Acts 11

Acts 11 is the eleventh chapter of the Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It records that Saint Peter defends his visit to Cornelius in Caesarea and retells his vision prior to the meeting as well as the pouring of Holy Spirit during the meeting. The book containing this chapter is anonymous but early Christian tradition uniformly affirmed that Luke composed this book as well as the Gospel of Luke. The original text was written in Koine Greek. This chapter is divided into 30 verses. Some early manuscripts containing the text of this chapter are: In Greek Codex Vaticanus (AD 325–350) Codex Sinaiticus (330–360) Codex Bezae (~400) Codex Alexandrinus (400–440) Papyrus 127 (5th century; extant verses 2–5, 30) Codex Laudianus (~550) In Latin León palimpsest (7th century; extant verses 1–13) This chapter mentions the following places: Antioch Caesarea Joppa Jerusalem Judea Tarsus Some church members, identified as 'circumcised believers' (), objected to the reception of Gentiles into the church, using precisely the kind of 'discrimination' that Peter was warned against in (cf. ), on the issue of the 'traditional restrictions on table-fellowship between Jews and Gentiles' (as Peter himself referred in ), that was significant in the early church as written by Paul in Galatians 2:11–14. Peter emphasizes 'the role of the Spirit, the importance of not 'making a distinction' (verse 12), and the parallel with Pentecost (verse 15)' in relation to Jesus' words (verse 16; cf. ), and warns that 'withholding baptism from the Gentiles would be tantamount to hindering God' (verse 17) because each step in the development of the church is initiated by God. [Simon Peter said to the assembly:] “If therefore God gave them the same gift as He gave us when we believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could withstand God?” The words "them" and "us" emphasize the parallel of the two cases (cf.