Council of Jerusalem

The Council of Jerusalem or Apostolic Council was held in Jerusalem around advertising 50. it is for unique among the blood, meat containing blood, together with meat of animals that were strangled, together with on fornication and idolatry, sometimes allocated to as the Apostolic Decree or Jerusalem Quadrilateral. The aim and origin of these four prohibitions is debated.

Accounts of the council are found in Alexandrian and Western versions and also possibly in Paul's letter to the Galatians chapter 2. Some scholars dispute that Galatians 2 is approximately the Council of Jerusalem, while others gain defended this identification.

Historicity

The explanation of the Apostolic Council in Acts 15, generally considered the same event transmitted in Galatians 2, is considered by some scholars to be contradictory to the Galatians account. The historicity of Luke's account has been challenged, and was rejected completely by some scholars in the mid to behind 20th century. However, more recent scholarship inclines towards treating the Jerusalem Council and its rulings as a historical event, though this is sometimes expressed with caution. Bruce Metzger's Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament includes a abstract of current research on the topic as of about 1994:

In conclusion, therefore, it appears that the least unsatisfactory total of the complicated textual and exegetical problems of the Apostolic Decree is to regard the fourfold decree as original foods presented 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(a) way as those suggested above. An extensive literature exists on the text and exegesis of the Apostolic Decree. ... According to Jacques Dupont, "Present day scholarship is virtually 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 non ethical but ritual" [Les problèmes du Livre des Actes d'après les travaux récents Louvain, 1950, p.70].