rushed down upon the mob with the soldiers and officers that were about him. It occurred to him that this tumult might be connected with a former disturbance; for not long before a certain fanatic had appeared in the character of a prophet, had secured a certain following especially among the zealots, and had led them from the wilderness of Judah to the Mount of Olives, promising that the walls of Jerusalem should fall down before their eyes as those of Jericho had done in ancient time, whereupon he would release the city from its heathen oppressors, and proclaim the Messianic kingdom. The governor, Felix, had dispersed his followers, after cutting down or capturing several hundred of them; but the chief culprit had escaped. Lysias thought he had perhaps come back again and was making this disturbance. In any case he must put a stop to the tumult.

66

When the Jews were aware of the captain's presence, they drew back for a moment and gave up striking Paul; upon which Lysias instantly seized him, threw him into fetters and manacles, and inquired who he was and what he had done. But the tumult was far too great for him to hope for an intelligible answer. One shouted one thing, and another another, till Lysias commanded the prisoner to be conveyed to the barracks in Antonia. Meanwhile the mob pressed forward so furiously, shouting "Away with him!" that when they reached the steps of the castle the soldiers had literally to carry Paul. When he was inside the ramparts and was being conveyed to his prison, he said to the captain, Can I have a word with you?" "So!" replied the other, "do you understand Greek? I thought you were the Egyptian Jew who made such a disturbance a short time back, and collected those four thousand bandits in the wilderness!" Upon this Paul declared himself a Jewish citizen of Tarsus, and begged to be allowed to address the people. His request was granted. He took his place at the top of the steps, demanded silence by a gesture, and when he had secured it addressed the people and their leaders in the language of the place, as follows: "Brothers and fathers! Listen to my defence." Now, when they heard that he was speaking in Hebrew they were more quiet yet; and he began to tell them of his descent, of his bringing up at Jerusalem, of his rigidly Jewish education under Gamaliel, of his zeal for the religion of the fathers, and the details of his persecution of the Nazarenes. It was only the irresistible force of the appearance of Jesus near Damascus (here described in vivid colors) that had brought him to

himself; and it was Ananias, a man whose piety according to the Law had earned him the esteem of all his Jewish fellow-citizens, who had told him to what he was called and had baptized him. Finally, when he had returned to Jerusalem, Jesus appeared to him in the temple and commanded him, in direct contradiction with his personal wishes, plans, and expectations, to quit the holy city, where he would not be accepted, and go far away to the gentiles.

The author has been very careful, in framing this address to the people, to make Paul lay stress on every point which could please the Jews, such as the way in which he had spent his early life, his zeal for the Law, and especially the person of Ananias.1 Accordingly he tells us that the people listened attentively so far; but as soon as they heard the word " gentiles" their passion burst out again as fiercely as ever, and they shrieked : Away with him! He shall not live!" and in their impotent fury tore their garments and flung dust into the air. Then the captain, who did not understand the language of the country, and therefore had not the least idea what it was all about, put an end to the scene by ordering Paul to be taken in and forced to a confession by scourging, in order that he might get at the cause of the people's fury. Paul was already bound to the stake and the executioners ready to scourge him, when he asked the officer in charge whether he had the right to scourge a Roman citizen, and one who had not been condemned. The officer went at once to the captain and told him what Paul had said, so that he might know what he was doing. Then the captain came himself and asked Paul whether he really was a Roman. "Yes," he replied. "I bought the citizenship myself for a great sum," said the captain. "But I was born to it," answered Paul. Of course the orders to scourge him were at once countermanded, and indeed the captain was under some uneasiness already, because he had thrown a Roman citizen into chains without giving him a hearing.

The next day, in order to learn with certainty what it was that the Jews laid to the charge of Paul, he had the Sanhedrim called, and brought Paul before them without chains. The Apostle gazed steadfastly at the assembly and said: "Men and brothers! I have walked before God with a clear conscience all my life." For these words the high priest, Ananias, son of Zebedeus, ordered the attendants to strike him on the mouth. That was too much for Paul's patience.

