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by
Doug Ward |
"Go therefore and make disciples of all nations," the
risen Jesus told his apostles (Mt 28:19). The book of Acts chronicles how the
apostles began to carry out this assignment, proclaiming the Messiah's
resurrection "in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of
the earth" (Ac 1:8). Their first disciples were fellow Jews, but God soon
directed them to present the Gospel to Gentiles as well.
The
earliest Gentile Christians, like Cornelius the centurion, were
"God-fearers" (Ac 10:1-2, 22)-Gentiles who were drawn to the God and
Scriptures of Israel and to the synagogue, but who had not taken the final step
of conversion to Judaism. Some Jewish Christians believed that God-fearers
should take this step and embrace a fully Jewish lifestyle, including
circumcision for men. A controversy ensued (Ac 15:1-5).
A
council of apostles and elders convened in Jerusalem to consider the issue (v
6). Peter reported that God had given his Spirit to Gentiles like Cornelius
without requiring that they be circumcised (vv 7-11).
James the brother of Jesus observed that Peter's experience was consistent with
the words of the prophets. Prophecies like Amos 9:11-12 pictured a time when
Gentiles would join with Israelites in following the true God while maintaining
Gentile identities (vv 13-18). Not everyone in the
messianic kingdom would be a Jew.
The
council agreed, then, not to require Gentile Christians to convert to Judaism.
It did specify, however, that these believers should "abstain from what
has been sacrificed to idols, and from blood, and from what has been strangled,
and from sexual immorality" (v 29). This list has come to be known as the
Apostolic Decree.
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Meaning(s)
of the Apostolic Decree |
The four items in the Apostolic Decree are stated briefly, with no
elaboration, in Acts 15 and again in Acts 21:25. We can give more explanation
with the help of the Bible and our knowledge of life in the first century. For
example, abstaining from blood can mean both not eating blood and not
committing acts of bloodshed (Ge 9:4-6). Several types of sexual immorality are
condemned in Scripture (Lev 18, 20; 1 Co 5:1; 6:9, 15-16). Idolatry was
ubiquitous in the Greco-Roman world, and believers were to give no honor to
false gods (1 Co 10:18-22; 1 Th 1:9; 1 Jo 5:21; Rev 2:14,20).
The
phrase "what has been strangled" is more obscure. The Greek word for
this phrase, pniktos, occurs in the New
Testament only in the Apostolic Decree. (A related word, pnigo,
means to choke or drown-Mt 13:7; 18:28; Mk 5:13.) Outside of the New Testament pniktos is a term for tender meat from infant or
unborn animals that have been smothered.1
The
meaning of pniktos in Acts 15 depends on the
meaning of the Decree as a whole. One possibility is that the Decree gives
guidelines for meal preparation, so that Jewish and Gentile Christians could
share meals in harmony. In this case, Gentile Christians hosting a meal should
not serve meat that had been offered in a pagan sacrifice and should make sure
that the animal's blood had been drained properly. No sexual immorality should
take place, including the common Greco-Roman practice of offering prostitutes
to guests after dinner.
In
the setting of a meal, avoiding pniktos could
mean not serving meat from a smothered infant animal, or it could mean not
butchering an animal by slitting its windpipe. An animal killed in this manner
would effectively smother to death, and its blood would not drain properly.
A
second possibility is that the decree lists basic moral requirements. The three
sins of idolatry, shedding blood, and sexual immorality are often listed
together in the Bible (Eze 33:25-26; 16:36) and in
later rabbinic literature. In Jewish tradition these are identified as sins
that one should not commit even if one's life is at stake (e.g., b. Sanhedrin
74a).
Rabbinic
lists of these three sins often add a fourth sin-for instance, slander, neglecting
a sabbatical year, unwarranted hatred, or robbery-in order to emphasize the
seriousness of the fourth sin. In the Apostolic Decree, pniktos
is the fourth sin. A good candidate for pniktos
would be the killing of unwanted infants by smothering.
In
favor of this interpretation of pniktos is the
fact that infanticide was widely practiced in the Greco-Roman world. When a
baby was born, the head of household decided whether to accept the baby into
the family. Rejected babies were either smothered or left outdoors to die.
Infanticide was commonplace in that culture but vocally opposed by Jews and
Christians. It was condemned by Jewish writers like Philo and Josephus and in
early Christian works like the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas.2
The
identification of pniktos with infanticide in
Acts 15 is also supported by an interesting parallel in Sibylline Oracles Book
3, a Jewish work from the first century BC. Lines 757-766 describe God
instituting a law for all people, both Jews and Gentiles. Three precepts from
that law are mentioned-prohibitions of idolatry, sexual immorality, and
infanticide.
There
is another possible parallel in Leviticus 17-20, where four laws intended for
both Israelites and resident aliens are introduced with the word
"whoever" (ish ish in Hebrew). They deal with unauthorized worship
(17:8), consuming blood (17:10), forbidden sexual unions (Lev 18:6), and
killing children in worship of Molech (20:2-5), a
combination close to the Acts 15 list.
The
Apostolic Decree seems to have been designed for application to both table
fellowship and universal morality. The word pniktos
can relate to both smothered animals and smothered human infants. The Decree's
prohibition of infanticide highlights the historic pro-life positions of
Christianity and Judaism.
1See David Instone-Brewer, "Infanticide and the Apostolic
Decree", Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 52 (2009),
pp. 301-321.
2See
Instone-Brewer, pp. 301-304.
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