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Acts 22: and 23:
PAUL BEFORE THE JEWS.
A1 | 22: 1, 2. OPENING WORDS. He spake in Hebrew.
Men, brethren and fathers.
B1 | 22: 2-30. DEFENCE AND CONSEQUENCES. |
a | Silence.
b | Conciliatory address.
c | Tumult.
d | Paul taken to castle.
e | Paul a Roman.
f | Jewish council.
A2 | 23: 1. OPENING WORDS.
Men and brethren.
B2 | 23: 2-24. DEFENCE AND CONSEQUENCES. |
a | Smite on mouth.
b | Dividing address.
c | Dissension.
d | Paul taken to castle.
e | Paul and Rome.
f | Jewish conspiracy.
A3 | 23: 25-30. OPENING WORDS. He wrote a letter.
The most excellent governor Felix.
B3 | 23: 31-35. DEFENCE RESERVED.
Here we see the oneness of the Apostle's two-fold defence. The first section is given
in an atmosphere of tense feeling, the second before the highest Jewish authority. Paul
had already claimed Roman citizenship; he now claims equality with his Jewish hearers.
On the stairs, before the excited mob, he had cried, "Men, brethren and fathers". Now,
before the Sanhedrin, "earnestly beholding the council" with a steady glance that
betrayed neither severity nor fear, he begins, "Men and brethren". The Sanhedrin was a
judicial body of seventy-two, made up of twenty-four chief priests, twenty-four elders,
and twenty-four scribes and doctors. The council originally met in an apartment of the
inner Temple, but as it was impossible for a Gentile to enter the sacred enclosure, and as
the Romans had granted the Sanhedrin the power of inflicting the death penalty in
connection with any Gentile passing into this sacred enclosure and so were obliged to
have a representative there, it now met in a room just outside the Temple precincts.
Ananias, the high priest, was one of the worst of his kind. The Talmud speaks of him
as rapacious, gluttonous and greedy; defrauding the lower priests of their tithes, while
sending his minions with bludgeons to collect his own tithes from the threshing floors.
"Few pitied him when he was dragged out of his hiding place in a sewer to perish
miserably by the daggers of the Sicarrii, whom, in the days of his posterity, he had not
scrupled to sanction and employ" (Farrar, quoting Gratz and Josephus).
Several things, no doubt, combined to annoy this unprincipled man--Paul's omission
of the title "fathers", claiming his right as a Sanhedrist and a Rabbi, his unflinching look,