PAUL
810
PAUL
not give up a Roman citizen to their judgment. As it was, the affair ended in confusion, and with no sem- blance of a judicial ternunation. The incidents select- ed by Luke from the historj' of this meeting form strik- ing points in the biography of Paul, but they are not easy to understand. Tlie difficulties arising here, not out of a comparison of two independent narratives, but out of a single narrative which must at least have ap- peared consistent and intelligible to the Avriter himself, are a warning to the student not to draw unfavorable inferences from all apparent discre]iancies. Paul ap- pears to have been put upon his defence, and with the peculiar habit, mentioned elsewhere also (Acts xiii, 9), of looking steadily when about to speak (((rfvi'trat;)) ^^ began to say, '• Men and brethren, I have livec. in all good conscience (or, to give the force of TrtTroXIrivficn, I have lived a conscientiously loyal life) unto God, until this day." Here the high-priest Ananias commanded them that stood by him to smite him on the mouth. With a fearless indi^^nation, Paul exclaimed, " God shall smite thee, thou whited wall: for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and commandest me to be smit- ten contrary to the lawV" The bystanders said, "Re- vilest thou God's high-priest V" Paul answered, "I knew not, brethren, that he was the high-priest; for it is written. Thou shalt not speak evil of the ruler of thy people." The evidence furnished by this admission of Paul's respect both for the law and for the high-priest- hood was probably the reason for relating the outburst which it followed. Whether the writer thought that outburst culpable or not does not appear. St. Jerome (contra Pelag. iii, quoted by Baur) draws an unfavorable contrast between the vehemence of the apostle and the meekness of his Master; and he is followed by many critics, as, among others, De Wette and Alford. But it is to be remembered that He who was led as a lamb to the slaughter was the same vtho spoke of " whited sep- ulchres," and exclaimed, " Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how shall ye escape the damnation of hell?" It is by no means certain, therefore, that Paul would have been a truer fuUuwer of Jesus if he had held his tongue under Ananias's lawless outrage. But what does his answer mean? How was it possible for him not to know that he who spoke was the high-priest? Why should he have been less willing to rebuke an in- iquitous high-priest than any other member of the San- hedrim, "sitting to judge him after the law?" These are difficult questions to answer. It is possible that Ananias was personally unknown to Paul; or that the high-priest was not distinguished by dress or place from the other members of the Sanhedrim. The least ob- jectionable solution seems to be that for some reason or other— either because of some defect in his eyesight, or of some obstruction or confusion, or temporary inadvert- ence— he did not at the moment recognise the rank of the person who ordered him to be smitten ; and that he wished to correct the impression which he saw was made upon some of the audience by his threatening protest, and therefore took advantage of the fact that he really did not know the speaker to be the high-priest, to ex- plain the deference he felt to be due to the person hold- ing that office. That Paul's language cannot have been a mere apology for a sudden outburst of passion is clear from his own direct assertion that he did not at the time know ,vhom he was addressing, and is con- lirmed by the apparently prophetic impulse under which he spoke. See Ananias, 13.
The next incident which Luke records seems to some, who cannot think of the apostle as remaining still a Jew, to cast a shadow upon bis rectitude. lie per- ceived, we are told, that the council was divided into two parties, the Sadducees and Pharisees, and therefore he cried out, " Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pliarisee ; concerning the liope and resurrection of the dead I am called in ipiestioii." This declaration, whetlicr so intended or not, had the effect of stirring up the party spirit of the assembly tj such a degree that
a fierce dissension arose, and some of the Pharisees act- ually took Paul's side, saying, " We find no evil in this man: suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?" — Those who impugn the authenticity of the Acts point triumphantly to this scene as an utterly impossible one; others consider that the apostle is to be blamed for ushig a disingenuous artifice. But it is not so clear that Paul was using an artifice at all, at least for his own interest, in identif^'ing himself as he did with the professions of the Pharisees. He had not come to Jerusalem to es- cape out of the way of danger, nor was the course he took on this occasion the safest he could have chosen. Two objects, we must remember, were dearer to him than his life : (1) to testifj' of Him whom God had raised from the dead, and (2) to prove that in so doing he was a faithful Israelite. He may well have thought that both these objects might be promoted by an ap- peal to the nobler professions of the Pharisees. The creed of the Pharisee, as distinguished from that of the Sadducee, was unquestionably the creed of Paul. His belief in Jesus seemed to him to supply the ground and fulfilment of that creed. He wished to lead his brother Pharisees into a deeper and more living ap- prehension of their own faith.