The Questor

The Wild Gospel..… ….. a date with the Emperor

So, in spite of the exhortations by his friends and the warnings by the Holy Spirit, Paul returned to Jerusalem. The last eight chapters of Acts of the Apostles describe in great detail what happened next and it’s a riveting read.

When he got to Jerusalem, Paul received a very warm welcome from the members of the church; and they were overjoyed to hear about all that had happened during his travels. But they were apprehensive because some of the Jews in the city were very suspicious of him since they believed he had turned his back on the Jewish law. So the elders of the church suggested that he should participate in a rite of purification at the Temple as a means of demonstrating to the Jews that he hadn’t abandoned their law.

This took place during the Feast of Pentecost when Jews from all over the known world were in Jerusalem on pilgrimage. One day, while Paul was in the Temple, a Jew from Ephesus recognised him and made a huge fuss, saying that Paul had spoken against the Jews when he was in Ephesus. There was an outcry and the people dragged Paul out of the Temple and started beating him up. The Roman commander heard about this and brought a posse of soldiers to arrest him.

The Roman authorities were fairly liberal with the communities they incorporated into their empire; but the one thing they wouldn’t allow was any kind of insurrection. The people were going crazy so the commander ordered his men to take Paul to the barracks and told them to flog him and interrogate him. When Paul told them he was a Roman citizen, the commander was very worried because he wasn’t allowed to treat a Roman citizen this way. So the next day he released Paul and arranged a meeting between Paul and the Jewish religious leaders – the same ones that had condemned Jesus to death.

That meeting didn’t go well and ended in uproar. Things became so violent that the Roman commander took Paul into custody for his own safety. The next day the Jewish leaders hatched up a plot to kill Paul. But Paul got to hear of it and passed the information to the Romans. So the commander arranged to transfer Paul into the custody of the Governor, Felix, in Caesarea. He provided an armed escort of 470 men and wrote to Felix to explain the situation.

Felix kept Paul under house arrest and invited the Jewish leaders to come and make their case against him. Both sides presented their case but Felix was unable to decide. He sent the Jews away and kept Paul under house arrest for two years.

Felix was succeeded by Porcius Festus who went through the whole process again, getting the Jewish leaders to come and state their case. At the end of the meeting, Festus asked Paul if he would be willing to stand trial in Jerusalem. Paul knew that this would be dangerous so he played the Roman citizen card one last time and appealed to be tried in Caesar’s court in Rome. Festus couldn’t refuse that request so he sent Paul to Rome under armed guard.

They travelled by sea and the journey was long and fraught with danger