02.01. THE TEXT OF THE APOSTOLIC DECREES

APPENDIX I THE TEXT OF THE APOSTOLIC DECREES The textual variants in the Apostolic Decrees are numerous and complicated: they can be found most fully in G. Resch’s Das Aposteldecret, pp. 7–17, and the material in the later Greek MSS. will no doubt be increased when von Soden’s new critical edition is published. But for the purposes of all except students of the later history of the text the facts may be stated as follows:— The text of all the manuscripts which represent the dominant Greek tradition—אΑΒCΡ, etc.—supported by the Alexandrian Fathers Clement and Origen, states that the Apostles told the Gentile converts to keep themselves from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from fornication. Thus there is a four-clause text of which the first three clauses seem, when united in this way, to give a food law to fix, as it were, the conditions of intercourse between Jewish and Gentile Christians, while the last clause—against fornication— seems to have nothing to do with food, but to belong to a different category altogether.

Over against this reading is the evidence of D, the Latin version, Irenaeus (in Greek as well as in the Latin translation), Tertullian, Cyprian, and other Latin writers, who omit “things strangled,” generally insert after the reference to fornication, “and do not do to others what you would not that they should do to you,” and at the end of all add, “Ye shall do well, being carried along by the Holy Spirit.” Thus it is plain that a widely received text of the decrees ran somewhat as follows: ἀπέχεσθαι εἰδωλοθύτων καὶ αἵματος καὶ πορνείας, καὶ ὃσα μὴ θέλετε ἑαυτοῖς γίνεσθαι ἑτέρῳ μη ποιεῖν· ἀφʼ ὦν διατηροῦντες εὖ πράξετε [or πράξατε?] φερόμενοι ἐν τῷ ἀγίῳ πνεύματι, and was opposed, ultimately successfully, by a rival form which ran ἀπέχεσθαι εἰδωλοθύτων καὶ αἵματος καὶ πνικτῶν καὶ πορνε·ίας· ἐξ ὧν διατηροῦντες ἑαυτοὺς εὖ πράξετε.

Now, the evidence of Irenaeus and Tertullian on the one hand, and of Clement on the other, shows that both these readings are very old. Moreover, the history of exegesis confirms them. For in Alexandria the Apostolic Decrees were always interpreted as a food law, but in Africa (up to the time of Augustine) and in Europe as referring to the three deadly sins. Irenaeus and Tertullian were, it is true, acquainted with a food law, but they did not connect it with the Apostolic Decrees.

Nevertheless, the three-clause text, in its entirety, cannot be maintained. Among modern critics there is an almost complete agreement that the additions of the negative form of the golden rule, and the reference to the Spirit cannot be original: partly because the former introduces a very harsh parenthesis or change of thought,but chiefly because if the golden rule had been in the text from the beginning, the interpretation of the decrees as a food law would have been impossible. This consensus of opinion has prejudiced critics against the omission of “things strangled,” which is supported by much the same witnesses, and Dr. Sanday in particular has argued that as D and Irenaeus have made a mistake in adding the golden rule, they ought not to be trusted where they omit “things strangled.” His view is that the same people left out “things strangled” and inserted the golden rule in order to change a food law into a moral enactment.

Against this argument serious objections can be brought. In the first place, it is not the case that the evidence for the golden rule is quite the same as that for the omission of “things strangled”; Tertullian omits “things strangled,” but does not insert the golden rule. There is, therefore, important if not extensive evidence that the two readings are independent of each other. In the second place, there is no historical evidence whatever that the circles which can be shown to have read a text which omitted “things strangled” had any objection to a food law. On the contrary, in the second century Gaul, in which Irenaeus lived, observed a food law, and Tertullian, the other earlier witness for the omission, observed a food law which actually mentioned “things strangled” (suffocatis).Thus there is no possibility of alleging any motive for the change of text. Finally, it is difficult to suppose that any scribe of Acts in the second century deliberately changed the obvious meaning of an important passage. No doubt redactors may have treated their sources in this way, but the scribes who copied the Gospels and Acts confined themselves to elucidating the meaning of the text. They made additions, alterations, and omissions, but their intention was to explain, not to alter. Of course they made many lamentable mistakes, but where is the evidence that they consciously set to work to change the manifest meaning of the text which they read? Whenever, therefore, we find a considerable variety of readings, we ought, if possible, to look for an original text offering some ambiguity which scribes would seek to clear up, first by notes in the margin, and afterwards by their insertion in the text.

