Galatians 2:1-21 versus Acts 15:1-35
There are a number of common elements:
- The problem arose because some unnamed party was asking for Gentile believers to be circumcised.
- Paul and Barnabas went together to Jerusalem for the meeting.
- The main agenda for the gathering was about the mission to the Gentiles.
- James and Peter were both present there.
- The mission to the Gentiles was recognized at the meeting.
- Paul in Galatians says 14 years after he had visited with Peter; he went up to Jerusalem again. And he went in response to a revelation. Yet the Paul of Acts isn't going to Jerusalem because of a revelation, but is being sent to Jerusalem by the church in Antioch to settle a dispute that arose in the Antioch church.
- Paul in Galatians says while in Jerusalem, he revealed the gospel that he preached among the Gentiles to the leaders of the Jerusalem church in a private meeting. Yet Acts claims Paul and Barnabas reported everything to the entire assembly immediately upon entering the Jerusalem church.
- Paul in Galatians says that circumcision became an issue of great contention in Jerusalem, for spies discovered that Titus was not circumcised. Whereas, Acts claims this is the very reason that the church in Antioch had sent Paul to Jerusalem in the first place, to receive instructions to settle a dispute concerning circumcision. The writer of Acts claims they were merely "believers" who simply wanted the Gentiles to observe what was being observed in the Jerusalem church.
- Paul in Galatians says he stood his ground, refusing to submit to the demands that the Gentiles be circumcised. Whereas Paul in Acts, is a subordinate of the Jerusalem Church and had to wait in the assembly while the elders and apostles of the Jerusalem Church conferred together to debate this concern.
- According to Acts it wasn't Paul who rescues the Gentile's foreskins, but was James, the leader of the Jerusalem Church. For after listening to Peter and the reports from Paul and Barnabas, James decides that he would allow the Gentiles to keep their foreskins.
- Paul in Galatians says an agreement was reached in Jerusalem that he should take his gospel to the Gentiles, and they would go to the Jews. In this agreement, Paul explicitly says only one thing was asked of him: To remember the poor. Whereas in Acts, James decrees that although the Gentiles my keep their foreskins, they will be required to observe certain laws of Moses. Specifically, the decree of the Jerusalem Council was that Gentile converts to Christianity must:
- abstain from meats offered to idols,
- abstain from blood,
- abstain from things strangled, and
- abstain from fornication
Yet, in I Corinthians 8:7-8 and 10:19-29 Paul's advice actually contradict the decree as he allows "the strong" to eat food offered to idols if it does not affect "the weak" (a reference to James perhaps?). Paul clearly had no problem with eating meat offered to idols. - As a prelude to Peter's speech, there was according to the writer of Acts much debate about the issue of Gentile conversion without the requirement of circumcision. Yet Acts 10 already narrated the conversion of Cornelius, an uncircumcised Gentile by Peter himself! This makes the whole idea of the "debate" quite pointless and completely irrelevant.
How do Christian apologists reconcile these accounts?
Which account is more likely to be accurate?
Is there any indication in any of Paul's writings that he accepted and understood the agreement outlined in Acts?
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Yet some conservative apologists have suggested that the account in Galatians 2:1-10 is not about the same event as described in Acts 15:1-29. Instead they suggest that the Galatians account was of an earlier trip by Paul to Jerusalem, recounted in Acts 11:27-29, the so-called famine relief visit.
