The Council of Jerusalem (found in Acts 15) was the first Council in Christian history, and was held in Jerusalem circa 50 AD. The council was convened as the result of the cleavage within the early Christian community between those, such as James, who believed the church must observe the rules of traditional Judaism and those, such as the Apostles Paul and Peter, who believed there was no such necessity. The council resolved that most Jewish law, including the requirement for circumcision, was not obligatory for gentile followers, possibly in order to make it easier for them to join the movement. However, the council did retain the prohibitions against eating meat containing blood, or meat not properly slain. It also retained the prohibitions against fornication and idol worshipping.

Some thinkers have compared the rules of that council with the notion of Judaism's Noahide Laws. In this regard, the following is found in The Chronology of Antient Kingdoms Amended, by Sir Isaac Newton (Dublin, 1728, p. 184): "This law [of abstaining from blood] was ancienter than the days of Moses, being given to Noah and his sons, long before the days of Abraham: and therefore when the Apostles and Elders in the Council at Jerusalem declared that the Gentiles were not obliged to be circumcised and keep the law of Moses, they excepted this law of abstaining from blood, and things strangled, as being an earlier law of God, imposed not on the sons of Abraham only, but on all nations, while they lived together in Shinar under the dominion of Noah: and of the same kind is the law of abstaining from meats offered to Idols or false Gods, and from fornication."-Italics his.

See also

• Circumcision in the Bible

• Acts 15

Outside links

• Judaizers. In: The New Catholic Encyclopedia, 1910, 2003.