Such a text would be excellently provided by the reading of Tertullian, which omits “things strangled,” but does not insert the golden rule. This three-clause text presents just the ambiguity necessary to account for the early diversity both of text and of exegesis. The first clause (εἰδωλόθυτα) means “things offered to idols,” and may be as well taken in a narrow sense, a literal command not to eat that sort of food (which was often sold in the market), as in the wider sense of a synonym for idolatry. In the former case it is a food law, in the latter it is a moral or ethical rule. The next clause “from blood,” (αἴματος), is equally ambiguous, and was probably the cause of the later confusion. To any one who had already interpreted the first clause in the sense of an ethical forbidding of idolatry it would either mean “murder,or possibly blood as used ritually in sacrifices in the temples (see p. 60), but if the first clause were taken in the stricter sense of a literal command not to eat that sort of food, the second would naturally be interpreted as a reference to the Jewish objection to the use of blood as food. It is plain that the tendency of scribes would be to clear up this ambiguity, and in some way to indicate which interpretation was correct. Those who favoured the sense of a food law made it clear by adding “things strangled”—first perhaps as a gloss in the margin, afterwards in the text itself—thus explaining blood as “meat in which the blood had been retained,” “sanguine suffocato” as the Vulgate (in some manuscripts) puts it.Those, on the other hand, who regarded the decrees as a moral law made their meaning plain by adding the negative form of the golden rule. It is possible that the addition of the reference to the Spirit was made at the same time, and for the same purpose, but the evidence of Tertullian (who has it, but has not yet adopted the golden rule) suggests that it is an earlier interpolation, and probably has nothing to do with the addition of the golden rule, or the omission of “things strangled,” but is merely one of the edifying remarks which the early scribes loved and sometimes allowed to pass into the text.

Each of these two ways of altering the text rendered the meaning unmistakable—that is exactly the reason why neither can be original. But the short three-clause text used by Tertullian is ambiguous; it adequately explains the origin of both readings, and is implicitly borne witness to by both of them. It would no doubt be foolish to claim that the textual question can be solved with certainty; there must be an element of doubt in a text on which second-century evidence—two hundred years before our best manuscripts—was sharply divided, but reflection is likely to convince all who concede that our most famous uncials only represent an Alexandrian recension of the third or fourth century, that the argument on purely textual grounds is against the four-clause text, and in favour of the shorter form. To the textual argument can be added a far stronger historical argument, to show that the Apostolic Decrees were originally of the nature of moral requirements rather than a food law. This historical argument is contained in the answers given to the questions: Which is really more likely to have been the decision of the Council? Which is more consistent with the subsequent course of events? Which is implied more probably by the Pauline Epistles?

Taking the two last questions first, the superiority of the three-clause form of the decree is as follows: (1) It removes the obvious difficulties of the sudden association of a food law with fornication; (2) the absolute silence of St. Paul on the decrees in 1 Corinthians 10:1-33, when he is discussing “things offered to idols,” and in Romans 14:1-23, when he is discussing food in general, is almost unintelligible if we suppose that the decrees were a food law. Even more difficult is the statement in Galatians 2:6, that the Jerusalem Apostles added nothing (οὐδὲν προσανέθεντο) to St. Paul, that is to say, made no additions to his gospel. If we suppose that Galatians 2:1-21 refers to the Apostolic Council, and that the Council enacted a food law, it would be hard for St. Paul to say that the Apostles had made no additions to his gospel: for it is plain from all his Epistles that a food law was widely removed from his thoughts. On the other hand, it would be quite true if the decrees were merely a moral requirement to abstain from idolatry, murder, and fornication. There is no evidence that St. Paul ever condoned these offences or needed an Apostolic Decree to persuade him to require his converts to abstain from them. The remaining question—which form of decree is in itself more likely to have been adopted by the Council? —is more difficult to answer, but again there is a decided balance of argument in favour of the three-clause text. Generally speaking, commentators have been inclined to argue that a food law is a probable decree, because the Jews placed so much importance on such regulations. It is probably true that this argument is partly based on the very unfair attitude which so many Christian theologians have adopted towards Jewish religion—always emphasizing the ritual and legalist elements in it, and ignoring the ethical and religious basis. Still, when all possible allowance has been made for this factor, it remains true that the outward side of religious life had great importance for the Jews of the first century. So much must be admitted. But when one goes on to ask for proof that “things strangled” was a point on which the Jewish element in the Christian Church at Jerusalem would probably have laid stress, it is simply not forthcoming. There is no evidence earlier than the fifth century after Christ that the Jews regarded the command not to eat blood as meaning more than that they were not to collect and use for cooking blood which was shed in the act of slaughtering an animal.¹ Even if we concede that in some circles the Jews had this custom in the first century, and that this is the origin of the later Christian practice, it is at least obvious that this rule was not likely to have been so crucial a point at the Jerusalem Council, that the Jewish party would have given way on the question of circumcision, but have held firm on the question of extracting blood from slaughtered animals. Moreover, the suggestion which is sometimes made that the Apostolic Decrees correspond to the so-called Noachic regulations, which on the basis of Genesis 9:4 were supposed to be binding on Gentiles living in Palestine, is unfortunately negatived by a comparison of the seven Noachic commands with the Apostolic Decrees. The seven commands were: (1) on the foundation of courts (Beth din); (2) against blasphemy; (3) against idolatry; (4) against shedding of blood; (5) against incest; (6) against robbery; (7) against cutting flesh from a living animal. It is also said that the last of these commands is a later addition. It is clear that there is here if anything a closer resemblance to the three-clause than to the four-clause form of the Apostolic Decrees.

