CHAPTER 22
Now that he’s under arrest, Paul has to defend himself. He recounts his experiences and how he came
to Christ. He notes that when Jesus
spoke to him on the road to Damascus, his companions didn’t hear a voice. Huh?
I thought they did. (checks
back). Yeah, this contradicts Chapter 8
that way.
It’s a bit weird because the Jews he’s testifying before get
really irate BEFORE Paul gets to the part where he discusses the crimes he’s
accused of. He gets as far as noting he
decided to leave Jerusalem and try to convert Gentiles to Christianity. When Paul gets this far, all hell breaks loose
and they want to stone him.
Wait – what? Why’d
they do that? Are they upset he’s a
Christian? Then they should’ve called
to stone him earlier. (Also, they
should be willing to stone James Christ and the rest). That would at least be in character from how
we saw Christians persecuted in Jerusalem earlier in this book. But that’s not it. Why would the Jews be upset at Paul talking to Gentiles about
Christ if the Jews themselves don’t think Jesus was the Messiah? It seems a bit off-point.
Well, maybe. But all
the above is perhaps getting ahead of things.
The previous paragraph only works if Christianity is in fact a totally
separate religion. But what if it’s
still art of the Jewish tradition?
After all, that’s what it was.
James Christ, for instance, was a strict adherer to Jewish customs. That’s how the early Christians were able to
get by in Jerusalem. But Paul is moving
a Jewish sect a bit out of the Jewish community.
Still, even if you approach it from that angle, the crowd
still gets upset too early. Peter has
also called for converting Gentiles.
James Christ himself signed off on waiving the circumcision
requirement. What Paul is accused of
doing is voiding all Mosaic laws.
That’s why people want to stone him – but he never got that far in his
explanation. So this reads a bit odd.
Paul plays his trump card to get out of this meeting
unscathed – he’s a citizen of Rome. So
the Jewish authorities have to tread a bit more lightly around him.
CHAPTER 23
Paul gets a second interrogation – this time before a more
important body of Jews. He throws out
an odd insult: “you whitewashed wall,” he bellows at one person. Huh?
I don’t get it, but I like it.
Before the Big Jewish Council, Paul tries to play an
angle. He sees Pharisees and Sadducees
in the group and tries to play them off each other. He announces he’s a Pharisee and tries to split the crowd. He gets some supporters, but most still want
him dead. That night, God speaks to
Paul, telling him to take courage.
However, there is a conspiracy to kill Paul by about 40 Jews
next time he speaks before the council.
But the good news is word leaks out and the Roman authorities don’t want
a prisoner dying on their watch, so they transfer him to another realm.
CHAPTER 24
Now that he’s been transferred, Paul has to testify before
an official (named Felix) instead of a Jewish council. The Jewish leaders can
also testify, but they less in control.
They testify that they want Paul punished for spreading dissension. They say he’s a leader of the sect called
the “Nazoreans” which means Christians.
But at this time Christians aren’t a separate religion.
And you can see why Paul angers them so much. He is breaking with all old customs and
trying to essentially create a new religion. This also explains something I didn’t quite get in the previous
sequence of chapters. There, I thought
the only concern Paul had with going back to Jerusalem was dealing with James
and the other leading Jerusalem Christians.
Heck, they were the least of his worries. His real problem wasn’t that the Christians there had heard what
he’d said. No, his real problem was
that the Jews had heard he’d broken with Moses on so many points. They want payback for that. James’s confrontation with Paul was a big of
a big timing, it was trying to get Paul on his side, but it was also an attempt
to keep Paul from getting lynched – a way to make amends not only with the
Christians of Jerusalem but with the Jews as well. It didn’t take.
These interrogations are inconsequential. Felix hopes that Paul will bribe him, but it
doesn’t happen. Paul spends two years
in a holding pattern instead.
CHAPTER 25
There is some more back-and-forth, and Paul – as his right
as Roman citizen – appeals directly to Caesar.
