Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Acts 23:6
But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men [and] brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.
6. But when Paul perceived, &c.] We are not told in what way the knowledge which the Apostle here acted on was gained. Perhaps the Pharisees, as in the parable of the Pharisee and publican, kept themselves apart; or to a Jewish eye some mark of their dress may have been enough to bespeak a difference of party. St Paul used this party spirit in a perfectly legitimate manner. What he did was not done merely to set them by the ears, but to secure an opportunity for speaking on that central doctrine of Christianity, the resurrection of the dead. (Cp. Act 24:21.)
Men and brethren ] Better “ Brethren.” See note on Act 1:16.
the son of a Pharisee ] The best MSS. give a son of Pharisees. This reading has the advantage of removing St Paul’s language beyond the questioning which has sometimes been raised about it. “I am a Pharisee,” he says. And the question has been raised, whether he had a right to describe himself thus. When he continues “a son of Pharisees” we see that he is stating that by descent and birth his family had for generations been members of that party. Having said this, he then propounds that doctrine which, of all their teaching, was that which severed them from the Sadducees. That this point also was the central doctrine of Christianity makes St Paul’s address not disingenuous, but an appeal to those who agreed with him thus far in his belief, to hear what he had further to say which might meet with their acceptance. And it is not as if the Apostle had raised the question in their midst on some side-issue. The whole teaching of the Christian church rested on the truth of the resurrection, and therefore with much wisdom and without any thought of deception he cries, “I am a Pharisee, and for teaching the doctrine of the resurrection (which they hold) I am now called in question.”
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
But when Paul perceived – Probably by his former acquaintance with the men who composed the council. As he had been brought up in Jerusalem, and had been before acquainted with the Sanhedrin Act 9:2, he would have an acquaintance, doubtless, with the character of most of those present, though he had been absent from them for fourteen years, Gal 2:1.
The one part … – That the council was divided into two parts, Pharisees and Sadducees. This was commonly the case, though it was uncertain which had the majority. In regard to the opinions of these two sects, see the notes on Mat 3:7.
He cried out … – The reasons why Paul resolved to take advantage of their difference of opinion were, probably:
(1) That he saw that it was impossible to expect justice at their hands, and he therefore regarded it as prudent and proper to consult his own safety. He saw, from the conduct of Ananias, and from the spirit manifested Act 23:4, that they, like the other Jews, had prejudged the case, and were driven on by blind rage and fury.
(2) His object was to show his innocence to the chief captain. To ascertain that was the purpose for which he had been arraigned. Yet that, perhaps, could be most directly and satisfactorily shown by bringing out, as he knew he could do, the real spirit which actuated the whole council, as a spirit of party strife, contention, and persecution. Knowing, therefore, how sensitive they were on the subject of the resurrection, he seems to have resolved to do what he would not have done had they been disposed to hear him according to the rules of justice – to abandon the direct argument for his defense, and to enlist a large part, perhaps a majority of the council, in his favor. Whatever may be thought of the propriety of this course, it cannot be denied that it was a masterstroke of policy, and that it evinced a profound knowledge of human nature.
I am a Pharisee – That is, I was of that sect among the Jews. I was born a Pharisee, and I ever continued while a Jew to be of that sect. In the main he agreed with them still. He did not mean to deny that he was a Christian, but that, so far as the Pharisees differed from the Sadducees, he was with the former. He agreed with them, not with the Sadducees, in regard to the doctrine of the resurrection, and the existence of angels and spirits.
The son of a Pharisee – What was the name of his father is not known. But the meaning is, simply, that he was entitled to all the immunities and privileges of a Pharisee. He had, from his birth, belonged to that sect, nor had he ever departed from the great cardinal doctrine which distinguished that sect – the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Compare Phi 3:5.
Of the hope and resurrection of the dead – That is, of the hope that the dead will be raised. This is the real point of the opposition to me.
