Instead, Paul complies with their strange dietary demands that, along with “sexual immorality,” are mentioned. Nowhere else are Christians subject to such rules in the New Testament. So, it is likely that the “Gentile” converts were then subjected to more than dietary restrictions, at the edge of a knife.
The account in Acts is clearly papering over the intense conflict between Paul and the Jewish-Christians. Silently and almost completely, James and his opposition to Paul have vanished from the story, something both incredible and most convenient to later Pauline Christians. Even so, according to Acts, before the seven days were up, “some Jews from the province of Asia” see Paul at the Temple, seize him and begin to beat him. Even Acts must confess to violent tensions during this period of time.
Once more, the Romans intervene on Paul’s behalf:
While they were trying to kill him, news reached the commander of the Roman troops that the whole city of Jerusalem was in an uproar. He at once took some officers and soldiers and ran down to the crowd. When the rioters saw the commander and his soldiers, they stopped beating Paul. (Emphasis added.) (76)
The Romans had Paul “bound with two chains” but the officer in charge—incredibly, if this was really an “arrest”—allowed Paul to address the crowd. (77)
The very idea that anyone arrested by the Romans would be allowed to make a public speech is simply not credible. That someone arrested for inciting unrest among the general population such that the whole city was “in an uproar” would be granted permission to address the angry crowd by Roman authorities is inexplicable. If it is true, we must assume the Roman government endorsed Paul’s mission.
As in the case of Jesus, the Jewish crowd at Jerusalem demands that the Romans get rid of Paul, and it is only in compliance with their demands that the Roman commander orders Paul to be flogged and interrogated. Paul then raises the legal issue of his Roman citizenship, brazenly “one-upping” the Roman officer in charge by observing that he was born a Roman citizen while the officer had to purchase his own Roman citizenship at some expense.
The commander then, we are told, is “alarmed” at this news and releases Paul before he is flogged, in spite of the ugly crowd demanding his punishment. (78) It is almost as if the benefits of Roman citizenship are being advertised in the narrative of Paul’s journeys in Acts.
Once more, as in Jesus’s story, it is the Jewish Sanhedrin, not the Romans, that proves to be the Christians’ worst foe. While Paul argues with them, “[t]he dispute became so violent that the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them. He ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force and bring him into the barracks.” (79)
Paul is arrested. (Early 1900s Bible illustration)
Again, his “arrest” by the Romans can only be seen as a kind of protective custody to save him from his zealous Jewish rivals. And, again, official Roman sanction seems to be behind the intervention.
Hearing of a plot that “some Jews” had hatched to assassinate Paul, the Roman commander “called two of his centurions and ordered them, ‘Get ready a detachment of two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen to go to Caesarea at nine tonight. Provide horses for Paul so that he may be taken safely to Governor Felix.’” (80) If this is not pure fiction, which is possible, Paul was a prisoner of enormous importance to the Romans, and his wider “Christian” movement can hardly have been the small underground group most scholars assume Christianity to have been at this early stage of its history. Not only was Paul provided with an entire cohort of Roman security forces, the commander informs Felix that “there was no charge against him that deserved death or imprisonment.” (81)
Just as with Jesus, and with all of Paul’s previous experiences, the Roman official finds no wrongdoing despite the hostile Jews’ accusations.
These, then, are the circumstances under which Paul was first brought before Governor Felix. And, according to Acts, under Felix (the husband of Titus’s future mistress, Bernice), Paul would spend two years in what must be described as protective custody. Felix’s replacement, Festus, would finally send Paul away from Judea, where calls for his head were mounting, to Rome for trial before Caesar himself in compliance with Paul’s own demand.
On his way to trial in Rome, Paul’s extraordinary luck with Roman authorities continues. This time the centurion in charge of him, one Julius from the “Augustan” or “Imperial” regiment, no less, “in kindness to Paul, allowed him to go to his friends so they might provide for his needs.” (82)
Once more, then, Paul’s “arrest” seems more like a formality. Once more, Roman moderation, toleration—even kindness and respect—is dutifully accorded him.
Christian tradition holds that Paul, like Peter, suffered martyrdom in Rome at the hands of the Romans during Nero’s reign. However, these deaths are not described anywhere in the New Testament.
The Gospels, Acts, and even Paul’s letters, show Romans in only one invariably positive light. From Jesus’s centurion to Paul’s own jailer, they are always portrayed as the good guys who are uniformly unwilling to name a Christian guilty of any crime or worthy of any punishment. Only when Jews and Jewish authorities are explicitly blamed, we can be sure, will any martyrdom be recorded in the New Testament, such as that of St. Stephen and, of course, of Jesus. This strict rule would no doubt have applied to the martyrdom of Paul and Peter, too, if it were possible.
So, while it is difficult to argue from a lack of evidence, this failure to discuss the deaths of Paul or Peter in any canonical text may be the best evidence that they were in fact executed by the Romans. After all, such a cruelty would contradict the portrayal of Romans that is thematically consistent everywhere else in the New Testament. The omission of their deaths looks just like the odd void of information we might inherit if the theory we are developing is true.
As a leader of the militant Jewish-Christians, Peter’s execution at Rome is rather easy to understand. And, by bringing his contentious mission to Rome itself, Paul may have helped fuel the Fire of Rome, which, as we noted in Part I, is likely to have been set by Paul’s Jewish-Christian foes. After the Great Fire, Nero may understandably have decided that Paul had outlived any usefulness he had once promised. Indeed, the narrative of Paul’s journey in Acts may be a clue to why Nero might have seen his execution as an expedient way to placate the dangerously aroused Jewish populace.
The outright villainy of “the Jews” as a whole as presented in the New Testament, and the sharply contrasting portraits of not just Romans but Roman officials in the stories of Jesus, Peter, and Paul, goes well beyond cosmetic touches to appease the Romans or to convince them that Christians were harmless to their empire. This constant chorus in the New Testament is too consistent to be coincidental.
The positive Roman portraits and good relations Christians enjoy with Romans in Acts and the Gospels are a deliberate demonstration of the ethics of Jesus and the theology of Paul. They are not incidental but fundamental to the New Testament’s theme. They are not exceptions, they are the rule.
An oddity largely overlooked in the New Testament is how often we are reminded of Paul’s high-ranking connections, friends and associates.
For example, according to the Book of Acts, one of the early Christians associated with Paul’s mission at Antioch was a man named “Manaen,” who was “brought up with Herod the Tetrarch.” (83) In his letter to the Romans, Paul asks his friends to “Greet those who belong to the household of Aristobulus. Greet Herodion, my fellow Jew.” (84) Paul, here, appears to be name-dropping royal Herodians! (85)