Thus there is no reason to think that the Jewish feeling of the first century would have been inclined to accept a food law as the basis of a compromise with the Antiochene movement. On the other hand, it is undeniable that the evidence of the advice given to King Izates, the statement of Philo (see above, pp. 24–26), and the fourth book of the Sibylline Oracles are the proof that the requirement of the moral law alone would have been nothing unique in the history of Judaism. Moreover, a comparison of the text of the Sibyllines raises the question whether the actual formula of the three-clause text of Acts 15:1-41 does not go back to some Jewish form of which there is also a trace in the Oracles. The two passages which are important are as follows:—

(1) Or. Sib., iv. 24–34 —

ὄλβιοι ἀνθρώπων κεῖνοι κατὰ γαῖαν ἔσονται,

ὄσσοι δὴ στέρξουσι μέγαν θεὸν εὐλογέοντες

πρὶν πιέειν φαγέειν τε πεποιθότες εὐσεβίῃσιν·

οἳ νηοὺς μὲν ἅπαντας ἀπαρνήσονται ἰδόντες

καὶ βωμούς, εἰκαῖα λίθων ἀφιδρύματα κωφῶν,

αἵμασα αν ἐμψύχων μεμιασμένα καὶ θυσίῃσιν

τετραπόδων· λεύσουσι δʼ ἑνὸς θεοῦ εἰς μέγα κῦδος

οὕτε φόνον ῥέξαντες ἀτάσθαλον οὔτε κλοπαῖον

κέρδος ἀπεμπολέοντες, ἃ δὴ ῥίγιστα τέτυκται,

οὐδʼ ἄρʼ ἐπʼ ἀλλοτρίῃ κοίτῃ πόθον αἰσχρὸν ἔχοντες,

οὐδʼ ἐπʼ ἄρσενος ὕβριν ἀπεχθέα τε στυγερήν τε.

(2) Or, Sib., iv. 162–170 —

ἆ μέλεοι, μετάθεσθε, βρότοι, τάδε, μηδὲ πρὸς ὀργήν

παντοίην ἀγάγητε θεὸν μέγαν, ἀλλὰ μεθέντες

φάσγανα καὶ στοναχὰς ἀνδροκτασίας τε καὶ ὕβρεις

ἐν ποταμοῖς λούσασθε ὅλον δέμας ἀενάοισιν,

χεῖράς τʼ ἐκτανύσαντες ἐς αἰθέρα τῶν πάρος ἔργων

συγγνώμην αἰτεῖσθε καὶ εὐλογίαις ἀσέβειαν

πικρὰν ἱλάσκεσθε· θεὸς δώσει μετάνοιαν

οὐδʼ ὀλέσει· παύσει δὲ χόλον πάλιν, ἤνπερ ἅπαντες

εὐσεβίην περίτιμον ἐνὶ φρεσὶν ἀσκήσητε.

