Acts 16:4

A proof of St. Paul's loyalty to the Jerusalem compact. The decree had not been delivered in Syria and Cilicia (where the letter had been already received), but in Galatia St. Paul delivers it. Wendt regards Acts 16:4-5 as interpolated by the author, who desires to give a universal importance to the decree which had previously been read to a few specified Churches (so too Spitta, Jüngst, Hilgenfeld, Clemen, who refers the verses to his Redactor Antijudaicus). But St. Paul might well feel himself bound to deliver the decree to the Churches evangelised by him before the conference in Jerusalem. Weiss, therefore, is probably right in pointing out that as no mention is again made of any similar proceeding, the action was confined to the Pauline Churches which had been previously founded, Churches which were, as it were, daughter Churches of Antioch. δόγματα : in the N.T. only in Luke and Paul (cannot be supported in Hebrews 11:23), and only here of the decrees of the Christian Church relative to right living, cf. Ignat., Magnes., xiii., 1; Didaché, xi., 3. In 3MMalachi 1:3 it is used of the rules and requirements of the Mosaic Law, cf. its use by Philo, see further Plummer on Luke 2:1, and Grimm, sub v. Dr. Hort refers the word back to Acts 15:22, ἔδοξεν, and so κεκρ. to κρίνω Acts 15:19 (cf. Acts 21:25), used by St. James. In these expressions he sees “more than advice,” but “less than a command,” and so here he regards “resolutions” as more nearly expressing the force of this passage, Ecclesia, pp. 81, 82; see however above on Acts 15:19.