Acts15chapter 15

Circumcision was not a minor rite. It was the covenant sign that made a man part of Israel, and Greeks and Romans found it repellent and mocked it in their literature. Requiring it of Gentile converts would have kept the church a Jewish sect forever; not requiring it raised the question of whether such converts were really in the covenant at all.

Underneath the theology sat a daily problem: could Jewish and Gentile believers eat together? The four items in the council's letter — meat offered to idols, blood, strangled animals, sexual immorality — are largely the practices that made a Gentile's table impossible for a law-keeping Jew, plus the sexual standard the surrounding culture did not share.

James presides and quotes the prophet Amos. He is Jesus's brother, and by this point he leads the Jerusalem church; his standing among strict Jewish believers is exactly why his verdict could settle the matter.

How this council relates to Paul's own account in Galatians 2 is genuinely disputed — some place Galatians before this meeting, some after, and the answer changes the letter's date. The traditional reading treats them as the same events described from two angles.