| Sumario: | In Acts 15:10, Peter asks why some are choosing to test God by placing an unbearable yoke upon gentile disciples. Scholarly consensus holds that this yoke is the law, and that Acts highlights Israel's historic inability to uphold Mosaic legislation--an interpretation that has undergirded the notion of an early Christian movement that dispensed with the legal and ethnic concerns of Judaism. In this article, I argue that the yoke is not the Torah, but rather human demands that counter divine authority. A Petrine reference to an unbearable law contradicts the ubiquity of Torah observance throughout Luke-Acts, and the Septuagint describes the law safeguarding against testing God. Further, Acts 15 contains allusions to Rehoboam's yoke of severe kingship (2 Chronicles 10-11 LXX), which suggests that the Lucan yoke should be understood as secular control rather than sacred commands. Moreover, the apostolic refusal of the Pharisees' demand in Acts 15:5 echoes Peter's prior rejection of Sadducean prohibitions in Acts 4-5; since the first rebuff responds to the imposition of human authority, the same should hold for Peter's interjection at the Jerusalem council. Finally, the human claim in Acts 15:1 that salvation is impossible without Torah observance anticipates and parallels Paul's God-given message in Acts 27:31. Linking the language in 15:1 and 27:31 depicts the yoke in Acts 15:10 not as the law, but as any human demand that opposes the divine will.
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