Acts 15

Acts 15 is the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records Paul and Barnabas traveling to Jerusalem to attend the Council of Jerusalem and the beginning of Paul's second missionary journey.[1] The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke.[2]

Acts 15
Acts 15:22–24 in Latin (left column) and Greek (right column) in Codex Laudianus, written about AD 550.
BookActs of the Apostles
CategoryChurch history
Christian Bible partNew Testament
Order in the Christian part5

Text

The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 41 verses.

Textual witnesses

Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are:

Locations
Places mentioned in (blue) and related to (black) this chapter.

This chapter mentions the following places (in order of appearance):

Timeline

The journey of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem and the Council of Jerusalem is generally considered to have taken place around 48 [3] – 50 AD.

Conflict over circumcision (15:1–5)

The circumcision controversy began in Antioch, when 'certain men' (Greek: τινες, certain 'people' in the NIV translation) came from Judea teaching that salvation was dependent on circumcision according to the Mosaic law. The People's New Testament Commentary [4] called them 'the Judaizing Teachers';[5] Paul called them and others with the same teaching 'false brethren secretly brought in'.[6]

The dispute which arose resulted in a decision to send Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem, to seek a resolution to the issue. In Jerusalem the pro-circumcision case was argued by 'some of the sect of the Pharisees who believed'.[7]

Council of Jerusalem (15:6–29)
Main article: Council of Jerusalem

The account of Jerusalem Council is bracketed by the scenes in Antioch (verses 1–5 opening; verses 30–35 closing) as an indication that the narrator shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch as 'home ground', and might not have access to the developments in Jerusalem since Peter left that city in Acts 12:17.[8]

Verse 13
And after they had become silent, James answered, saying, "Men and brethren, listen to me:"[9]

The council listened to James because he was the first of the three pillars of church (see Galatians 2:9). He was the leader of the church in Jerusalem until he was stoned to death at the insistence of the high priest in 62 AD. James was the Lord Jesus Christ's half brother, the one who did not believe until the Lord appeared to him privately after the Resurrection (see 1 Corinthians 15:7).[10]

Verse 14
Simon has declared how God first visited the Gentiles to take from among them a people for His name.[11]

Return to Antioch (15:30–35)

Armed with the apostolic decree, Paul and Barnabas triumphantly returned to Antioch, accompanied by the Jerusalem delegates, Judas (surnamed Barsabbas) and Silas (verses 22, 32), who provided encouragement and strengthening (cf. Acts 14:22), just like Barnabas, who was originally sent from Jerusalem to Antioch (Acts 11:22–24).[1]

Paul and Barnabas part company (15:36–41)

This section opens the account of Paul's second journey (Acts 15:36–18:23) which started after an unspecified interval (verse 36), without the formal commissioning ceremony as in the first one and was simply aimed to revisit converts from the previous mission (verse 36).[14] Paul parted ways with Barnabas before the departure (verses 37–39), and Barnabas disappears from the remaining chapters of Acts, although Paul mentions him in his first epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 9:6). Silas of Jerusalem (also called "Silvanus" in Latinized form), who is a 'prophet' and anointed by the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:32; like Paul and Barnabas), became Paul's new companion (verse 40). Paul and Silas began the journey through the Taurus Mountains passing Paul's home territory of Cilicia (verse 41), following the route along southern Anatolia (now Turkey) across the Cilician Gates.[14] Later, they evangelized Macedonia and Achaea (1 Thessalonians 1:1; 2 Corinthians 1:19).[14]

See also

References
  1. Alexander 2007, pp. 1047–1048.
  2. Holman Illustrated Bible Handbook. Holman Bible Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee. 2012.
  3. Robinson, John Arthur Thomas (1976) Redating the New Testament, Westminster Press. ISBN 978-1-57910-527-3
  4. M. Eugene Boring, Fred B. Craddock, The People's New Testament Commentary, Westminster John Knox Press, 2004
  5. People's New Testament, http://biblehub.com/commentaries/pnt/acts/15.htm accessed 10 September 2015
  6. Galatians 2:4
  7. Acts 15:5 NKJV
  8. Alexander 2007, p. 1047.
  9. Acts 15:13 NKJV
  10. The Nelson Study Bible. Thomas Nelson, Inc. 1997
  11. Acts 15:14 MEV
  12. Greek Text Analysis: Acts 15:14.Biblehub
  13. Strong's Greek Concordance 4826. Sumeón. Biblehub
  14. Alexander 2007, p. 1048.

Sources
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