The acceptance of the Gentiles into the church without the necessity of circumcision (with the implication of submission to the whole law) might seem to have been assured after the conversion of Cornelius and his friends. At that time, even in Jerusalem, the bastion of Jewish tradition, those Christians who had met to consider the matter had agreed that God had “granted even the Gentiles repentance unto life” (11:18), though they probably never dreamed that this would be anything more than an exceptional case. Since then, things had changed dramatically, and the rapid influx of Gentiles into the church in both Antioch and the cities of southern Galatia had raised again the whole question of Gentile admission or, more precisely, the terms on which they should be admitted. It was one thing …