Acts 15:20

ἐπιστεῖλαι (Acts 21:25), Hebrews 13:22; the verb is used of a written injunction, Westcott, l. c. (so Wendt here and in Acts 21:25, and so Klostermann), and so often in ecclesiastical writers; here it may mean to write or enjoin, or may well include both, cf. Hort, Ecclesia, p. 70, Westcott, u. s., Weiss, in loco; in classical Greek it is used in both senses. In LXX it is not used, except in a few passages in which the reading is doubtful, ἀπ. for ἐπ., see Hatch and Redpath, sub v. τοῦ ἀπέχεσθαι : Burton, N. T. Moods and Tenses, p. 159, cf. Jeremiah 7:10 1 Peter 2:11, 1 Timothy 4:3; generally without ἀπό. τῶν ἀλισγμάτων : from Hellenistic verb, ἀλισγεῖν, LXX, Daniel 1:8; Malachi 1:7; Malachi 1:12, Sir 40:29 (, al); may mean the pollution from the flesh used in heathen offerings = εἰδωλοθύτων in Acts 15:29 (Acts 21:25), cf. 1 Corinthians 8:1; 1 Corinthians 10:14 ff, but see further Klostermann, Probleme im Aposteltexte, p. 144 ff., and Wendt, 1888 and 1899, in loco. The phrase stands by itself, and the three following genitives are not dependent upon it. If St. James's words are interpreted more widely than as = εἰδωλοθύτων, Acts 15:29, they would involve the prohibition for a Christian not only not to eat anything offered to idols, or to share in the idolatrous feasts, but even to accept an invitation to a domestic feast of the Gentiles or at least to a participation in the food on such an occasion. That it was easy for Christians to run these risks is evident from 1 Corinthians 8:10 when St. Paul refers to the case of those who had not only eaten of the flesh offered to idols, but had also sat down to a feast in the idol's temple. τῆς πορνείας : the moral explanation of this close allocation of idolatry and uncleanness is that the former so often involved the latter. But Dr. Hort whilst pointing out that such an association is not fanciful or accidental, reminds us that we ought not to lay too much stress on the connection, since many forms of idolatry might fairly be regarded as free from that particular stain. The language, however, of St. James in his Epistle shows us how imperative it was in the moral atmosphere of the Syria of the first century to guard the Christian life from sexual defilement, and the burning language of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians 6:15 and 1 Thessalonians 4:3, etc., shows us the terrible risks to which Christian morality was exposed, risks enhanced by the fact that the heathen view of impurity was so lax throughout the Roman empire, cf. Horace, Sat., i., 2, 31; Terence, Adelphi, i., 2, 21; Cicero, Pro Cælio, xx.; and on the intimate and almost universal connection between the heathen religious guilds and societies and the observance of nameless breaches of the Christian law of purity, see Loening, Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums, and his references to Foucart, p. 12 ff. Without some special prohibition it was conceivable that a man might pass from some scene of licentious indulgence to the participation in the Supper of the Lord (Plumptre, Felten). An attempt has been made to refer the word here to the sin of incest, or to marriage within the forbidden degrees, rather than to the sin of fornication, so Holtzmann, Ritschl, Zöckler, Wendt, Ramsay; but on the other hand Meyer, Ewald, Godet, Weiss, and others take the word in its general sense as it is employed elsewhere in the N.T. From what has been said above, and from the way in which women might be called upon to serve impurely in a heathen temple (to which religious obligation, as Zöckler reminds us, some have seen a reference in the word here, cf. also Wendt, p. 332 (1888)), we see the need and the likelihood of such a specific enjoinder against the sin of fornication. Bentley conjectured χοιρείας or πορκείας. τοῦ πνικτοῦ : “from that which has been strangled,” lit [286], such beasts as had been killed through strangling, and whose blood had not been let out when they were killed. For this prohibition reference is usually made to Leviticus 17:13; Deuteronomy 12:16; Deuteronomy 12:23, so Weiss, Wendt, Zöckler, Plumptre, Felten, Hackett. But on the other hand Dr. Hort contends that all attempts to find the prohibition in the Pentateuch quite fail, although he considers it perfectly conceivable that the flesh of animals strangled in such a way as not to allow of the letting out of blood would be counted as unlawful food by the Jews, cf. Origen, c. Cels., viii., 30; Judaistic Christianity, p. 73, and Appendix, p. 209. But his further remark, that if such a prohibition had been actually prescribed (as in his view it is not) we should have a separate fourth precept referring only to a particular case of the third precept, viz., abstinence from blood, is probably the reason why in, cf. Irenæus, Hær., iii., 12, 14; Cyprian, Testim, iii., 119; Tertullian, De Pudicitia, xii., the words καὶ τοῦ πνικτοῦ are omitted here and in the decree, Acts 15:29, although it is also possible that the laxer views on the subject in the West may have contributed to the omission (see Zöckler and Wendt). Dr. Hort leaves the difficulty unsolved, merely referring to the “Western” text without adopting it. But in Acts 21:25 the words are again found in a reference to, and in a summary of, the decree, although here too [287] consistently omits them (see critical notes). τοῦ ἅματος : specially forbidden by the Jewish law, Leviticus 17:10, cf. Acts 3:17; Acts 7:26; Acts 19:26; Deuteronomy 12:16; Deuteronomy 12:23; Deuteronomy 15:23, and we may refer the prohibition, with Dr. Hort, to the feeling of mystery entertained by various nations of antiquity with regard to blood, so that the feeling is not exclusively Jewish, although the Jewish law had given it such express and divine sanction. “The blood is the life,” and abstinence from it was a manifestation of reverence for the life given by and dedicated to God. This was the ground upon which the Jews based, and still base, the prohibition. Nothing could override the command first given to Noah, Genesis 9:4, together with the permission to eat animal food, and renewed in the law. αἵμ. cannot refer (so Cyprian and Tertullian) to homicide, as the collocation with πνικτοῦ (if retained) is against any such interpretation. See additional note (2) at end of chapter.

[286] literal, literally.

[287] Codex Claromontanus (sæc. vi.), a Græco-Latin MS. at Paris, edited by Tischendorf in 1852.