Clifford Denton continues the study of Acts 15 by considering the context and conclusion of the meeting of apostles and elders in the First Century.

Recap

In the first part of our study, we argued that the Acts 15 meeting of apostles and elders was according to Jewish tradition for settling disputes, whose origin can be traced to the time of Moses. It was perhaps the first council of its kind in the emerging Christian community. We can adopt this view providing we maintain a balanced perspective of continuity from biblical origins rather than a breaking away to form a new religion. The apostles and elders were responsible, as are Church leaders today, to shepherd the body of disciples, including both Jews and Gentiles, to be the authentic manifestation of the covenant community of faith.

The outpouring of the Holy Spirit had begun in the Gentile world and the leaders met in Jerusalem to consider together what the God of Israel was now doing, and what he was expecting of his people.

The apostles and elders met in Jerusalem in accordance with Jewish tradition, to consider what God had begun in the Gentile world and what he was expecting of his people."

All this was happening in the context of the Jewish world of the Sanhedrin and the Rabbis, who to that time had interpreted biblical teaching into a set of rules for living. This was the world into which Jesus came, challenging the Rabbis but recognising their authority – that is until the coming of the Holy Spirit to empower his disciples in a new and living way.

Let us consider a little more of the rabbinical teaching of the day to further understand the need for the council of Acts 15.

Rules and Obligations

Jewish tradition has it that there are two aspects to Torah: the Written Torah, recorded by Moses, and the Oral Torah passed on from Moses through reliable men. The Oral Torah was codified (developed in written form) in the Second Century into what is known as the Mishnah. This was some time after the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD when concerns arose as to whether oral traditions would be remembered with the Jewish nation scattered throughout the world. Once the teaching was passed on orally, but now it was codified for fear that the teaching would be lost to future generations.

In our own generation, we can read the Mishnah to study these oral traditions. Here we find much of what was taught by the Rabbis at the time of Jesus and his Apostles. A study of the Mishnah gives us information that helps us to understand the basis of Jesus' challenges to the Rabbis. For example there is an incident recorded in Matthew 12 concerning the rabbinic definition of work and its relationship to the Sabbath Day. The disciples of Jesus, in the eyes of the Pharisees, contravened a number of their definitions of the work of harvesting when they ate grain as they walked through the fields. This incident and others are understood most clearly through reference to the Oral Traditions recorded in the Mishnah.

In Jesus' day, to be a Jew implied obedience to the authority of the oral traditions and extra rulings of the Rabbis."

Jews were expected to govern their lives through obedience to oral traditions and other rulings of the religious leaders. The different schools of Rabbis formulated rules by which their disciples were obliged to live – the legal halakhah of the day. To be a Jew implied that such obligations were authoritative. Circumcision for men was the entry point into the Jewish family and everything else followed. This is the background to Acts 15.

The Perceived Authority of the Mishnah

In the introduction to Danby's translation of the Mishnah (OUP, 1933), there is a passage that relates the chain of the Oral Torah's passage down through the centuries. Because the Oral Torah was considered to go back to Moses it was considered just as authoritative as the written Torah.

Recall that Jesus referred to the teaching of the Rabbis sometimes as, "You have read" and sometimes, "You have heard it said", reflecting both the written and oral nature of rabbinic teaching:

The Mishnah's own account of its origin and history of the Oral Law is given in the tractate Aboth. At the same time that the Written Law was given from Sinai, the Oral Law, too, was delivered to Moses, and handed down (orally) in turn to the leaders of successive generations – to Joshua, to the Elders (Joshua 24:31), to the Prophets, to the 'Men of the Great Synagogue' (the body of teachers who administered and taught the Law after the time of Ezra), to Simeon the Just (c.280 or 200 B.C., one of 'the remnants of the men of the Great Synagogue'), to Antigonus of Soko; then, in turn, to the five 'Pairs of leaders' – Jose ben Joezer and Jose ben Johanan (c.165 B.C.), Joshua ben Perahyah and Nittai the Arbelite, Judah ben Tabbai and Simeon ben Shetach, Shemaiah and Abtalion, and Hillel and Shammai. Thus the chain of tradition was brought to the threshold of the Christian era.

On account of this chain of reliable men it is considered that the Oral Torah is of equal authority to the Written Torah in Judaism. As the Introduction to the translation of the Mishnah states, after the above paragraph:

The Mishnah, in other words, maintains that the authority of those rules, customs, and interpretations which had accumulated around the Jewish system of life and religion was equal to the authority of the Written Law itself, even though they had no place in the Written Law.

Students of the Rabbis

Along with the culture of oral traditions went the zeal for the Scriptures of every student from a Jewish background. The abiding issue was to know just what was expected in how to live in every part of life. The Mitzvot (Commandments) were obligatory and binding and it was a person's duty to apply them into his or her life.

Even though both the Written and Oral Torah were assumed to have been passed on flawlessly they still needed to be interpreted in every generation. Hence the Councils of Elders determined halakhah, whether in the Synagogue Bet Din at local level, or through the Sanhedrin, on more weighty matters, at national level. Though the origin of the term halakhah (also spelled halachah) is to walk out one's duty to God, it became a legal term meaning, to a Jew, those things that were legally binding on his life.

