The Meeting That Changed the World: The Council of Jerusalem AD 49
MICHAEL KNOWLES
(SACRISTY PRESS, 368 PP, £19.99)
Tablet bookshop price £17.99 • Tel 020 7799 4064

This is an interesting and thoughtful book, admirably attentive to the text of Acts. In Michael Knowles’ view, the meeting described in Acts 15 (and to which all the preceding chapters are prolegomenal) ensured that Christianity did not become just another sect within Judaism, doomed to disappear with the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in AD 70. Knowles is arguing that this involved an immense paradigmatic shift, of which we stand in urgent need today, in response to the leadership of Pope Francis.

Knowles is readier than many scholars would be to argue for an older view of historicity, for example that Mary is one of Luke’s sources, and that the two-volume gospel that he penned can be taken without further ado as historically accurate (which may be no bad thing); and he takes seriously the 10-day gap that Acts suggests between the Ascension and Pentecost. He is, however, happy to go along with the fashionable dating of the fourth gospel to around AD 100 and Luke-Acts to AD 80.