I am called in question – Greek: I am judged; that is, I am persecuted, or brought to trial. Orobio charges this upon Paul as an artful manner of declining persecution, unworthy the character of an upright and honest man. Chubb, a British Deist of the seventeenth century, charges it upon Paul as an act of gross dissimulation, as designed to conceal the true ground of all the troubles that he had brought upon himself, and as designed to deceive and impose upon the Jews. He affirms also that Paul probably invented this pretended charge against himself to draw over a party of the unbelieving Jews unto him. See Chubbs Posthumous Works, vol. ii. p. 238. Now, in reply to this, we may observe:
(1) That there is not the least evidence that Paul denied that he had been, or was then, a Christian. An attempt to deny this, after all that they knew of him, would have been vain; and there is not the slightest hint that he attempted it.
(2) The doctrine of the resurrection of the dead was the main and leading doctrine which he had insisted on, and which had been to him the cause of much of his persecution. See Act 17:31-32; 1 Cor. 15; Act 13:34; Act 26:6-7, Act 26:23, Act 26:25.
(3) Paul defended this by an argument which he deemed invincible; and which constituted, in fact, the principal evidence of its truth – the fact that the Lord Jesus had been raised. That fact had fully confirmed the doctrine of the Pharisees that the dead would rise. As Paul had everywhere proclaimed the fact that Jesus had been raised up, and as this had been the occasion of his being opposed, it was true that he had been persecuted on account of that doctrine.
(4) The real ground of the opposition Which the Sadducees made to him, and of their opposition to his doctrine, was the additional zeal with which he urged this doctrine, and the additional argument which he brought for the resurrection of the dead. Perhaps the cause of the opposition of this great party among the Jews the Sadducees – to Christianity, was the strong confirmation which the resurrection of Christ gave to the doctrine which they so much hated – the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. It thus gave a triumph to their opponents among the Pharisees, and Paul, as a leading and zealous advocate of that doctrine, would excite their special hatred.
(5) All that Paul said, therefore, was strictly true. It was because he advocated this doctrine that he was opposed. That there were other causes of opposition to him might be true also; but still this was the main and prominent cause of the hostility.
(6) With great propriety, therefore, he might address the Pharisees and say, Brethren, the doctrine which has distinguished you from the Sadducees is at stake. The doctrine which is at the foundation of all our hopes – the resurrection of the dead; the doctrine of our fathers, of the Scriptures, of our sect, is in danger. Of that doctrine I have been the advocate. I have never denied it. I have everywhere defended it, and have devoted myself to the work of putting it on an imperishable basis among the Jews and the Gentiles. For my zeal in that I have been opposed. I have excited the ridicule of the Gentile and the hatred of the Sadducee. I have thus been persecuted and arraigned; and for my zeal in urging the argument in defense of it which I have deemed most irrefragable the resurrection of the Messiah – I have been arraigned, and now cast myself on your protection against the mad zeal of the enemies of the doctrine of our fathers. Not only, therefore, was this an act of policy and prudence in Paul, but what he affirmed was strictly true, and the effect was as he had anticipated.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Act 23:6-10
But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out I am a Pharisee.
Paul before the Sanhedrin
I. Objections to his conduct.
1. That when he said he was a Pharisee, it was not true in the sense which the term would naturally convey, he was not now of their party. He had renounced all connection with them, and had everywhere opposed their characteristic doctrines and practices.
2. That what he affirmed to be the main point involved in his present troubles, the hope and resurrection of the dead, was not really the point for which he was called in question, but for undervaluing the Hebrew institutions; for apostasy from the faith; and for polluting the temple.
3. That this was the trick of an orator rather than the act of a noble-minded man; that it was designed to embarrass, and divide, but that it constituted no defence in regard to the charges which had been brought against him; and that it had no tendency to enlighten the mind of Lysias, or to aid him in the performance of his duty.
II. Its vindication.
1. We are to bear in mind that the Sanhedrin had properly no jurisdiction over the case and that it had not been submitted to them at all with that view. It was solely referred to them to ascertain the cause of the riot. That one thing discovered, the case would then be entirely in the hands of the Roman authorities. But even in regard to this point, it was manifest at the very opening of the trial, that there was no hope of justice. The command given by the high priest took away all prospect of obtaining a fair hearing. If now, in this state of things, Paul could prove that, in condemning him, as it was manifest they were determined to do, the majority would condemn themselves, and must deny doctrines for which they had always been contending, could it be regarded as unfair or unmanly to show them that this must be so? It is certain that this was his aim.
2. There was, in fact, an important difference of opinion in the Sanhedrin on the most vital subjects of religion. That difference of opinion Paul did not make, nor did he increase it.
