communities; and that attempt was in harmony with the principles which Paul enunciated in 1 Cor. ix. 19-22. Moreover, the Apostolic Decree was in accord with Paul's principle of regard for the weaker brother (1 Cor. viii; Rom. xiv). In Corinth, certain brethren were offended by the eating of meat which had been offered to idols. Paul himself was able to eat such food; for he recognized that the idols were nothing. But for some of the members of the Christian community the partaking of such food would mean the deadly sin of idolatry; and out of regard for them Paul is ready to forego his freedom. The case was very similar in the mixed communities contemplated in the Apostolic Decree. The similarity, of course, appears on the surface in the first prohibition of the Decree, which concerns things offered to idols. But the two other prohibitions about food are not really very different. The use of blood was intimately associated with heathen cults, and the eating of meat with the blood still in it ("things strangled") would also, because of deep-seated religious ideas, seem to a devout Jew to involve idolatry. It is very doubtful, therefore, whether those prohibitions of the Decree which we are accustomed to designate as "ceremonial" were felt to be ceremonial by those for whose benefit the Decree was adopted. They were probably not felt to be ceremonial any more than the prohibition of things offered to idols was felt to be ceremonial by the weaker brethren at Corinth. Rather they were felt to involve the deadly sin of idolatry.