The so-called "Antioch Incident," where Peter and Paul almost come to blows over a directive sent from Jerusalem by James is so shocking, that if we did not have have Paul's own first-hand account of it, it would be diffcult to believe. Underlying the surface incident between Peter and Paul, is revealed a much deeper ideological rift between Paul and James — a foreshadowing of the growing chasm between emerging catholic Christianity and earliest Jewish-Christianity. The Incident at Antioch starkly shows us that the apostolic period was not a time of sweetness and light with the earliest followers of Jesus all living as one happy family (which has been the general assumption of the majority of Christians), but a time of bitter rivalries as parties and factions vied for supremacy in the emerging Church catholic.
It is not accidental that this rift first emerged at the church at Antioch. Antioch was one of the very first, if not the first, churches to be established outside of Palestine, in Asia Minor (modern Turkey). Antioch was an interesting communal experiment (which, sadly, ultimately failed) where Jews and Gentiles were in communion and shared common meals. For Jews, sharing meals with Gentiles was prohibited by the Torah, as it violated kosher food laws. Peter apparently engaged in this new and controversial practice when he was at Antioch until James got wind of it back in Jerusalem and sent people to investigate. As a result of their visit, Peter (as well as Paul's close friend and missionary companion, Barnabas) withdraw from sharing meals with the Gentiles, which makes Paul go ballistic and he angrily accuses Peter of hypocrisy.
Here are Paul's own words from his letter to the Galatians (2:11-14):
But when Cephas [Peter] came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, "If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?"
What is most revealing here is that Peter kowtows to James's wishes, plainly showing that James was the highest authority in the early church and not Peter.
What else is extremely revealing in this telling incident, is that James was a rather conservative Jew who strictly held to the laws of the Torah. It was one thing for James to say in the Apostolic Decree that Gentiles may become part of the Christian community without being circumcised and required to only adhere to a very limited part of the Torah (see Jerusalem Conclave); it is quite another to figure out how Jews and Gentiles could share table fellowship. And this is where James drew a line, revealing his unwillingness to abrogate the clear teaching of the Torah. It was this line that would further divide James and Paul, and eventually result in an unharmonious "parting of the ways" between the original Jewish Christians (the Nazarenes) and the emerging Gentile Church. That James threw his support behind Paul's mission to the Gentiles at the Jerusalem Conference by requiring only minimal observance of the Torah for Gentile Christians, does not mean that James believed the Law was any less in effect for Jewish Christians. The rift at Antioch led to growing animosity between Paul and the Jewish Christian community based in Jerusalem, which finally came to a head when Paul made his last visit to Jerusalem (described in Acts 21), where his very presence in the Temple sparks rioting in the streets and Paul has to be taken into protecitve custody by a Roman tribune. See: James versus Paul.
Finally, it is interesting to note that according to the book of Acts, "it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians" (11:26). Prior to this, the followers of Jesus were generally knows as "Nazarenes" (at a time when all the followers of Jesus were still Jews). The church at Antioch, with its large number of Gentiles, was the harbinger of Christianity eventually breaking away from parent Judaism, tragically
foreshadowed in the breaking off of table fellowship.
