Table-Fellowship

. The chapter "Table-Fellowship" deals with the issue of the relationship between the Gentile community and the early Christian community which was comprised of Jewish Christians. The issue of table-fellowship is important because it divided the communities into groups---one which believed Gentiles and Jews or Jewish Christians should mix and one which believed they should not mix. The study of the book of Luke and the Acts in this chapter begins with a history of Jewish opposition to dining with Gentiles, or non-Jews. There was a very strict tradition, based on religious law, which forbade such mixing. The author cites much literary and historical evidence forbidding Jewish dining with Gentiles. When some of the early Jewish Christians dined with Gentiles, they stopped doing so when pressured by the Jewish community (87). They did so to "preserve the separate identity of the Jewish people; their motivations were social and ethnic, as much as theological" (87). Other New Testament books mentioned changes in Jewish attitudes toward dining with Gentiles, but it is in Luke and Acts that it is made clear that the Jewish Christians had come to understand that there was meant to be a profound change in the way Jews looked upon non-Jews in the light of Christian awakening.

The author then goes on to show a number of examples in Luke and Acts in which Jews and Gentiles dine together. This is far more important than simply showing that Jewish dining habits had changed with the adven

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s or traitors or worse. This shows how important each side's interpretation of the law was to the entire Jewish community. At the root of Luke's arguments about the law was Jesus's own view of the law, which was both respectful and challenging. Jesus saw his mission as a fulfillment of the law, but also said that he was transcending the law at the same time. The author points out that such a challenge was seen as a serious threat to the Jewish hierarchy whose authority and power flowed from their enforcement and interpretation of that law. b. As with the chapter on table-fellowship, the author presents his material in a fair, measured and objective way. He is more definitive in his conclusions in this chapter about the law, because Luke (and Jesus) were more definitive than they were with respect to table-fellowship. At the same time, the author points out that the resistance from the (non-Christian) Jewish community was much stronger with respect to Christian interpretation of the law than it was with respect to table-fellowship. If the Jewish leaders lost their grip on the law to the Christian Jews, they would lose their power and authority in the community as well. Therefore, the author is able to come to clear conclusions,

Category: Philosophy - T