Luke’s Appeal to Favorable Verdicts
The cumulative pattern of riots following Paul’s preaching would appear suspicious at best.²⁵⁵ This would be especially the case for his nocturnal flight in 17:10 (though the decree against him would now be expired, it might still be remembered by local enemies), and, most seriously, the riot in Ephesus. Ephesus was a major city, and the riot’s aftermath apparently left Paul mostly unwelcome there (as suggested by many commentators on Acts 20:16).²⁵⁶
Luke is well aware of the dangerous appearance of the Ephesian riot and seeks to counter it in his narrative. He emphasizes that even in Ephesus leading officials recognized that there was no real ground against Paul (19:40), and that the frivolous charge never came to court (19:38–39). Luke’s interests are theological as well as apologetic: Jesus’s message does bring division (Luke 12:51–53), as Paul’s preaching had proved in synagogues (Acts 18:5–8; 19:8–9) and, in a sense, before the Sanhedrin (23:7, 10). But these theological observations also fit his apologetic: the divisions have theological causes, not seditious ones.
Luke’s Narrative Defense of Paul: Reversing the Charges
Meanwhile, examination of the above cases quickly reveals a feature common to many of them. Although Paul in at least one case suffers precisely because he is Jewish (16:22–23; anti-Jewish prejudice might also be implied in 19:33–34), in the majority of instances above where trouble occurred, nonbelieving Jewish opponents instigate the trouble.²⁵⁷ Given Luke’s appreciation for Jewish heritage, law observance, and the Jewish people elsewhere in his work (highlighted, e.g., in the Gospel’s opening infancy narratives), it is not likely that Luke’s agenda is intended against the Jewish people generally. Rather, his point fits his apologetic.²⁵⁸
Luke’s account appears clearly ironic on this point: it is people who could ally themselves with Paul’s accusers who stirred the riots, rather than Paul himself. Meanwhile, Paul had some legal precedents in his favor, especially the Achaian governor’s dismissal of frivolous, religious charges brought by local synagogue leaders (a matter that records would be able to document concretely; 18:12–17). Luke’s narrative pattern was not lost on ancient hearers: Chrysostom finds irony in the opponents’ charges, in that it is Paul’s very accusers who have frequently stirred unrest!²⁵⁹
Reversing Charges in Ancient Rhetoric
Rhetorical handbooks had long suggested that it was ideal to shift the very charges of which one was accused to one’s adversaries, whenever possible.²⁶⁰ The handbooks simply reflected more pervasive ancient custom; returning charges was good rhetoric.²⁶¹ Thus one might concede that an offense was deathworthy, and then emphasize that it was one’s accuser, and not oneself, who was guilty of such an offense.²⁶² Sometimes a classical orator would express surprise at the audacity of an accuser charging a client with the very offense of which the accuser was guilty.²⁶³ Similarly, the orator Aeschines, charged by Demosthenes with taking bribes, counters that Demosthenes is the real bribe-taker (Fals. leg. 3; Ctes. 113, 156, 259), and that Demosthenes offers bribes as well (Ctesiphon 69).²⁶⁴ Having presented his evidence, Aeschines questions “whether . . . it is I whom Demosthenes has accused, or whether on the contrary he has accused himself in my name.”²⁶⁵ When a man named Peithias was acquitted, he charged his accusers with a different offense and got them all convicted (Thucydides 3.70.3–4). While the prospect of returned accusations did not always deter frivolous prosecutions, those who entered litigation voluntarily often did so at their own peril!
In more recent times Roman speakers also went on the offensive, attacking the character of those who charged their clients.²⁶⁶ If, for example, Sestius’s abusers now charge him with the violence they inflicted on him, they so charge him only “because he is alive. But that is not his fault.”²⁶⁷ Counterclaims could involve êthos, or character; thus when Cicero prosecuted Verres, Verres tried to circulate a story that Cicero had taken a bribe to falsify his prosecution (Verr. 2.1.6.17). In Nero’s reign, when a false accuser denounced Seneca, the latter effectively returned the charge against his accuser (Tacitus Ann. 14.65). The practice of returning charges also appears in Jewish Christian reports or interpretations of Judean debates (Matt 12:43–45; John 8:37–51).