It is surely very remarkable that here, as in the Apostolic Decrees, if the three-clause text be followed, abstinence from idolatry, blood-shedding, and immorality (it is highly probable that ὕβρεις in 1. 164 has a sexual significance, cf. l. 33) should be selected as the characteristics of a good life. It is very unlikely that there is any literary connection between the Oracles and the Acts, and the only possible suggestion seems to be that both are to be traced back to antecedent Jewish expression. So far, therefore, there is a decided balance of argument in favour of the three-clause form of the Apostolic Decrees. The one argument which at first seems seriously to weigh against it on historical grounds is that there existed at the end of the second century in the Christian Church a food law which certainly did refer to meat with the blood in it. The earliest evidence for this is probably the letter of the Churches of Lyons and Vienne (A.D. I78), in which Biblis, one of the martyrs, is stated to have refuted the accusation of cannibalism by saying, “Those who are not allowed to eat the blood of irrational animals, how should they eat children?”A little later in his Apologyand elsewhere Tertullian refers to the food law of the Christians as commanding them to abstain from “suffocatis”; and Clement of Alexandria also bears witness to the same practice. This seems certainly strong evidence that “things strangled” were forbidden by a Christian food law. But it is weakened to unimportance by the fact that none of these writers except Clement connect the custom with the Apostolic Decrees. For Irenaeus (who even if not the writer of the letter of Lyons and Vienne, was the bearer of the letter to Rome, and was afterwards Bishop of Lyons) used the three-clause text of the decrees, and Tertullian not only used the three-clause text, but explained it as a reference to the three deadly sins. Moreover, writers earlier than the end of the second century say nothing of any food law, and mention “things offered to idols” in the same way as St. Paul, as an incident in idolatry and communion with demons,while the Didache knows so little of a food law that it says, “Concerning food, bear what thou canst, but keep strictly from idol-sacrifice (εἰδωλοθύτον), for it is the service of dead gods.”

Thus while there is evidence for a Christian food law before the end of the second century, it is not certain that it existed earlier, and it is in no case, except in Alexandria, connected with the Apostolic Decrees.

Hence the evidence to be derived from the early Christian food law is really in favour of the three-clause text. The theory that the four-clause text is original, and refers to a food law, necessitates the hypothesis that it was altered to the three-clause form because a food law had become repugnant or obsolete. When we find, therefore, that the writers who quote the decrees as a moral requirement, nevertheless did possess exactly the food law which the four-clause form represents, and that it was neither obsolete or offensive to them, we are debarred from accepting this hypothesis. There is clearly no reason whatever why they should have changed the decrees from a food law, if they had ever known them as such; or, in other words, the three-clause form is presumably primitive, and the existence of the four-clause form is due to the reaction of the food law in Alexandria, first on the exegesis and afterwards on the text of the decrees. It is natural that this corruption should have taken place in Alexandria, because the text in that Church, although sometimes corrupt, escaped the great inundation of glosses—one might almost say commentary— which overwhelmed the text of Acts elsewhere. It was, therefore, free from that addition of the golden rule, which, though textually corrupt, was exegetically not far from the truth, and protected the text elsewhere from the smaller but more pernicious gloss of “things strangled,” which by so small an addition converted moral requirements into a food law.

There is one point more to be considered. So far it has been more or less assumed that the choice must necessarily be between a food law and moral requirement illustrated by abstention from idolatry, murder, and fornication. Perhaps this is correct, but a few scholars take a different position.

They explain all the clauses of the decrees as references to various forms of idolatry. They have thus taken “things strangled” as meaning sacrifices in which there was no shedding of blood. It is, however, obvious that the same exegesis could be applied to the three-clause text. The advantage of this line of interpretation is that it avoids the historical and critical difficulties connected with the view that the decrees were a food law, and this argument ought to weigh heavily with those who, on textual grounds, are reluctant to accept the three-clause text. Moreover, as applied to the three-clause text, it avoids explaining blood as meaning murder, and brings it into connection with idolatry. The disadvantage is that there is no trace in early Christian literature that this interpretation was ever adopted. It is, however, not necessary to discuss this point further, as, whichever view of the meaning of the three-clause text be taken, it does not affect the general view which has to be held of the position of the decrees in the Judaistic controversy. 

¹ For a different interpretation, see p. 60.

¹ Tertullian is the extremely important exception.