3. It was a matter of fact, also, that, so far as these two parties were concerned, Paul was wholly with the Pharisees by ancestry and conviction. Paul had no sympathy with the Sadducees whatever. Moreover, he attached all the importance to the doctrine of the resurrection which the Pharisees had ever done. It had lost none of its value in his estimation by his having become a Christian.
4. Paul held that doctrine now in a form which was to him most convincing in the fact that one had actually been raised from the dead. We may easily suppose that he had the consciousness that he was now able to confirm the views in which he and they had been educated, by an argument vastly superior in strength to that in which they had been trained.
5. It was this doctrine, as thus held, which was the real cause of all that Paul had suffered; and it was, in fact, this for which he had been called in question. He had laid this doctrine at the very foundation of all his arguments for the truth of the Christian religion; and in order to diffuse a knowledge of this he had gone over the world, enduring all forms of privation and suffering. (A. Barnes, D. D.)
Paul and the Sanhedrin
1. There is sometimes a gain to the right in setting the forces of the wrong to attacking each other, and to wearing each other out.
2. There is nothing which will so speedily bring the Pharisees to espouse Pauls cause as the knowledge of the fact that the Sadducees hate him.
3. There is little love for one another felt by the various adversaries of Christianity. True love is too much of a Christian virtue to be exercised by those who hate Christ.
4. There always arises a great clamour when two theological parties, both in the wrong, are aroused to discussion, of the very theological point upon which they most strongly differ.
5. There was no love for the truth in this suddenly manifested zeal of the Pharisees for Paul. The Pharisees only hated the Sadducees a little worse than they did Paul–that was all.
6. There is sometimes as much danger in being in a fight as there is in being the object of a fight. Paul had to be hurried out of danger, even after the direct assault upon him had ceased. (S. S. Times.)
Pauls strategy: its vindication
Was Paul disingenuous? No–
I. He was a Pharisee by birth and education; he had a right to throw himself on the only section of the crowd with which he had any sympathy, and it would be a great mistake to suppose that there was not a great deal in the better Pharisees of that day with which Paul and every good man could heartily sympathise, if it were nothing else but their firm belief in a spiritual world, and their sincere attempt to live cleanly. If Paul was to stand his ground for a moment in such an assembly, it must be by an immediate appeal to anything friendly to be found there.
II. Was it true that he was a prisoner on account of his belief in the resurrection? Was he not rather a prisoner because of his sympathy with the Gentiles? Was he not submitting a false issue at the expense of truth in order to extricate himself from a perilous position? Not at all–he was strictly within the letter and spirit of uprightness. True, the beginning of his troubles had to do with the Gentiles, but the last scene which ended in his being hailed before the Sanhedrin was directly connected with the message he claimed to have had from the Risen One; the mission to the Gentiles held for him its consecrating force directly and solely from the power of His resurrection, and, like a skilful orator, again Paul takes up, not the central grievance at first, but the controversy just where it had left off in chap. 22:21. That is what Paul stood on–the authority of the risen life. The resurrection happened to be held a verity by the Pharisee and a delusion by the Sadducee–it happened to draw all the Pharisees over to Pauls side–and it was an oratorical feat to pit the two sects against each other, no doubt, but it was justifiable. The plea was perfectly true, consummately opportune, and absolutely successful. (H. R. Haweis, M. A.)
A diversion
During the early excesses of the French Revolution, a rabble of men and women were rioting in the streets of Paris. Lafayette appeared and ordered a young artillery officer to open fire upon them with two cannon. The officer begged the general to let him try first to persuade them to withdraw. It is useless to appeal to their reason, said the general. Certainly, answered the officer; and it is not to their reason, but to their vanity, I would appeal. The officer rode up to the front of the mob, doffed his cocked hat, pointed to the guns, and said, Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to retire; for I am ordered to shoot down the rabble. The street was cleared at once; for none could brook the idea of being classed with the scum of the city.
