Paul’s First Defence in Jerusalem
The central feature of the chapter is clearly Paul’s speech of defence (22.1–21). But it is also important to bear in mind the framework in which Luke has set it; for Luke regularly uses the framework of a speech to ‘set up’ the speech, not only in terms of the developing narrative, but also in terms of the theological points he wants to be heard by means of the speech. In this case the framework is slightly obscured by the chapter division. But when we recognize that 21.37–40 functions as preface to the speech and 22.22–29 as its sequel, a striking feature becomes immediately apparent. This is the fact that at each end of the speech Paul identifies himself and does so in a way only paralleled in 23.6. In the preface to the speech he identifies himself as a Jew from the diaspora (21.39); and in the sequel he identifies himself as a Roman citizen (22.25–28). This framework structure is matched by the structure of the speech itself. For it begins with a reaffirmation of the same identity claim (‘I am a Jew’ — 22.3; see also on 22.4–5) and climaxes in the commission to go ‘far away to the Gentiles’ (22.21). Hence also the internal dynamic between the various elements within the speech — the strong emphasis on Ananias’ Jewish identity (22.12), the Jewish character of Paul’s commission to bear witness for the Righteous One ‘to every person’ (22.14–15), with its strong echo of Isaiah’s commission (22.17–20), and not least Paul’s own continuing identification with the Temple (22.17).
None of this will be accidental. Luke is making a clear point by means of this section: Paul, and the movement he represents, shared a double character and a double loyalty. He (and it) are both Jewish, standing well within the traditions of his people, but also with rights and obligations within and to the wider world. It was this twofold identity which caused all the problems now unfolding: fellow Jews who would not recognize the wider obligation as articulated by Paul; Roman authorities uncertain as to the continuing Jewish identity of Paul and what he represented. This is a theme Luke plays upon constantly in this and the following chapters, as Paul becomes a kind of shuttlecock batted back and forth between the two spheres — the physical to-ing and fro-ing of the main character in itself expressing the tensions which the twofold identity and double loyalty set up. The ever clearer definition of Christianity’s identity is the subplot being played out in these chapters.
Paul’s conversion rehearsed for a second time
22.1–21
For the second time Luke recounts Paul’s conversion — this time from Paul’s own lips (as also the third in Ch. 26). As before (see Introduction to Ch. 9), the constant focal point of the speech remains the encounter between Jesus and Paul (22.7–10; cf. 9.4–6 and 26.14–16), and the climax is the commissioning of Saul/Paul to take the gospel to the Gentiles (22.15, 21; cf. 9.15–16 and 26.16–18, 23). But here there are two principal shifts in emphasis. The first is the emphasis on Paul’s Jewish identity, training and zeal, one who even after his conversion went naturally to the Temple to pray (22.3, 17), and on Ananias as ‘a devout observer of the law’ (22.12). The other is the way the speech passes over the element of commissioning in the Damascus road encounter itself (contrast 26.16–18) or even in relation to the meeting with Ananias (22.15; contrast 9.15–16), and leaves it till the subsequent vision of Paul in the Temple (22.17–21). Luke makes the commission to go to the Gentiles literally the climax of the speech.
In both cases the reason is obvious. The speech emphasizes the Jewishness of the two main characters because it obviously has the Jewish audience of the speech in view. And leaving the explicit commissioning to take the gospel to the Gentiles until the end makes it clear what it is the Jewish crowd object to: that this Jewish sect is eroding the set-apartness of Israel from the other nations, undermining the Jewish distinctives and in effect questioning Israel’s special prerogatives as God’s chosen people.
Did Paul deliver this speech in these circumstances? The dramatic context sketched out by Luke is not at all so far-fetched as many assume. In a day when public oratory was the principal means of disseminating information and canvassing public support for policy, the tradition of crowds giving a hearing to speeches would be well established. As usual, Luke would feel no obligation either to provide a transcript of what Paul actually said, or to refrain from recording any speech. In accordance with the conventions of historical writing of the day, it was enough for Luke and his readers that he could represent what Paul could or would have said on the occasion in question. The variation in the three accounts of Paul’s conversion, reproduced by one and the same author, is a reminder both of the liberty an author felt in retelling the same story and that this was quite acceptable historiographical technique for the time (see further Introduction §4(3)).
22.1–2 The speech is introduced as a speech for the defence (apologia; cf. 24.10; 25.8, 16; 26.1–2, 24; I Cor. 9.3; II Tim. 4.16). Luke implies (cf. 21.40 with 22.2) that the ‘great silence’ of 21.40 was not so complete as he seemed at first to imply. Now, on hearing Paul speak in Aramaic, the hush deepens and becomes the more expectant. Of course Luke is squeezing every bit of drama he can from the account, but any public speaker knows the difference between a quiet and an expectant audience; Bruce suggests the parallel of someone regarded as a traitor (by e.g. Irish nationalists) being able to address a hostile crowd in the vernacular.
