The accounts agree as to the contending parties—Jerusalem and Antioch—the leaders on
both sides, the topic of controversy, the sharp conflict, and the peaceful result.
But in other respects they differ considerably and supplement each other. Paul, in a polemic
vindication of his independent apostolic authority against his Judaizing antagonists in Galatia, a
few years after the Council (about 56), dwells chiefly on his personal understanding with the other
apostles and their recognition of his authority, but he expressly hints also at public conferences,
which could not be avoided; for it was a controversy between the churches, and an agreement
concluded by the leading apostles on both sides was of general authority, even if it was disregarded
by a heretical party. Luke, on the other hand, writing after the lapse of at least thirteen years (about
63) a calm and objective history of the primitive church, gives (probably from Jerusalem and
Antioch documents, but certainly not from Paul’s Epistles) the official action of the public assembly,
with an abridgment of the preceding debates, without excluding private conferences; on the contrary
he rather includes them; for he reports in Acts 15:5, that Paul and Barnabas "were received by the
church and the apostles and elders and declared all things that God had done with them," before
he gives an account of the public consultation, ver. 6. In all assemblies, ecclesiastical and political,
the more important business is prepared and matured by Committees in private conference for
public discussion and action; and there is no reason why the council in Jerusalem should have made
an exception. The difference of aim then explains, in part at least, the omissions and minor variations
of the two accounts, which we have endeavored to adjust in this section.
The ultra- and pseudo-Pauline hypercriticism of the Tübingen school in several discussions
(by Baur, Schwegler, Zeller, Hilgenfeld, Volkmar, Holsten, Overbeck, Lipsius, Hausrath, and
Wittichen) has greatly exaggerated these differences, and used Paul’s terse polemic allusions as a
lever for the overthrow of the credibility of the Acts. But a more conservative critical reaction has
recently taken place, partly in the same school (as indicated in the literature above), which tends
to harmonize the two accounts and to vindicate the essential consensus of Petrinism and Paulinism.- The Circumcision of Titus.—We hold with most commentators that Titus was not
circumcised. This is the natural sense of the difficult and much disputed passage, Gal. 2:3–5, no
matter whether we take δέin 2:4 in the explanatory sense (nempe, and that), or in the usual
adversative sense (autem, sed, but). In the former case the sentence is regular, in the latter it is
broken, or designedly incomplete, and implies perhaps a slight censure of the other apostles, who
may have first recommended the circumcision of Titus as a measure of prudence and conciliation
out of regard to conservative scruples, but desisted from it on the strong remonstrance of Paul. If
we press the ἠναγκάσθηcompelled, in 2:3, such an inference might easily be drawn, but there was
in Paul’s mind a conflict between the duty of frankness and the duty of courtesy to his older
colleagues. So Dr. Lightfoot accounts for the broken grammar of the sentence, "which was wrecked
on the hidden rock of the counsels of the apostles of the circumcision."
Quite another view was taken by Tertullian (Adv. Marc., V. 3), and recently by Renan (ch.
III. p. 89) and Farrar (I. 415), namely, that Titus voluntarily submitted to circumcision for the sake
of peace, either in spite of the remonstrance of Paul, or rather with his reluctant consent. Paul seems
to say that Titus was not circumcised, but implies that he was. This view is based on the omission
of οἶς οὐδέin 2:5. The passage then would have to be supplemented in this way: "But not even Titus
was compelled to be circumcised, but [he submitted to circumcision voluntarily] on account of the
stealthily introduced false brethren, to whom we yielded by way of submission for an hour [i.e.,
temporarily]." Renan thus explains the meaning: "If Titus was circumcised, it is not because he
A.D. 1-100.