After Jesus' departure, one of the most pressing questions his followers faced was whether only Jews could be saved, or Gentiles also. (See for example Matthew 10:5-6; 15:24; John 4:21-24). Acts 15:1 reports that some followers of Jesus from Judea, probably Pharisees in the Jerusalem church (Acts 15:5), began to teach (in Antioch) that Gentiles in the Christian community must be circumcised to be saved. In his letter to the Galatians, Paul addresses a similar teaching but does not name its source (see Galatians 3:1-5; 6:12-13). The teachers' reasoning is unclear: they may have thought that only Jews could be saved, and that therefore Gentiles must convert to Judaism, or they may have taught that circumcision was a path to perfection. (Other explanations also exist.) In any case, Paul and his companions (Barnabas, Timothy, Titus) strongly opposed this teaching [see the mini-article on "Circumcision"].

Both Acts 15 and Paul's letter to the Galatians (2:1-10) discuss a meeting between Paul and the leaders of the Jerusalem Christians to settle this controversy. The two accounts are not identical. According to Galatians 2:1-10, Paul, Barnabas, and Titus (Galatians 2:1) met "privately" with "the most important leaders" (Galatians 2:2, CEV), including James, Peter (also called "Cephas"), and John, who were the (supposed) "backbone of the church" (Galatians 2:9, CEV). In Acts 15, the church in Antioch appoints Paul and Barnabas "and a few others" to go to Jerusalem and resolve the controversy (Acts 15:2, CEV). Acts says that an unspecified number of "apostles and church leaders met to discuss this problem" (Acts 15:6, CEV). After a "long" discussion, Peter describes his own role in bringing the good news to Gentiles (Acts 15:7-11; see Acts 10:1—11:18), and then Barnabas and Paul report on their successful mission (Acts 15:12). Paul implies a more private meeting than Acts does; some scholars therefore think two meetings were held.

In Galatians, Paul says the teachers who opposed his message only "pretended to be followers"; but he didn't grant them an inch (Galatians 2:4-5, CEV). And he says that the meeting ended on a happy note: no one told Paul and Barnabas to change their message (Galatians 2:6), the Jerusalem leaders acknowledged their mission (Galatians 2:7-8), and they even gave them "a friendly handshake" (Galatians 2:9, CEV). In Acts 15, James gives a formal decision that the Gentiles are not to be burdened, as long as they don't "eat anything that has been offered to idols," "eat the meat of any animal that has been strangled or that still has blood in it," or "commit any terrible sexual sins" (Acts15:20, CEV; but some manuscripts lack the instruction about what has been strangled). Paul does not mention these prohibitions or the letter that the council wrote (Acts 15:23-29). Some scholars therefore think that Acts has combined two meetings: one was about food, and Paul was not part of that conversation.

Despite their possible discrepancies, the two accounts describe the same meeting: the two writers have different reasons for narrating the same event. The basic message though remains the same: Gentiles don't need to be circumcised.