22.3–4 The information of 21.39 is repeated for emphasis and effect: Paul was a Jew. But now he lays out the full sweep of his bona fides, using the traditional three stages of birth, nurture and education (as in 7.20–22). He was a Jew of the diaspora (it was diaspora Jews who had started the trouble — 21.27). But he had been brought up in the city, and taught by one of the greatest rabbis of the time (Gamaliel — see on 5.34); despite scholarly questioning of this information (based on Gal. 1.22), it is hardly possible to conceive of someone training to be a Pharisee (23.6; 26.5; Phil. 3.5) anywhere other than in Jerusalem. More to the point, he had been trained in the strict understanding and practice of the ancestral law which was a mark of the Pharisees: the term he uses here (akribeia) was used by Josephus to describe the Pharisees and denoted their concern for exactness in interpretation of the law and scrupulosity in observing the law (so also its adverbial version in 26.5). And he had been ‘zealous for God’ (similarly Gal. 1.14; cf. Rom. 10.2). A Jewish audience would not fail to pick up the implication here in the junction of verses 3 and 4, for in Jewish history one ‘zealous for God’ was one who maintained and defended Israel’s set-apartness with the sword (see on 21.20). It was out of this zeal that he had persecuted the church (Phil. 3.6), those who followed the way (9.1–2). In other words, Paul could speak as one who was a Jew through and through. He knew and understood from personal experience the fears and beliefs which had sparked off the riot in the first place (21.28).
22.4–5 repeats the information of 9.1–2 with some variations. One indicates that some of the persecution resulted in the death of followers of the Way (similarly 26.10); that is surprising since the power of the death penalty was strictly controlled by the Roman authorities; but perhaps the case of Stephen is in view (see further on 26.10). Another notes that his commission to Damascus was approved by the whole council of elders (the same term is used in Luke 22.66); he had acted as representative of the people as a whole. And a third refers to the Jewish community in Damascus as ‘the brothers’. Paul continues to emphasize his Jewish identity.
22.6–8 is more or less a putting of 9.3–5 into first person terms. The only additional information is that the encounter on the Damascus road happened ‘about noon’. The information has stimulated speculation about the effects of the midday sun in the vision Paul saw (‘a great light’). Jesus also identifies himself by means of the fuller formula: ‘Jesus the Nazarene’ (as in 2.22; 3.6; 4.10; 6.14; 26.9).
22.9 This is the most glaring inconsistency between the first two accounts of Paul’s conversion: in 9.7 those with him ‘heard the voice but saw no one’; here ‘they saw the light but did not hear the voice of the one speaking with me’. The inconsistency can be resolved (they heard the voice but could not make out the words). But it is more worthy of note that the same author could dictate both versions without any sense that such inconsistency was of any significance.
22.10–11 In this version the instructions of the heavenly one come in response to Saul’s question, and the response alludes to the larger commissioning indicated in 9.15–16, here using the term (‘appointed’) which was used in 13.48 and which emphasizes divine ordering of events (cf. 26.16–18). Otherwise the account is the same as in 9.6 and 8. Talk of the ‘brightness or glory’ of the light ties into Paul’s own recollection of the event in II Cor. 4.4–6.
22.12 In 9.10 Ananias was referred to as ‘a disciple’. Here Paul describes him as ‘a devout man (cf. 2.5 and 8.2) as defined by the law, well spoken of by all the Jews living there’. The point is obvious: the man who received the zealous Pharisee into the sect he had been persecuting was a wholly observant, respected and representative Jew. The same man could be a representative of both Jewish traditional values and of the Way, because the two were not at odds with each other; they were cut from the same cloth.
22.13 abbreviates 9.17–18.
22.14 gives the information implicit in the Ch. 9 version: that Ananias reported the substance of his own visionary instruction (9.15–16) to Saul. Thus the good storyteller builds up the fuller picture by giving complementary information in his successive versions of the same story. Here, once again, the language used underlines the continuity of Paul’s commissioning with Israel’s heritage. (1) The one who appointed Paul was ‘the God of our fathers’ (echoing the title used in 3.13, 5.30 and 7.32), as in 7.32 probably an allusion to the commissioning vision of Moses in Ex. 3.15; Paul’s commissioning was in continuity with that of Moses. (2) Paul was appointed not simply to do but to know God’s will — the aspiration of every pious Jew (Ps. 40.8; Ps. 143.10; II Macc. 1.3; Rom. 2.18). The implication is, of course, that Paul’s new direction in mission is in full accord with the will of Israel’s God, part of his ordering of history (see on 4.12 and 27–28). (3) The one he saw was ‘the righteous one’ (as in 3.14 and 7.52). Paul’s converting vision and commission was entirely God’s doing.
