Holy Land Sanctity for Every Greco-Roman City: Rethinking the Lukan Apostolic Decree (Acts 15:19–21)

Abstract:The meaning of the enigmatic verse of Acts 15:21, not to mention the issues around the preceding Apostolic Decree (vv. 19–20), has largely been researched individually and historical-critically. By contrast, in this study I explicate the meaning of the verse within the broader scope of James’s speech by attending to the Jewish spatiality on Luke’s narrative-ideological plane. The Lukan James’s speech tightly combines intertextual elements that bear on significant Jewish spatiality, namely, the restored tent of David (v. 16) within the quotation of Amos 9:11–12, the alluded-to holy land (v. 20) drawn from Lev 17–18 as the background of the decree, and the Jewish synagogues in every city (v. 21) as the background of James’s final invocation of Moses. From this perspective, I propose that v. 21 is part of the Lukan narrative-ideological portrait that reconfigures the holy land’s purity concern via the eschatological presence of the restored Davidic tent, making it relevant to the larger Greco-Roman world in accordance with the continuing monotheistic cultic sanctity.