Reversal of Charges in a Pauline Forensic Speech
Such reversal of charges may appear even in one of Paul’s defense speeches reported by Luke.²⁶⁸ It is not surprising that in Acts 24:18–19 Paul turns from defending himself against the charge of stirring unrest to remarks about his accusers who were present at the time of the riot. Here Paul leaves his sentence unfinished, omitting a verb. Writers and speakers sometimes displayed intense emotion by leaving sentences incomplete.²⁶⁹ Hearers would expect this practice at times in forensic speeches.²⁷⁰ The Paul we know from his letters did this in Galatians, which, as largely a letter of reproof, displays the heat of passion (Gal 2:2–4, 6; cf. 5:12).²⁷¹ It is not difficult to reconstruct the implied but formally omitted words of Paul’s ellipsis.²⁷²
Paul might be implying that his accusers are the very ones who started the riot (as Luke’s own narrative claims, 21:27–29). This situation would also explain, Paul might imply, why they do not wish to be present for the hearing! Paul speaks obliquely, yet even the phrasing, “certain [tines] Jews from Asia,” can indicate that Paul intends to imply something with more forensic significance than solely a summary of events. “Certain persons” was often the language of polemic.²⁷³
More importantly, insinuating guilt was a very common rhetorical technique.²⁷⁴ Rhetoricians sometimes found it more appealing to audiences to stop short (or pretend to do so), rather than recounting all the crimes, to avoid sounding too hostile.²⁷⁵ This was especially the case if the defendants were relatives, or, in this case, members of one’s own people before a foreign judge (cf. 28:19).²⁷⁶ Not mentioning one’s mistreatment could be counted honorable.²⁷⁷ Paul had nothing to lose by stopping short of a full counteraccusation: it was clear that someone had started the riot, and if it was not he, some might infer that his accusers had done so but now wished to deflect suspicion from themselves. By not stating this connection more explicitly, he could avoid appearing vindictive while hinting enough to imply their guilt.
One could illustrate this principle of insinuation abundantly. For example, Cicero is happy to slander an accuser while claiming to avoid doing so, making frequent use of insinuation. Sometimes he avoided denouncing individuals by name, thus minimizing the impression of harshness, while denouncing them by insinuation instead.²⁷⁸ Without directly accusing Piso of gaining his office unethically, Cicero insinuates his guilt: “But as to how each of us was elected I prefer to say nothing.”²⁷⁹
In many cases he even goes on to specify what he claims to merely insinuate (unlike some other orators and Paul in our passage). I have attacked only your tribunate, he assures one opponent, “for why question you about your misdeeds and shameful robberies [as governor] in Spain?”²⁸⁰ Likewise, Clodia, who dared to charge Cicero’s client, is sexually notorious, but he would “say no more than what is necessary” (Cael. 13.31; LCL 445). Cicero then charges her through much of the speech; at one point he implies her guilt for her husband’s earlier death, then claims that he must return to answering her charge, because that memory dismays him (Cael. 24.60). He accuses another man of murdering his wife and then committing another crime that Cicero refuses to describe, lest by describing it Cicero undermine public morality.²⁸¹ He further passes “over in silence” the defendant’s other private vices to focus on public ones (Cat. 1.6.14).²⁸²
Cicero’s lengthy denunciations of the corrupt governor Verres illustrate the practice particularly abundantly. Cicero has much to say against Verres that he must pass over quickly (Verr 2.2.1.1, 2), in the process indicating (apparently accurately in this instance) that the evidence he can present is only the tip of the iceberg. Cicero poses a question that he claims at some length not to ask (at the end of the claim, in passing happening to mention what this unasked question is; Verr. 2.5.5.11). He promises to skip over various facts, all of which he mentions (including some to stir pathos; Verr. 2.5.8.20–21). He claims to say nothing for the moment of matters he addresses elsewhere—then recounts them.²⁸³
Paul at the least implies that the original accusers are lying. This was a common charge against malicious accusers, though Paul’s response is worded more delicately than to employ the expression.²⁸⁴
History and Apologetic in Luke’s Reversal of Charges
Reversal of charges fits ancient forensic rhetoric, as noted above, but is also central to Luke’s own apologetic. Whereas Paul may insinuate his accusers’ guilt, Luke narrates it explicitly. Luke has precedent for such an approach. First-century Jewish responses to riots were often designed to show, when possible, that their enemies caused the riots, and claim that therefore Rome should reaffirm Jewish rights.²⁸⁵ If Luke can argue that Paul’s Jewish opponents rather than Paul himself incited many of these riots, he can argue that Paul’s diaspora Jesus movement should not be treated as authors of unrest.²⁸⁶ (This might also be the reason that in Acts 18:2 he omits the unrest in Rome that Suetonius attributes to one “Chrestus,” although that matter remains debated.)²⁸⁷
Noting apologetic interest does not require denying that the apologist may be marshalling factual information in support of that interest; as in Josephus’s case, noted below, facts served the case far better, even if they were (as they always are) selectively presented. In the real world extremists militantly hostile to some other people, including on religious grounds, do sometimes stir unrest, often inciting charges and countercharges between otherwise relatively peaceful communities.
