Harris, ed. by H. G. Wood (London, 1933), pp. 203—211; W. G. Kümmel, “Die älteste Form des Aposteldekrets,” Spiritus et veritas [Festschrift Carlo Kundzinš] (Eutin, 1953), pp. 83—98; E. Haenchen, Die Apostelgeschichte, ad loc.; Marcel Simon, “The Apostolic Decree and its Setting in the Ancient Church,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, LII (196—970), pp. 437—460; C. M. Martini, “Il Decreto del Concilio di Gerusalemme,” Atti della XXII Settimana Biblica (Brescia, 1973), pp. 345—355; C. K. Barrett, Australian Biblical Review, XXXV (1987), pp. 50—59.

²⁹⁵ So A. A. Ellis in Bentleii Critica Sacra (1862), p. 25, quoted by J. Rendel Harris, Side-Lights on New Testament Research (London, 1908), p. 188.

²⁹⁶ Who first proposed the emendation is not known; it found champions in such diverse persons as William E. Gladstone and Joseph Halévy — indeed, the latter unguardedly gives the impression that it is actually found in manuscripts of Acts (Revue Sémitique, X [1902], pp. 238 f.).

²⁹⁷ J. U. Powell’s verdict in his article, “On the suggestion po,rkeia in the Acts of the Apostles, XV, Acts 15:20, Acts 15:29, ” is that (quoting the words of F. W. Farrar), “There is not the faintest atom of probability in it” (Classical Review, XXXIII [1919], p. 152).

²⁹⁸ “The Western Text and the Theology of Acts,” Bulletin of the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, II (1951), pp. 22—28.

²⁹⁹ “If our conjecture about the original text appears to be too hazardous, this text of î⁴⁵ can be regarded as the original,” op. cit., p. 24, with a reference to M.-J. Lagrange, in Revue Biblique, XLIII (1934), p. 168, and La Critique textuelle (Paris, 1935), p. 414.

³⁰⁰ An ingenious attempt to solve the problem by proposing that both the Alexandrian and the Western readings are, in a certain sense, original was made by Karl Six, S.J., who asks, “Could not James, who according to tradition was more legalistic than the rest, have included the prohibition of pnikto,n in his proposal, while in the composition of the letter it was omitted, either in the interest of conciseness or because it seemed to be comprehended in the prohibition of blood?” (Das Aposteldekret (Act 15, 28:29). Seine Entstehung und Geltung in den ersten vier Jahrhunderten [Innsbruck, 1912], p. 18). The difficulty with this theoretical solution is that it is unsupported by the evidence of the manuscripts in Acts 15:20 and Acts 15:29.

³⁰¹ According to Jacques Dupont, “Present day scholarship is practically unanimous in considering the ‘Eastern’ text of the decree as the only authentic text (in four items) and in interpreting its prescriptions in a sense not ethical but ritual,” Les problèmes du Livre des Actes d’après les travaux récents (Louvain, 1950), p. 70.