Paul Arrested by Roman Authorities

In this class we discuss some of the details of the Roman garrison in Jerusalem and their relationship to various political and ethnic disturbances with the Jews there. The Jews were causing an "uproar" over Paul and were shouting incoherently. The Roman authority wanted find out the facts. He found out that Paul was not the Egyptian who had created havoc at an earlier time.

Josephus wrote about the incident and we cite some of the facts about it. This particular commander in Rome will become an important person in this narrative. He found out about Paul's Roman citizenship and was able to get the crowd to listen to Paul's story. We discuss the temple issue in the bigger narrative of Luke/Acts.

These Jews were zealous for the temple but not for people finding true access to the blood atonement and forgiveness of sins which Jesus provided once for all. In order to get the impact of Paul's speech to this Jewish crowd in Jerusalem, I read the whole speech without doing exegesis of each verse at this time. When the crowd heard that Paul claimed to be called by Messiah to go the Gentiles (Acts 22:21) they shouted that Paul should not be allowed to live. This is ironic and stunning.