OK, ‘To Caesar you will go” Felix tells him. I guess Paul was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, but after two
years he just couldn’t take it anymore.
A lot of this reads more like legal minutia.
CHAPTER 26
The king of the region – a guy named Agrippa – hears out
Paul. And at the end, he gives Paul
some unpleasant good news. Agrippa
likes Paul’s case – but since Paul has appealed to Caesar, he can’t let him go. If he hadn’t made that appeal, he’d be
free. I don’t quite get the legalistic
issues of the Roman Empire, but there you go.
Paul outsmarted himself. D’OH!
Oh, and Paul also mentions Satan in this chapter. It might be the first Satan mention in the
book so far. Maybe not, but he hasn’t
come up much. I also noted you didn’t
see much of him in the Gospels. I’m a little surprised. I figured he’d get mentioned more than this
in the New Testament.
CHAPTER 27
Off to Rome for Paul and some friends. Apparently there are friends, because the
narrative shifts back to “we” mode. The
voyage is a disaster, and they wreck on Malta.
Well, at least the natives are nice. Also, everyone lives, so that’s
nice. God tells Paul he doesn’t want
them to die because they’re with Paul.
Well, that’s nice of God.
One thought while reading this: Paul reminds me a bit of
Jeremiah. Both are treated
shabbily. Both are nearly killed on
multiple occasions. Both die far from
their land of birth. Both of their
stories end a bit inconclusively (neither are dead when their stories come to
an end). Both possibly die feeling that
they hadn’t achieved their missions.
Jeremiah dies in Egypt surrounded by a bunch of Hebrew abandoning
God. Paul dies in Rome, far from the
churches he founded with no way of preventing James Christ and friends from
changing the theology he’d given those churches.
Oh, and both Jeremiah and Paula are arguably the most
important people to constructing their respective Testaments. I noted in the Old Testament how Biblical
scholar Richard Elliot Friedman argues that Jeremiah is the perhaps the author
of Deuteronomy, and that he’d used previous sources to edit/compile what’s
known as the Dueteronomic history – Joshua, Judges, the Samuels and the
Kings. He told the events through his
moral slant, and that’s the heart of the Old Testament. Paul’s letters will serve as half the New
Testament books, and the gospels are written from the perspective of Paul’s
theology more than James Christ.
So though both Jeremiah and Paul may have died feeling
unfulfilled, they both played a crucial role in establishing the Jewish and
Christian religions as we understand them.
CHAPTER 28
OK, here is where Paul and his friends have their Gilligan’s
Island adventure spending the winter in Malta. Oh, we’re still talking in “we”
mode, by the way.
Eventually, Paul arrives in Rome, though. Good news and bad news for Paul. Good news: no one has come to offer a
complaint about him. Bad news: no one
has said anything about his case at all.
So Paul stays in his holding pattern.
And that’s where things end. We’re told Paul spends two more years in his lodgings, trying to
spread the word of Christ. Then it just
ends.
There is no death. There is a tradition that he’s executed
after Rome burns under Nero, but that tradition isn’t in Acts of the
Apostles. There is a tradition that
Peter was also in Rome independent of Paul, but he’s not mentioned here
either. In fact, once Paul takes center
stage in Chapter 13, we never hear about any of the apostles again after that.
If they are mentioned, it’s only in passing. There is Paul, a bit of James
Christ in relation to Paul - but the
last 16 chapters are all Paul, not Peter.
CONCLUDING THOUGHTS
This is a fascinating work.
The gospels were great, too, but they were (obviously) more than a
little bit redundant of each other. This, meanwhile, is unlike anything else.
Paul comes off as the main force, yet he doesn’t get along
with the church leaders. Given that he
never met Jesus (pre-death Jesus anyway) and the church we have comes to us
through Paul, it’s interesting to wonder about what the original leaders would
think of the modern Christian movement now.
Also, it’s interesting that while Peter and Paul are the
most famous leaders, the biggest guy in the movement in this generation was
neither – but James Christ.
No comments:
Post a Comment