We have good reason to believe that Paul did in fact face opposition among many of his own people. Paul’s letters clearly speak of experiencing considerable conflict, including with many Jewish leaders (cf. especially 2 Cor 11:24; perhaps Rom 11:7; 1 Thess 2:14–15), and, as observed above, they hardly reveal him promoting sedition (cf. Rom 13:1–7). Ancients also recognized that people were sometimes in trouble through others’ enmity (e.g., Dio Chrysostom Ep. 1; cf. Prov 6:19), and people often charged opponents with maliciously twisting the truth (Philostratus Vit. Apoll. 7.35). Luke knows that Paul was misrepresented even within parts of the church (Acts 21:21), as Paul’s letters confirm (Rom 3:8). Luke aims to correct hostile portraits of Paul.
Apologetic Appeal to Precedents in Josephus and Luke
Governors were not bound to follow precedents, but often did so. Luke (much like Josephus for diaspora Jews) multiplies various official outcomes and expressions of favor that could function as legal precedents against persecuting early Christians as subversives (13:12; 16:38–39; 17:32–34; 19:38–40; 24:20–27; especially 18:14–15; 26:30–32). Herod Antipas, Pilate, and a centurion all pronounce Jesus’s innocence toward the end of Luke’s first volume (Luke 23:15, 22, 47).²⁸⁸
Luke often portrays the disorder accompanying the spread of Christianity as due to hostility from fellow Jews (or, on two occasions, “vested property interests”).²⁸⁹ Granted, it was never safe for public documents to challenge the Roman authorities or portray them in a hostile light, least of all for a sect whose founder was a provincial executed on a cross.²⁹⁰ But the accumulation of precedents in Acts is probably no more a coincidence than are the analogous precedents in Josephus.
Josephus’s Appeal to Favorable Decrees
Rome had to choose between persecuting Jews or making exceptions for them that others would count as privileges; usually they chose the latter course.²⁹¹ Jewish apologists were more than happy to appeal to precedents supporting basic Roman tolerance of Jewish rights.²⁹² Josephus notes that each nation should observe its own laws properly rather than critique those of other nations, as the anti-Semite Apion does (Josephus Ag. Ap. 2.144).²⁹³ Specifically, he notes that Romans did not force peoples to break the laws of their own cultures (Ag. Ap. 2.73). Josephus appeals to Roman decrees to show the Jewish people’s loyalty to Rome (Ag. Ap. 2.61), an idea much in dispute in the decades after 70. Augustus himself, he notes, defended diaspora Jews’ religious rights (Josephus Ant. 16.162–65).²⁹⁴ None of the Caesars sought to reduce the privileges Alexander of Macedon bestowed on the Jewish people (War 2.488). In his Antiquities he cites various Jewish rights repeatedly established in the Diaspora, which E. P. Sanders summarizes as follows:²⁹⁵
1.to assemble (Ant. 14.214–16, 227, 235, 257–58, 260–61)²⁹⁶
2.to keep the Sabbath (14.226, 242, 245, 258, 263–64)
3.to keep to their “ancestral” food (14.226, 245, 261)
4.to decide their own affairs (14.235, 260)
5.to contribute money (14.214, 227)
More generally, they could exercise the right to pursue their own customs (14.213–16, 223, 227, 242, 245–46, 258, 260, 263).²⁹⁷ These rights probably varied from place to place—Josephus normally cites local precedents²⁹⁸—but cumulatively they provided a strong argument from Roman and many local traditions for tolerance.
