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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
2. γενομένης δὲ στάσεως καὶ ζητήσεως, and when there arose a debate and questioning. στάσις does not necessarily imply angry dissension, but only a division. The members of the Church took opposite sides in the matter. Of course Paul and Barnabas would be with those who maintained that circumcision was no longer necessary.
ἔταξαν, they appointed, i.e. the brethren of the Church at Antioch did so. The verb, as well as the whole context, shews that the mission was sent, in an orderly fashion, by the whole Christian community, to which the question was one of most vital importance, probably affecting a large part of their members.
καί τινας ἄλλους ἐξ εὐτῶν, and certain other of them, who would represent the position of the men who had come from Judæa.
πρὸς τοὺς ἀποστόλους καὶ πρεσβυτέρους, unto the Apostles and elders. Peter, John and James we find were now at Jerusalem, and they seem, from other notices in the N.T. (Gal 1:18-19; Gal 2:9), to have been the Apostles who continued to live in the holy city. These with the elders appear now as the governing body of the infant Church. And Jerusalem was for the Jew, until its destruction, the place of chief authority (cf. Isa 2:3). The overthrow of the holy city did as much as anything to help on the knowledge of the universality of the Christian religion. Those who had been bred in Judaism could not (as devout Jews to this day do not) cast away the thought that Jerusalem is ‘the place where men ought to worship.’