² G. Resch, whose work on the subject entitles him to great respect, is the most important exception.

³ “From which if ye keep yourselves ye shall do well,” reads awkwardly after the golden rule.

¹ See p. 58.

¹ The insertion of the reference to the Spirit in the last clause seems to have no bearing on the question. Supposing it to be (as I am inclined to believe) an insertion, it neither negatives nor affirms the other readings. To be “carried along by the Holy Spirit” was a general characteristic of the early Christians.

² 1 Corinthians 10:14 ff. is an instructive commentary on the word. It is part of the answer to the question of the Corinthians περὶ εἰδωλοθύτων. In the first half (1 Corinthians 10:14-22) of the passage, εἰδωλόθυτον is treated as an act of idolatry, the actual sacrifice to a false god, and is forbidden: in the second half (1 Corinthians 10:23-33) it is treated in the sense of merely food which, after having been used in sacrifice, was sold in the shops and used for an ordinary meal, and this is in principle allowed, though St. Paul makes practical reservations because of the chance of giving offence to the weaker brethren. It is clear that in this chapter, St. Paul is either deliberately ignoring the Apostolic Decrees, or interpreting them as forbidding idolatry, not as establishing a food law. Cf. G. Resch, Aposteldecret, p. 21.

¹ Probably few will doubt that αἵμα can be used in the sense of murder— blood-guiltiness—but G. Resch has met any such objection by a convincing list of quotations in his Aposteldecret, p. 42. The passages he quotes are: Leviticus 17:4; Numbers 35:27; Sir 34:21; Matthew 23:30; Revelation 6:10. Demosthenes, In Meidiam, 548; Pausanias, 5. 1, 6; Æschylus, Eumen., 203. Plato, Laws, 872, DE, and others of less importance.

² It is significant also that Origen (In Matthaeum, 2. 837), though he seems to have known the ordinary four-clause text, also quotes the decrees in a three-clause form with πνικτοῦ instead of αἷματος. Methodius, too, has the same curious text. This may be a slip, or may be an instance of the gloss replacing the word glossed.

¹ Personally I do not think so (see Chap. V), but in deference to a widely spread opinion I adopt the view for the moment.

¹ Once more reference must be made to Resch, who collects all the evidence (Das Aposteldecret, pp. 21 ff.). It would seem that the present Jewish custom of extracting all blood from meat (the “Kosher” meat) can only be traced back to the tractate Chullim of the fifth or sixth century. The matter is, of course, one on which only Rabbinical scholars have a right to speak, but I do not gather that Resch’s view is disputed by them.

² Sanhedrin, 56 a. ff. I am indebted to my friend Prof. Oort for the verification, and correction, of the reference. Cf. Schürer, Geschichte des jüdischen Volkes (Fourth Edition), 3. p. 178, note 77 (Third Edition, p. 128).

¹ By Hamburger, Realencyclopaedie, in the article on “Noachiden.”

² The fact probably is that the Noachian rules are a later crystallization of the primarily moral requirements of the early Jewish Propaganda in the Diaspora.

¹ Geffcken rejects this line, as the construction is harsh, and it is not found in the Ω recension. But it is doubtful whether this is sufficient reason.

¹ Eus., H. E., 5. 1. 26 (ed. Schwartz, p. 412). The Latin of Rufinus has “flesh” instead of “blood,” but the Greek is probably right.

² “Erubescat error vester Christianis, qui ne animalium quidem sanguinem in epulis esculentis habemus, qui propterea suffocatis quoque et morticinis abstinemus, ne quo modo sanguine contaminemur vel intra viscera sepulto.” Apol., 9; cf. also de Monogam, 5; de Jejun, 4 and 15; de Spect. 13; and see Resch. op. cit., p. 148, where these passages are collected.

³ Paed., 2, 7; Strom., 4, 15.

⁴ One copy went to Asia, another to Rome; cf. Harnack, Die altchristliche Literatur, p. 262; and Chronologie, pp. 315 f. 323.

⁵ Aristides, Apol., 15; Justin, Dial. c. Tryph., 35.

⁶ Did., 6.

¹ The best statement of their case may be found in Prof. H. Oort’s Het besluit der Apostelsynode, in the Theologisch Tijdschrift, vol. 40, pp. 97 ff. Cf. also Sanday, The Apostolic Decrees, p. 11.