Josephus may select only favorable decrees (and only the most favorable parts of such decrees, as with Claudius’s extant decree to the Alexandrians), but their limited yet public and falsifiable nature, in a work submitted to potential imperial examination, among other factors, indicates that he did not simply invent such precedents.²⁹⁹ (That an occasional precedent might have been fabricated before him and without his knowledge is not impossible; in some less cosmopolitan locations at least some governors’ edicts were suspected of being of dubious authenticity.)³⁰⁰ Although the apologetic pattern is clear in Josephus, the idea of appealing to precedents was of course hardly limited to him.³⁰¹
That Luke would provide a similar (albeit necessarily more limited) appeal to precedents (noted above) is not surprising. Luke’s apologetic naturally differs in some respects from that of Josephus. For example, Josephus is less apt to emphasize conversion of Romans; Jewish proselytism had provoked considerable Roman hostility.³⁰² By contrast, Acts, probably like some diaspora Jewish literature, values conversion too highly to omit it.³⁰³
But if (as most scholars think) Luke writes after Nero’s persecution, Christians already have a significant (imperial) negative precedent against them.³⁰⁴ Followers of one “Chrestus” had already been charged with stirring unrest in Rome’s Jewish community under Claudius (Suetonius Claud. 25.4), but it was Nero who explicitly branded Christians as seditious (Tacitus Ann. 15.44).³⁰⁵ Provincial governors’ decrees could normally serve as precedent, but an imperial decree could ratify or annul any policies based on such decrees (Pliny Ep. 10.108.1–2).³⁰⁶ Governors’ precedents would be of limited value to Luke if Nero later established new imperial precedent—but these earlier precedents from the East were the only favorable ones that Luke had available. Isolating Nero’s persecution from a string of precedents and showing his persecution to be historically idiosyncratic would help reduce prejudice. Although Nero was loved in the Greek East, his memory was hateful to the Roman aristocracy—i.e., the class that would supply further governors’ decrees.³⁰⁷
But unlike some of his successors in church history, Luke does not emphasize that it was just a “bad emperor” who began the persecution.³⁰⁸ Nor does he appeal to the apparent affection for the Jewish community held by Nero’s mistress Poppaea³⁰⁹ as a reason for persecution of Christians (happily, since we lack clear reason historically to believe that there was any connection there). He prefers the safer route of emphasizing entirely positive precedents.
Luke’s Appeal to Favorable Verdicts
Just as Josephus tries to show that Tiberius’s expulsion of Jews from Rome stemmed from a lone exploiter and the Judean-Roman war from irresponsible governors and a few Jewish bandits, Luke must show that Paul’s enemies, not Paul himself, caused the unrest of which he was accused.³¹⁰ Luke may have even deliberately echoed a Jewish apologetic pattern.³¹¹
Luke also addresses favorable precedents, although some ambiguity remains in his narrative. Roman courts and important officials (people of the kind of status that weighed in Roman courts) exonerated Paul (16:36–39; 18:14–15; 19:37–40)!³¹² This portrait is useful for Luke’s purpose. Even so, Luke’s historiographic sensitivity does not allow him to paint every official the same way, and he cannot suppress some tension (e.g., 4:27; 24:27). Moreover, some close calls (17:10) suggest that just beneath the surface of Luke’s apologetic are serious challenges against Paul. Chains, imprisonment, and execution were shameful in the Empire, and Luke had an important but difficult job in exonerating Paul. Association with one convicted of a crime could be used in courts to imply guilt by association, so that some would seek to dissociate themselves from the convicted person’s memory or legacy (e.g., Quintilian Decl. 307.6).
Toward the end of Paul’s life and soon afterward, his prisoner status became problematic even for some Christians (cf. Phil 1:17; 2 Tim 1:8, 12, 16); the prominence of this concern in Philippians (Phil 1:7, 12–20; 2:17) could have made it a very relevant issue for Luke’s own immediate setting (at least for non-Christian critics there; cf. Phil 1:28–30), especially if the frequency of his “we” in Philippi might imply a special connection with that church.³¹³
How does one honor the founders of one’s movement, hence the movement itself, when they are vilified by a world that values human status and the verdicts of corrupt courts? Showing that such condemnations were aberrations rather than appropriate precedents would also better equip other Christians to defend their position vis-à-vis Roman authorities concerned about a movement painted as seditious by its detractors.
Emphasizing Paul’s Innocence
Acts as a whole functions as a highly refined literary apologetic useful in addressing various external concerns, including Roman ones. As noted earlier, the very amount of space devoted to Paul’s custody (Acts 22—28, plus briefer earlier custodies) indicates this concern. Luke often signals the points that he wishes to emphasize by repetition: for example, he underlines the gentile mission by three times repeating the Cornelius narrative (Acts 10—11, 15) and three times repeating the account of the conversion of the apostle to the gentiles (Acts 9, 22, 26). In the same way, he reports three Roman hearings concerning Paul’s final custody, none of which hearings supplies any conclusive evidence against him.³¹⁴
While our present Book of Acts is not a trial brief, parts of it focus so fully on Paul’s (or others’) innocence that one may wonder if some of this material was not originally (at some earlier stage) collected for such a purpose. If Acts was written when Paul was a prisoner, the material would be quite relevant; but Luke did not compose his two-volume work in a legal form that Roman officials would have admitted as evidence at a trial. It is not likely, then, that Luke composed Acts as a court brief for Paul during his life, though he may employ material previously so composed.
