“Now when [the Roman governor] Festus was come into the province…the high priest and the chief of the Jews informed him against Paul…and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove.
Festus inherited and greatly inflamed the social unrest problems of his predecessor Felix. “He valued peace with the Jews more than justice and, despite determining his prisoner was innocent” refused to release Paul. In his quest for a political alliance with the Jewish rulers, Festus publicly dismissed their clear homicidal intentions towards Paul as a simple religious dispute. He actually tried to give up Paul to the Jewish rulers by encouraging him to go back to Jerusalem to be judged by them, knowing it would result in his death.
Paul was not so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good. He operated in close connection to his social environment. Judea had been fomenting revolution for at least fifty years, and was a tinderbox needing just one last strike to blow. If Festus allowed this revolution to happen, it would result in Festus’ disgrace and demotion by Rome, quite likely even his death – if not by a Jewish mob, by an irate Roman politician looking for a scapegoat.
Paul’s only safety net was Festus’ sensibly greater fear of Roman over Jewish reprisal if he didn’t treat Paul as the Roman citizen that he was when he appealed to Caesar. You can imagine the efforts of the Jews to get Festus to turn a blind eye on that one.
Continue reading “178) Paul Publicly Repudiated Christianity”
“Now when [the Roman governor] Festus was come into the province…the high priest and the chief of the Jews informed him against Paul…and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove.
Festus inherited and greatly inflamed the social unrest problems of his predecessor Felix. “He valued peace with the Jews more than justice and, despite determining his prisoner was innocent” refused to release Paul. In his quest for a political alliance with the Jewish rulers, Festus publicly dismissed their clear homicidal intentions towards Paul as a simple religious dispute. He actually tried to give up Paul to the Jewish rulers by encouraging him to go back to Jerusalem to be judged by them, knowing it would result in his death.
Paul was not so heavenly minded as to be no earthly good. He operated in close connection to his social environment. Judea had been fomenting revolution for at least fifty years, and was a tinderbox needing just one last strike to blow. If Festus allowed this revolution to happen, it would result in Festus’ disgrace and demotion by Rome, quite likely even his death – if not by a Jewish mob, by an irate Roman politician looking for a scapegoat.
Paul’s only safety net was Festus’ sensibly greater fear of Roman over Jewish reprisal if he didn’t treat Paul as the Roman citizen that he was when he appealed to Caesar. You can imagine the efforts of the Jews to get Festus to turn a blind eye on that one.
Continue reading “178) Paul Publicly Repudiated Christianity”
