The Early Church

also that when the blood of your witness Stephen was being shed, I was standing there too, in full agreement; I was even looking after the clothes of the ones who were killing him!’

But he said, ‘Get going! For I am going to send you far away — to the Goyim!’”

They had been listening to him up to this point; but now they shouted at the top of their lungs, “Rid the earth of such a man! He’s not fit to live!”

They were screaming, waving their clothes and throwing dust into the air;

so the commander ordered him brought into the barracks and directed that he be interrogated and whipped, in order to find out why they were yelling at him like this.

But as they were stretching him out with thongs to be flogged, Sha’ul said to the captain standing by, “Is it legal for you to whip a man who is a Roman citizen and hasn’t even had a trial?”

When the captain heard that, he went and reported it to the commander, “Do you realize what you’re doing? This man is a Roman citizen!”

The commander came and said to Sha’ul, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” “Yes,” he said.

The commander replied, “I bought this citizenship for a sizeable sum of money.” “But I was born to it,” Sha’ul said.

At once the men who had been about to interrogate him drew back from him; and the commander was afraid too, because he realized that he had put this man who was a Roman citizen in chains.

However, the next day, since he wanted to know the specific charge the Judeans were bringing against him, he released him and ordered the head cohanim and the whole Sanhedrin to meet. Then he brought Sha’ul down and put him in front of them.

Sha’ul looked straight at them and said, “Brothers, I have been discharging my obligations to God with a perfectly clear conscience, right up until today.”

But the cohen hagadol, Hananyah, ordered those standing near him to strike him on the mouth.

Then Sha’ul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! Will you sit there judging me according to the Torah, yet in violation of the Torah order me to be struck?”

The men nearby said, “This is the cohen hagadol of God that you’re insulting!”

Sha’ul said, “I didn’t know, brothers, that he was the cohen hagadol; for it says in the Torah, ‘You are not to speak disparagingly of a ruler of your people.’”

But knowing that one part of the Sanhedrin consisted of Tz’dukim and the other of P’rushim, Sha’ul shouted, “Brothers, I myself am a Parush and the son of P’rushim; and it is concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead that I am being tried!”

When he said this, an argument arose between the P’rushim and the Tz’dukim, and the crowd was divided.

For the Tz’dukim deny the resurrection and the existence of angels and spirits; whereas the P’rushim acknowledge both.

So there was a great uproar, with some of the Torah-teachers who were on the side of the P’rushim standing up and joining in — “We don’t find anything wrong with this man; and if a spirit or an angel spoke to him, what of it?”

The dispute became so violent that the commander, fearing that Sha’ul would be torn apart by them, ordered the soldiers to go down, take him by force and bring him back into the barracks.

The following night, the Lord stood by him and said, “Take courage! For just as you have borne a faithful witness to me in Yerushalayim, so now you must bear witness in Rome.”

The next day, some of the Judeans formed a conspiracy. They took an oath, saying they would neither eat nor drink until they had killed Sha’ul;

more than forty were involved in this plot.

They went to the head cohanim and the elders and said, “We have bound ourselves by an oath to taste no food until we have killed Sha’ul.