Yet the apologetic thrust of the later chapters in Acts would be relevant not only during Paul’s life. Paul as an executed convict of Rome could also become an apologetic issue for Luke’s era subsequent to Paul, if slanders against him (cf. e.g., Acts 21:21) survived him; it was far easier for Christians to simply dissociate from Paul’s memory than from Jesus’s (cf. Phil 1:17–18; 2 Tim 4:10, 16), but not so easy for Luke’s own circle of churches if Paul was known as the father or leading pioneer of the gentile mission.³¹⁵ The truth that should have vindicated Paul before Nero, had justice been done, might need to be reapplied now for the sake of defending his gospel.³¹⁶
In this light, Luke’s reports of the riots following Paul’s ministry take on far more serious overtones than for those who (such as Pervo) view them more as novelistic entertainment. Unrest followed Paul’s preaching in most places where he went, and Luke could not easily deny this. But, as noted above, Luke can provide explanations: Jewish rabble-rousers (the kind that Rome particularly despised after 66 CE) often started the trouble (Acts 9:23; 13:50; 14:2–4, 19; 17:5–8; 18:12); or vested economic interests vied against him, as when some falsely denounced him as non-Roman because he was forced to cast out a demon (a benevolent act; 16:18–21); or when a rabble-rouser in Ephesus accused him of hurting local interests (19:25–29).
It seems unlikely that Luke would answer charges against Paul that were not being offered. Does this situation tell us anything about the date at which Luke was writing? It suggests that the memory of the specific charges against Paul remain fresh, probably either before or (in my view) not many years after his martyrdom, perhaps even within a decade or so of that event.
Paul clearly experienced false accusations, both within and outside the church, during his ministry (Acts 21:21; Rom 3:8; 2 Cor 6:8). The climax of all charges against Paul, however, would be those surrounding his Roman arrest, custody, and ultimately execution; his custody accordingly dominates the final quarter of Acts. Chains were shameful, and people were often ready to withdraw their support from those who had endured such shame.³¹⁷
While Paul’s letter to the Philippians suggests that Paul’s imprisonment had become a cause of controversy (Phil 1:13–17), and other sources suggest embarrassment about the arrested Paul in some circles (2 Tim 1:16), Paul’s legacy was presumably contested not only in his final years but the years that followed, when charges involving sedition could be construed as the prelude to the despised and scandalous Judean revolt against Rome. Although dating narrative works, including Acts, is admittedly notoriously insecure, I suggest elsewhere that Luke probably writes after Paul’s death.³¹⁸ Whether he writes before or after Paul’s death, however, if he writes afterward he does so soon enough afterward that Paul’s legacy still remains in significant question in some circles that matter to Luke’s audience. Luke’s account probably succeeded in setting the record straight in many circles, and may be one reason that some of these circles continued to celebrate Paul’s legacy.
Luke includes an apologetic for Paul on another level, for which the Gospel and first part of Acts prepares. The extensive parallels with Jesus and the Jerusalem Christian leaders (where possible) reveal that those who respect Jesus, Stephen, and Peter, should also respect Paul.³¹⁹ If Paul suffered the humiliation of Roman custody and execution, he simply followed the steps of his Lord. Luke shows that like Jesus (the subject of Luke’s first volume), Paul was executed for unjust reasons, and his legacy is not ultimately a liability for the church in the Roman Empire. Luke’s rehabilitation of Paul helped preserve the apostle’s legacy for the following generation.
Conclusion
In a number of cases, Luke’s depiction of riots in Acts follows the appropriate convention in forensic rhetoric of returning charges against accusers. In Luke’s narration, it is not Paul but his accusers who consistently incite riots.
At the same time, Luke’s historical apologetic would have been simpler had he been able to avoid narrating riots surrounding Paul at all. He must explain them rather than evade them. His narration of riots therefore likely reflects accusations against Paul still circulating in his day, charges exemplified in Acts 24:5 and 25:8 and perhaps associated with Paul’s martyrdom (depending on the date assigned to Acts). These charges and the unrest that Luke implicitly conceded behind them thus reflect recently remembered historical tradition about public disorder surrounding Paul, information about which both Luke and Paul’s detractors agreed.
There is therefore strong probability that Luke preserves recent information about some of Paul’s historical experiences of riots and hearings. Observing Luke’s apologetic thus informs our appreciation of Luke both as an apologist and as a historian.