22.15 gives the justification for Luke’s and Paul’s repeated testimony to his conversion-commission. To be noted is the fact that Paul is here also commissioned to be a ‘witness’ (as in 26.16; but so also was Stephen, witness = martyr — 22.20). These are the only occasions on which Luke uses this term which was tightly linked with the apostles (1.8, 22; 2.32; 3.15; 5.32; 10.39, 41; also 13.31), and the closest he comes to conceding Paul’s own fierce insistence that he was an apostle every bit as much as the earlier witnesses of the risen one (I Cor. 9.1–2; 15.8–11; Gal. 1.1, 15–16; see Introduction to Ch. 1 [p.4]).
22.16 is a further variation on the previous version (9.17–18). In the former there had been no explicit invitation to baptism, but only reference to Saul’s being filled with the Holy Spirit. Here there is no reference to the Spirit, but an actual theology of baptism is clearly implied (the Greek could be translated ‘Baptize yourself . . .’, but the more obvious rendering is ‘Get yourself baptized . . .’). (a) Baptism is explicitly linked with the washing away of sins (cf. 2.38) — whether as a parallel or an effective symbolism is not made clear. The same question arises in I Cor. 6.11 (same verb) and Eph. 5.26. In Acts 15.9 the thought is of the cleansing of the heart effected by faith, and in Heb. 9.14 the cleansing of the conscience by the blood of Christ. (b) Baptism is understood as the occasion wherein or means whereby the baptisand ‘calls upon the name’ of Christ in confession and commitment (cf. 2.21; 9.14, 21; 15.17). It thus served as the most visible formal marker to identify those who placed themselves under the name of Messiah Jesus — apart, that is, from the gift of the Spirit (10.44–48). As an identity-defining ritual in contrast to circumcision it was caught up in the tensions of Christian identity. And though it features little in the Jewish /Christian identity crisis in the New Testament (hardly prominent, for example, in Galatians), it was the visible and public character of baptism which gave it the same role and importance within subsequent Christianity that circumcision enjoyed within Judaism at the time of Paul.
22.17–20 is entirely fresh information, which Luke has held back till this point, in much the same way that he held back the issue of clean and unclean until Ch. 10 and the accusation that Jesus would destroy the Temple till 6.14. In each instance the dramatic effect is powerful — as Luke no doubt intended.
We learn (22.17) that Paul continued to attend the Temple even after his conversion (despite the views on the Temple associated with Stephen), and not just as a convenient compromise in 21.26. This is as much of a defence against the original charge (21.28) as the speech allows: it is no longer the Temple as such which is at issue, it is the free opening of a Jewish gospel to the Gentiles. Here also is a further example of a vision coming at a crucial moment of decision for Paul (cf. the visions of Ch. 10, 16.9–10 and 18.9–10; also 23.11). As in 10.10 and 11.5, Luke has no hesitation in describing it as a vision seen ‘in ecstasy’; it is a way of denying that the vision was contrived (Paul was not controlling things).
The vision has some echoes of that of Isaiah in Isa. 6.1–10. As with Isaiah, the vision takes place in the Temple (Isa. 6.1). Like Isaiah, Paul’s first reaction is to confess his unfitness (Isa. 6.5; Acts 22.19–20). And like Isaiah, Paul is ‘sent’ and ‘goes’ (22.21) at the behest of ‘the Lord’ (Isa. 6.8); the ‘Lord’ here is implicitly Christ though not actually named (22.19; cf. John 12.41). Most striking is the link provided to Luke’s theme of Jewish rejection, already highlighted in 13.46–47 and 18.6, and foreshadowing the final word of 28.25–28, where the same passage is cited (Isa. 6.9–10). As with Isaiah, Paul is given the depressing information that his own people will not accept his testimony (22.18). But the implication is the same: even so, he, like Isaiah, must continue to speak his message to his people (to Jew as well as Gentile; cf. 3.25, 13.47 and 26.18), as Paul in fact did according to 28.17–24 and 30–31.
The account rehearsed is very much Luke’s version of things (cf. 7.58, 8.3 and 9.1–2). Quite how it squares with Paul’s own insistence that his commission to the Gentiles came with the revelation of Jesus Christ on the Damascus road (Gal. 1.15–16; cf. Acts 26.16–18) is not clear. But it is entirely possible that, following his three years in Arabia and Damascus (Gal. 1.17–18), Paul needed a further commissioning boost before embarking on his evangelistic work in Syria and Cilicia (Gal. 1.21–23) — one of the abundant revelations which Paul confesses to in II Cor. 12.6–7.