1 See pp. 523, 533.

"Strike me! God will strike you, you whited wall [hypocrite]," he burst out. "Are you sitting there to give sentence according to the Law, and do you dare to order them to strike me in violation of the Law?" "How dare you revile God's high priest?" cried the bystanders. Upon which Paul, unconditionally submissive to the Law as usual, replied: "Brothers! had I known that he was the high priest I would never have transgressed the precept, Thou shalt not curse a leader of thy people.' Then, knowing that one half of the council consisted of Sadducees and the other half of Pharisees, he cried aloud: "Men and brothers! I am a Pharisee, as my fathers were before me. It is concerning the Messianic hope and the resurrection of the dead that I am now upon my trial!" These words caused an instant division between the two parties1 and a great turmoil. Some of the Scribes rose up and asserted vehemently: "We can find no harm in the man. And what if a spirit or an angel really did speak to him at Damascus?" The contest grew so violent that the captain began to be afraid they would tear Paul to pieces, and ordered the soldiers down to take him away to the castle. This scene before the council is again entirely incredible. The self-righteous assertion with which Paul begins conflicts in more than one respect with his real sentiments. Besides, he could not have helped knowing that the president was the high priest, or at any rate some person in authority; and in any case the style of excuse put into his mouth is by no means such as he would really have adopted. Above all, he adroitly throws the apple of discord into the assembly by making an assertion which is true enough of the Paul of the Acts, but would have been a gross untruth, and therefore utterly impossible, on the lips of the historical Paul. Finally, the Pharisees were by no means so easy to take in as this story would make it seem, and the whole affair is improbability itself. The description is simply intended to make out that Paul's innocence was manifested even before the supreme Jewish court, and that the Pharisees themselves took his part, as Gamaliel had once done for Peter and the rest. Afterwards the whole Sanhedrim is represented as hostile to him, which it really was. In a word, the author of the Acts has given us another of his fictions for the sake of displaying his Apostle as an unimpeachable Jew of the strictest school.

The next night, he continues, Paul saw the Lord stand by 1 Compare pp. 378, 5, 6. 2 See pp. 497,

498.

him, and say, "Be of good cheer! As you have preached me at Jerusalem, so must you preach me at Rome also." But to all appearance the dangers still grew. The day after Paul's audience with the Sanhedrim, more than forty Jews bound themselves under a fearful oath neither to eat nor drink before they had slain him. They told the senators of their oath, and begged them to make an official request to the captain that Paul might be brought before the assembly again, in order that they might go into the affair more narrowly. While he was on his way to the hall the conspirators would kill him.

By good luck however the son of Paul's sister heard of the murderous project, went to his uncle at the castle and revealed the plot to him. Thereupon Paul sent one of the officers to introduce his nephew to the captain, in his name, as the bearer of important news. The captain received him well, stepped aside with him, and asked him what it was. In reply the young man told him of the request the Sanhedrim would make in the morning, and of the plot it was meant to cover; upon which the captain dismissed him with strict injunctions not to tell a soul of the information he had lodged with him. Then he called two centurions and told them to get ready two hundred heavy and two hundred light armed soldiers and seventy horsemen, besides the needful beasts of burden, to set out for Cæsarea at nine o'clock in the evening, and convey Paul in safety to the governor, to whom meanwhile he himself prepared the following dispatch:

"Claudius Lysias to the great Governor Felix. Greeting! This man was seized by the Jews and almost killed; but, understanding him to be a Roman, I hastened to the spot with the soldiers and rescued him. And, desiring to know of what they accused him, I brought him before their council, and found that the accusation referred to some question of their Law, but involved nothing punishable by death or imprisonment. On hearing that an attack upon his person was contemplated, I have sent him without delay to you, at the same time instructing his accusers to urge their complaints against him before you."

The tribune's orders were strictly fulfilled. The infantry escorted Paul by night to Antipatris, about eleven leagues north-west of Jerusalem, beyond all danger of an attack from the Jews. Thence they returned on the following day to Antonia, leaving the cavalry the task of escorting the prisoner further. The troop arrived at Cæsarea, seven leagues further north, and Paul rode as a prisoner under armed escort

into the very city which he had left a few days before as a free man, surrounded by friends.

The officer in charge gave Lysias's dispatch to the governor, and ushered Paul into his presence. Felix read the letter, asked from what province the prisoner came, was informed that it was Cilicia, announced his intention of examining him as soon as his accusers arrived, and put him in safe custody in the former palace of Herod the Great, which was now his own residence.

CHAPTER XI.

PAUL'S IMPRISONMENT AND DEATH

WE

ACTS XXIV.-XXVIII.; PHILEMON; PHILIPPIANS.

E are still without the authority of Titus, the eyewitness, whom we do not meet again till we come to Paul's departure for Rome. Meanwhile we have no guide but the writer of Acts, who lived much later, and modified or invented his history to suit the object he had in view. In the portion of his book that begins with Paul's arrival at Jerusalem and ends with his departure for Rome, his purpose is to make out that in every court, whether Jewish or heathen, and upon every occasion whatever, Paul was admitted and declared, by friend and foe alike, to be innocent of all the charges brought against him by his enemies; and further that the Roman authorities were very favorably disposed towards him, and constantly shielded him against the unmerited hatred and the treacherous violence of the Jews.

All this he describes at length, but omits every thing else, and passes over a period of two years in all but absolute silence.2 The speeches he puts into the mouth of Paul, though modified according to the demands of the moment and the nature of the audience, are always intended to prove his scrupulous orthodoxy, and assure us that when seized he was in the very act of performing a meritorious religious rite. On the other hand, we are left in the dark as to the most essential feature of the trial, for we are never really told who Paul's accusers were or of what they accused him. When we further bear in mind that the discourses, conver 2 Acts xxiv. 26, 27.

1 See pp. 615 617, 620,