What Happens:
The next day, Paul arrives at the Sanhedrin to defend himself in front of the court. When he tells the council of Jewish leaders that he has fulfilled his duty to God in good conscience, the high priest Ananias orders the priests nearby to hit Paul on the mouth. In righteous outrage Paul sputters, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! You sit there to judge me according to the law, yet you yourself violate the law by commanding that I be struck!”
The other priests are angry that Paul would insult the high priest, and Paul says that he didn’t know Ananias was the high priest and immediately apologizes, quoting Scripture that says to honor your leaders. Paul knows that some of the Sanhedrin are Pharisees and some are Sadduccees, and announces that he is a Pharisee and that he’s on trial because he believes in the resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees all believe in resurrection (and immediately vote for Paul to be released), and the Sadduccees all devoutly disbelieve in it, and soon the two groups are arguing about resurrection instead of about Paul. The fight between the Pharisees and Sadduccees gets so heated that the Roman commander sneaks Paul out of the court for his own safety. The next night Jesus visits Paul, and tells him, “Take courage! As you have testified about me in Jerusalem, so you must also testify in Rome.”
The next day, 40 Jews get together and make a pact not to eat or drink until they have killed Paul. They go to the chief priests (presumably the Sadduccees) and tell them all about it, asking the priests to summon Paul back to the court on the pretext that they want more information from him. They plan to kill Paul on his way to the court. Paul’s nephew gets wind of what’s going down, and warns Paul. The Roman commander decides to assemble a small force of 470 soldiers to whisk Paul away to Caesarea, where the Roman governor is.
The commander writes a letter to the governor:
To His Excellency, Governor Felix:
Greetings.
This man was seized by the Jews and they were about to kill him, but I came with my troops and rescued him, for I had learned that he is a Roman citizen. I wanted to know why they were accusing him, so I brought him to their Sanhedrin. I found that the accusation had to do with questions about their law, but there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment. When I was informed of a plot to be carried out against the man, I sent him to you at once. I also ordered his accusers to present to you their case against him.
The governor says he will hear Paul’s case, and keeps him under guard until his accusers get there.
Commentary:
Ananias is a different high priest than the one who helped the Romans crucify Jesus (Caiaphas). According to wiki, Ananias was high priest from 47 to 52. Paul’s trial probably took place toward the end of his term, because Herod died back in chapter 12, which took place in 44AD, and that’s been a good number of years previous to the current events, based on all the stuff that’s happened in the intervening chapters. Acts started in 33AD (right after Jesus’ ascension), so… 11 years from chapter 1 to chapter 12, then 8 years between chapter 12 and chapter 23 (max). 19 years for the whole book thus far, or 1.2 years per chapter on average.
ANYWAY. Ananias was accused by the Roman governor of fomenting violence, but was acquitted by Emperor Claudius at a trial in Rome. Most of the Jews hated Ananias because of his cozy friendship with the Romans (he was a huge suck up to Claudius, just like the Herods had been), and in 66AD Jewish loyalists killed him and started a war against the Romans. It was the first of three rebellions in a row (in addition to the ones they had previously fought), which finally culminated in the Romans kicking the Jews out of Judea and starting the Diaspora. (wiki)
It was pretty sneaky of Paul to turn the Sanhedrin members against each other like he did. Divide and conquer, as they say (it was especially funny that the Pharisees immediately voted to free him when he claimed he was only on trial for having Pharisee beliefs). He’s tricksy, he is. Also, ninja Jesus makes an appearance. Is he there in the flesh (i.e. physically visiting), or is it just a vision?
What’s the deal with going on a hunger-strike as part of a vow to kill someone? Unless they’re successful basically immediately, their chances of successfully killing Paul while not eating or drinking diminish to zero as their physical condition deteriorates. Yeah, they plan to kill him that very day, but they also have to know that so far in history their strategies have gone as planned, um, never, so there is maybe a teensy chance that today will not be the miracle day that everything goes right for them for the first time. Not to mention that even with their super-optimistic timeline, lack of water will send you reeling within hours, thus interfering with their plan even if everything goes perfectly. Also, they’ll die within a week if they seriously don’t drink anything. This is the worst idea in the entire New Testament so far, seriously.
Also: is it just me, or are the Romans making a huge deal out of what should basically be a non-event? Some Jewish guy gets accused by other Jews of mangling their beliefs, Romans all agree that the dude hasn’t broken any Roman laws (which are the only ones that matter, after all), and that Jews in general are nutters, and you’d think that that would normally be the end of the story and they’d turn him loose. If some anonymous Jewish guy gets shanked by angry countrymen, I don’t really understand why the Romans would care about that. Long story short, you’d think the Romans’ care factor would be zero, but evidently they actually care a lot.
Ok, maybe they’re just trying to enforce Roman law – i.e., that no one gets to carry out the death penalty except the Romans – but if that were the case, they could just arrest a couple of the 40 Jewish would-be assassins, flog or otherwise punish them to send the other Jews a message, and re-iterate in no uncertain terms that the Jews don’t get to execute people anymore. Paul’s involvement with all this would be zero – he’d be released since he hadn’t done anything against the Romans, while the Romans went about strengthening their grip on Jerusalem. The Romans do absolutely nothing like this, so I don’t think enforcing Roman rule is the reason behind the unusual treatment they give Paul.
Or, it could be because Paul is a Roman citizen. As discussed previously, Paul’s citizenship probably derived from his family being rich and powerful, and therefore getting free citizenship from Rome in exchange for being patsies of Rome, post-conquering. So, Paul’s family is almost certainly rich and influential. (Although for some reason we never see any of them, except for the one random nephew in this chapter.) But if Paul’s death would cause problems among the upper class, then that explains why the Roman commander took such special care of him – saving him from the mob a couple of times, and sending a small army to escort him to the governor, and to have his case heard by the governor himself. A normal Jew, i.e. a working-class nobody, who was in Paul’s situation probably would have received the standard treatment of “Hey, you haven’t broken any Roman laws so you’re good. So, bye! And if the other Jews kill you on your way out, sucks to be you.” They can’t do that with Paul, because if the other Jews succeed in killing him, they will anger a rich, influential, and pro-Roman family. So Paul gets to escape death a few times and get extra special care from the Roman leaders.
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