The Acts of the Apostles

260 THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
them. If this is accepted, then everything in the
Decree and in the narrative at once becomes consistent
and clear. We also see clearly that it was not neces-
sary for St. Paul to mention these stipulations in the
Epistle to the Galatians, and that in spite of the
silence of this epistle they may very well be historical.
Moreover, we now see clearly how the false inter-
pretation arose.i In the course of the second century,
but quite independently of the Apostolic Decree or
any other decree, the Jewish prejudice against partaking
of blood (like much else from the Old Testament in
spite of freedom from the Law) crept into the Church.
Then it was that early—indeed, very early ttviktov
was added to af/xa in the margin of the Decree,^ in
—
order to give the prejudice against the partaking of
blood the sanction of a commandment. This ttviktov
transformed the whole Decree! (The transformation
could scarcely have been carried out if the words koI
oara fxtj OiXere eavroig ylvecrOai erepco nir] iroielv had
been original ; it is therefore probable [not certain]
that they are an ancient interpolation which was intended
to fix the character of the Decree as a summary
of moral precepts.) This could the more easily happen
since the brevity of the Decree made its meaning not
quite clear, and since a simple ethical catechism in a
document like this may have seemed superfluous to a
later generation. But it was at first only in the East
—and very slowly—that ttviktov and the new inter-
* Further details will be found in Resch, s. 151-170, to whose
discussion of this point I expressly refer.
2 The earliest direct testimony to this word is found in Clement
of Alexandria and Origen, but the consensus of almost all the
Uncials throws it back much further.