Council of Jerusalem

Acts 15 and Galatians 2 both suggest that the meeting was called to debate the legitimacy of the evangelizing mission of Barnabas and Paul to the Gentiles and the Gentile converts' freedom from most of the Mosaic Law,[1][2] especially from the circumcision of males,[1] a practice that was considered execrable and repulsive in the Greco-Roman world during the period of Hellenization of the Eastern Mediterranean,[13][14][15][16][17] and was especially disdained in Classical civilization both from ancient Greeks and Romans, which instead valued the foreskin positively.

[1][2][23][24] The main concern for Paul, which he subsequently expressed in greater detail with his letters directed to the early Christian communities in Asia Minor, was the inclusion of Gentiles into God's New Covenant, sending the message that faith in Christ is sufficient for salvation.

Instead we should write to them, telling them to abstain from food polluted by idols, from sexual immorality, from the meat of strangled animals and from blood.

[a] For the law of Moses has been preached in every city from the earliest times and is read in the synagogues on every Sabbath.Acts 15:23–29 sets out the content of the letter written in accordance with James' proposal.

They remind the assembly that, "as for the Gentiles who have believed, 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 has been strangled, and from sexual immorality".

In the view of some scholars, the reminder of James and the elders here is an expression of concern that Paul was not fully teaching the decision of the Jerusalem Council's letter to Gentiles,[28] particularly in regard to non-strangled kosher meat,[29] which contrasts with Paul's advice to Gentiles in Corinth,[30] to "eat whatever is sold in the meat markets" (1 Corinthians 10:25).

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].

[44] The Jewish Encyclopedia 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.The Jewish Encyclopedia also states: R. Emden [...] 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 20th-century American Catholic priest and biblical scholar Joseph A. Fitzmyer SJ disputes the claim that the Apostolic Decree is based on the seven Noahide laws (Gen 9), and instead proposes Lev 17–18 as the basis for it.

[48] The apostolic decree was defined by the Council of Florence to have been obsolete when the distinction between Jewish and gentile converts had disappeared: [The council] also declares that the apostolic prohibition, to abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled, was suited to that time when a single church was rising from Jews and gentiles, who previously lived with different ceremonies and customs.

In places, however, where the Christian religion has been promulgated to such an extent that no Jew is to be met with and all have joined the church, uniformly practicing the same rites and ceremonies of the gospel and believing that to the clean all things are clean, since the cause of that apostolic prohibition has ceased, so its effect has ceased.This reasoning was repeated in Pope Urban VIII's Creed for Oriental converts of 1642 [50] and Pope Benedict XIV's encyclical Ex Quo of 1756.