Speech of James. Who is this James? In Galatians 2:9 Paul tells us of the agreement he made with James and Cephas and John. James and John in this account are prima facie to be taken as the two sons of Zebedee; when Paul refers to the other James he calls him the brother of the Lord (Galatians 1:19). In Acts 1:22 we were told of the murder of James, the brother of John. But the James here will be the same person, if Acts 15 is in the wrong place, and ought to stand before Acts 15:12. His being the first martyr of the apostles proves his importance. [On the other hand see Acts 12:1 *. The importance of James the son of Zebedee is also rendered probable by the fact that he was one of the three disciples specially chosen by Jesus to be with Him on momentous occasions. Nevertheless in Ac. he has no prominence at all; we hear nothing of him but that he was martyred, and the fact is stated in the curtest way (how different from Stephen's martyrdom!). Moreover, he is simply James the brother of John (Acts 12:2). A. S. P.] In his speech here he says nothing about Paul and Barnabas nor about the church at Antioch; he goes back to the statement of Peter, here called by his Aramaic name of Simeon (in chs. 10 f. we have several times Simon who is surnamed Peter, here only the Aramaic name), and accepts his story of how first the conversion of the Gentiles began, and finds in Amos 9:11 f. an explicit prediction that the dispersed of Israel should be gathered again, and not only they but the Gentiles also on whom His name is called. In Galatians 2:9-12 James also is and remains an apostle of the Circumcision. His sentence is that no unnecessary trouble is to be put in the way of the Gentiles who enter the Church, but that a letter should be written setting forth the conditions on which they are received. There are some things they must give up: (a) Pollution of idols, i.e. participation in the sacrificial meals of the heathen; (b) Fornication; i.e. perhaps the impure acts done in the name of religion in idolatrous temples; but the word may cover impurity generally, which to the Gentile was no serious sin, but in the Church was entirely forbidden; (c) What is strangled, and blood, mean the same thing. The Jew might cat no meat from which the blood had not been drained away (Genesis 9:4 *). The synagogue still has its own butcher. Many witnesses (including D), omit things strangled; an omission which might point to a moral rather than a ritual interpretation of the decree. These prohibitions are to be a wall separating the life of the Church from Gentile life.
Acts 15:21 probably means that it is unnecessary to say anything to the Jewish Christians about these points, which are familiar to them from their early life. D, with Latin copies, and some versions, give an addition to the decree, which is found also in Irenæ us; and what they would not have done to themselves, not to do to others, which is not a ritual but a moral injunction and suggests the moralising of the others also (p. 651). But the three members of the decree are more likely ritual; pollution of idols is a technical term (Malachi 1:7-12).