As each generation interpreted the Torah into halakhah, to know just how to live, halakhah became less about relationship with God and more an expression of legal duty."

On matters of Torah, a member of the Jewish community should seek guidance from his Rabbi on matters which needed interpretation. There were also rules for whose interpretations were binding. For example, in Popular Halachah: A Guide to Jewish Living (edited by Avnere Tomaschoff and sponsored by the World Conference of Jewish Organisations, 1985) it states:

The halachic decision of a contemporary Rabbi is binding upon the person who poses the question; he may not attempt to receive a more lenient opinion by bringing the same question to another Rabbi unless he advises the second Rabbi of the opinion that he had previously received.

This was the background to the Jewish world of the Apostles in Jerusalem at the meeting recorded in Acts 15. They met as a Bet Din to discuss how the Gentiles coming to faith should be brought into the community where the laws and traditions of Torah were to be interpreted and it was to be discovered what was obligatory and binding.

This was the background of the Bet Din in Jerusalem in Acts 15: how should Gentiles be brought into the community steeped in the interpreted laws and traditions of the Torah?

The most prominent issue was whether circumcision was necessary for Gentile converts, but implicit in the deliberations was every aspect of the Torah, since to be circumcised in the flesh implied coming under the authority of the teachers of Judaism according to the current traditions.

Freedom to Learn

With these thoughts in the background, we realise that the Acts 15 meeting was simply a meeting in Jerusalem of those with authority from Jesus, guided by God's Spirit (in the continuity of Covenant history and Jewish tradition), to see how Gentile converts should approach Torah. Was there a new way or should Gentile converts come under the authority of the rabbis?

An inspired conclusion was reached. A letter was sent out to new believers in the Gentile world, after which the Gospel continued to go out into the Gentile world with spiritual power. The four things that are mentioned in the letter were not binding in the sense of normal Jewish halakhah, but very important and necessary, nevertheless, for the good of every believer:

The apostles, the elders, and the brethren, To the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia: Greetings. Since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your souls, saying, "You must be circumcised and keep the law" -- to whom we gave no such commandment -- it seemed good to us, being assembled with one accord, to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who will also report the same things by word of mouth.

For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things: that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well. Farewell. (Acts 15:23-29)

Both the content of the letter and the spirit of the letter are important. The four things mentioned are also known as the Noahide Laws, principles traditionally thought to have been given to Noah after the Flood, and so for all mankind. This does not mean that these are the only four things relevant to believers from the Old Testament. Noah was a man of faith and fellowship with God, just as Abraham was; faith was the major principle of the Old Testament as well as the New. Neither Noah nor Abraham knew the Torah ('Law') in the sense that it was given through Moses, but they both had a heart to walk closely with the living God (the true halakhah, one might say).

In all generations, the one thing of which a person must be careful in seeking to walk with the true God is to avoid those things that might be a seduction towards following false gods. The four injunctions contained in the letter were typical of the traps to avoid if one was to not be seduced into idolatry. Thus the letter, the ruling from the Acts 15 meeting (so to speak), warned new believers to beware of following false gods so that they might learn to walk out their faith in fellowship with the One True God of Israel.

Each of the four Noahic principles given to new believers referred to typical traps which might seduce them into following false gods. They were intended to protect and support their faith and fellowship with the One True God."

Secondly, we see in the spirit of the letter that was foreseen by Jeremiah of the New Covenant:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. No more shall every man teach his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord,' for they all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, says the Lord. For I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more. (Jer 31:33-34)

The reason why other aspects of Torah were not specifically mentioned is that the Holy Spirit inspired the elders in Jerusalem to see that, in future, Torah would be studied in terms of New Covenant revelation, in which the Holy Spirit would be the agent of such revelation. The emphasis was to be on teaching those with a heart to learn more than through externally imposed obligations.

The remainder of God's law would not be externally imposed, but written on the hearts of believers through the revelation of the Holy Spirit, as Jeremiah had previously prophesied. "

Relevance Today

It was not that a new religion was beginning, but that the faith and walk of Abraham was to be brought to the Gentile world by the power of the Holy Spirit. This was nevertheless a continuity of Covenant history within the context of the Jewish traditions of authority and searching out the interpretation of Torah for the emerging sect of the Jews into which Gentile converts were grafted.

We continue to live in the flow of Covenant history. We are connected to our history through the Council of Jerusalem of Acts 15. Through this Council, or Bet Din (as we now understand it), we learned not about the departure from the Jewish Roots of our faith but how Torah and halakhah would be taken to the Gentile world by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Through Acts 15, we learn not about departing from the Jewish roots of our faith, but how Torah and halakhah - the faith and walk of Abraham - would be taken to the Gentiles through the power of the Holy Spirit."

With freedom to learn for everyone who is a disciple of Yeshua, our Jewish and Hebraic roots are as secure as for anyone in the Covenant community, right through from Abraham's day to our own.

For Study and Prayer

1. In the light of what we have considered concerning the context and interpretation of Acts 15, how should Christians approach study of the Old Testament?
2. Do you see any parallels with the way the rabbis exercised authority through tradition with what happens in some branches of the Christian Church today?

Next time: Paul and the Torah

These studies are developed from the course Christianity's Relationship with Israel and the Jews, first prepared for Tishrei Bible School.