. 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 advent of Christianity. What it means is that Christianity was showing Jews---Jewish Christians---that their very idea of Jewishness had been revolutionized as a result of their accepting Jesus Christ. The conversion of Cornelius, the Apostolic Council, and the scene with Lydia are all examples of this profound change in table-fellowship for Jews and Gentiles. Opposition to Jewish-Gentile dining continued, however, and Luke in response went so far as to "re-write th...