Acts 15


Acts 15 is the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records the journey of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem and the Council of Jerusalem. 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.

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:
This chapter mentions the following places :
The journey of Paul and Barnabas to Jerusalem and the Council of Jerusalem is generally considered to have taken place around 48 – 50 AD.

Conflict over circumcision

The circumcision controversy began in Antioch, when 'certain men' came from Judea teaching that salvation was dependent on circumcision according to the Mosaic law. The People's New Testament Commentary called them 'the Judaizing Teachers'; Paul called them and others with the same teaching 'false brethren secretly brought in'.
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'.

Verse 13

The council listened to James because he was the first of the three pillars of church. He was the leader of the church in Jerusalem until he was stoned to death at the insistence of the high priest in AD 62. 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.

Verse 14