Leolaia,
BTW, what do you think of the quote given in my last post from the Kerygmata Petrou. It is an interesting hybrid between the rabbinical Noachide laws and the Jewish-Christian dietary prohibitions for Gentiles.
I found it very illuminating, though I would tend to see both this text and the "decree" in Acts as characteristic of the post-James period when the "Judeo-Christians" (Ebionite / Nazoreans) had already lost their symbolical centrality and were desperately trying to cope with "Christianity" as an overwhelmingly Gentile religion.
The Pauline "mission" still had to justify (Pauline keyword!) itself before Jerusalem. Once (1) Gentile Christianity could stand on its own feet as a distinct religion and (2) the Ebionite/Nazorean were symmetrically rejected by Pharisaic/rabbinical judaism, the subsequent "Judeo-Christians" were engaged in a lost fight to justify themselves before the two major groups who didn't care anymore about them.
Heathen / Ross:
I guess the Hellenistic interpretation of Hebrews 11:4 makes the difference:
By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain's. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts.
Some light can be shed on this by Josephus' Antiquities I,2,1 (54):
God was more delighted with the latter oblation, when he was honored with what grew naturally of its own accord, than he was with what was the invention of a covetous man, and gotten by forcing the ground.