22.21 provides the reason why the commission of Saul was left until the end of this version. It is the climax of the speech and becomes the occasion for the crowd to react (more so than the implied identification of Jesus as ‘Lord’, it would appear). This double function underlines that the commission to the Gentiles was at the heart of Paul’s self-understanding as a missionary, and that it was this open invitation to Gentiles which provoked the hostility of Paul’s fellow Jews (since, presumably, it called in question their own traditional self-understanding as the chosen people of God).
The reaction of Jewish crowd and Roman centurion
22.22–30
This is the second contrast between Jewish crowd and Roman authority — the latter protecting Paul from the former (as in 21.27–35). In it Luke continues to play off the mutual incomprehension of both as to who Paul was and what he was about. The crowd have heard Paul identify himself wholeheartedly with his ancestral religion, but cannot accept his commission to go to the Gentiles. The centurion on the other hand has learned from his first mistake: Paul is a Jew (and not ‘the Egyptian’)· But now he makes a second: he assumes that as a Jew he is no different from most other Jews, and so can be subjected to the arbitrary punishments allowed under Roman law. And when informed that Paul is in fact a Roman citizen he can hardly believe it. Luke dwells on the confusion at some length, since it is representative of his whole endeavour: to show that Paul is a typical and properly representative Christian; that is, a Jew through and through, but also a Roman citizen. As he spans two worlds, so the faith he represents can command a hearing in both worlds.
22.22–23 The ‘word’ which incites the crowd is the last (22.21). Despite the ambiguity of talk of those ‘far away’ (see on 2.39) and the promise of blessing to the nations contained within their own foundation promises (see on 3.25), they are not ready to face up to the consequences for their own prerogatives and self-understanding which ‘to the Gentiles’ involves (cf. Luke 4.24–29).
22.24–29 The detachment guarding Paul proceed up the rest of the stairway into the fortress Antonia. The procedure set in motion by the centurion was a common one — to interrogate a prisoner by means of physical torture. And torture it would have been, since the Roman scourge was usually a flail with knotted cords, or possibly in a severe flagellation with pieces of metal or bone inserted into the leather straps. Quite possibly it was the prospect of such a severe beating (in contrast to the relatively much less severe beating in 16.23) which caused Paul on this occasion to identify himself as a Roman citizen. The point was that the law explicitly safeguarded Roman citizens from such arbitrary punishment (16.37). The reaction of the tribune and those who had illegally tied Paul (22.29) is a fair reflection of the seriousness of what they had done as a breach of Roman law.
The interplay between centurion, tribune and Paul is a fine piece of storytelling: the tension builds as Paul is stretched out and tied securely at a whipping post or on a bench in preparation for the fearful scourging; the bombshell dropped by Paul and the incredulity and fear of the centurion and the tribune are vividly evoked; and the turning of the tables in 22.28 is highly effective (we know that Roman citizenship was sold during the reign of Claudius). But it serves Luke’s point still more by underlining the depth of Paul’s second identity, this time as a Roman citizen — something necessary since the emphasis on Paul’s Jewish identity had been so thoroughly reinforced in the preceding paragraphs. That Paul could have been a Roman citizen by birth is a thought which causes some eyebrows to arch in surprised doubt. But many Jews had been sold into slavery in Rome after Pompey’s conquest of Palestine in the 60s BC, and it was customary for such slaves to be granted citizenship when they attained freedom (as most did). Quite possibly, then, one of Paul’s immediate forbears had gained Roman citizenship in this way. Alternatively, his father had done some significant service for the Roman authorities in Cilicia and had been granted citizenship by way of reward. At all events, the point is that Paul the Jew had also been a Roman citizen from the day of his birth. Such a double identity was not a contradiction in terms.
22.30 The chapter division would come more naturally between verses 29 and 30, but we will follow the accepted division here for convenience. At least it facilitates the parallel between chs 22 and 23, with Paul’s speech of defence making the immediate impact on the reader. As usual the simple reference to ‘the Jews’ allows the inference that Luke was setting the Jewish nation as a whole over against Christianity. But that hardly makes sense of his repeated emphasis in these two chapters on Paul’s own Jewish identity. And on Roman lips, an indiscriminate reference to ‘the Jews’ would hardly be surprising. Luke also effectively indicates the power of Rome vis-à-vis the Jewish authorities. The tribune, identified as Claudius Lysias in 23.26, has the authority (no doubt in the name of the procurator) to summon the leading Jews in a sanhedrin/council, not to try Paul as though he fell within their jurisdiction, but for them to elucidate Paul’s status and the facts behind the riot in the Temple court. The issue is still, What is the real identity of Paul and of the movement he represents?