Pauls policy vindicated
If a general, who had never distinguished himself by his bravery, should, in some hazardous enterprise, proceed with a caution bordering on timidity, and thus bring off his men in safety, but gain no victory, he might be suspected of cowardice, and it might be thought that a more determined leader would have boldly attacked and routed the enemy. But if the very same caution, with the very same result, had been used by a veteran who had manifested his prowess in many a hard fought field , all would be satisfied that he had good reason for what he did, and would admire the union of courage and circumspection which met in his character. Let this obvious and just mode of judging be applied to Paul. If we knew no more of him than what we learn from this transaction, we might suspect that his fears had led him to suppress a part of his principles. Or had it been Mark who now acted in this manner, we might have ascribed his conduct to timorousness. But when it was Paul, who was familiar with danger and with suffering, and whose coming at this time to Jerusalem was in the face of foreshown peril, and with a readiness to be bound or even to die for the name of the Lord Jesus; every rule of judging compels us to conclude that his wariness was not the result of fear, but manifested a circumspection which adds to the lustre of his character, and shows that his sufferings were not incurred by rashness or self-will, but were the unavoidable consequence of his faithfulness in preaching the gospel of Christ. (J. Fawcett, M. A.)
Of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.
Proofs of the resurrection
Every impulse and feeling we have within us teaches a prolonged and immortal existence.
1. As to proofs from the conscience. Conscience of guilt speaks with great certainty of a future life.
2. Proofs from our affections: from our human affections in the remembrance of lost friends. Rev. Octavius Winslow has beautifully said that this assurance of heaven grows stronger gradually as the family on earth grows less, and there are more to meet us above. Further from our religious affections. Can the saint who has spent long years in learning to realise the presence of God here be made to believe that he shall be cut off from it hereafter?
3. Proofs from the will and desires.
4. Proofs from the imagination. The mind of man in every age, in every country, has been busied in painting a future life. The mythology of all religions from Egypt to Mexico, from the civilised Roman to the unenlightened Druid, are full of this. This may be called the weakest of our proofs, but it is the most universal. (E. Sharpe.)
The hope and the resurrection
Not a little light will be thrown upon Pauls conduct if it be remembered that his address from the stairs was unfinished, and that his mind must have been full of the thoughts which, if altered, would make that address complete. Verse 1 is the natural conclusion to the argument of the preceding chapter, which shows the sincerity with which he embraced and held his present views. Another interruption occurs, and as soon as it subsides the apostle resumes, to deal with a subject which is never absent from his speeches. Seeing Pharisees present Paul recognises a providential moment for proclaiming their favourite doctrine and his own; and it is interesting to compare the whole paragraph with Act 24:14-15; Act 26:5-6. The hope, which should be distinguished from the resurrection, was unquestionably the advent of the Messiah which Paul had proved had taken place, inasmuch as Christ had appeared unto him (Act 22:6-10). With the hope, the calling of the Gentiles (the ground of the uproar– Act 21:28-29) was inseparably bound up, as any impartial student of prophecy will admit, and as Paul tried to show (Act 22:18; Act 22:21) when he was compelled to break off. And then, further, upon the hope the resurrection was founded and made sure. Consider–
I. The hope. It was–
1. An ancient hope: as old as the fall, renewed to the patriarchs, repeated by the prophets and psalmist. In all its vicissitudes Israel had been supported by this hope, and men were eagerly waiting for its fulfilment when Christ came.
2. It was a sure hope. It was no brilliant speculation or dream of a golden age. It was no vague impression that as God in wrath had closed the gates of Paradise, He might, perhaps, in mercy, send a deliverer to open them once more. It was a hope based upon certain definite promises made by God again and again.
3. It was a wide hope. With the Scriptures in their hands it is hard to account for Jewish exclusiveness. The primeval promise was made to humanity; the patriarchal promises embraced all the families of the earth, and the glowing prophecies of Isaiah show clearly that without the Gentiles the Jews themselves could not be made perfect.
4. It was a glorious hope. It included–
(1) Redemption from sin.
(2) The establishment of a universal kingdom of righteousness and peace.
5. The hope has been fulfilled. Have you any part in it? The Jews rejected Him who was the subject of it. He now offers Himself, and it to you. How will you escape if you neglect so great salvation?
II. The resurrection as founded on the hope. The fulfilment of the hope for this life only would have frustrated its purpose–to make men blessed. Its very revelation would have engendered despair at the thought that it would one day come to an end (1Co 15:19). But connected with the revelation it is an eternal hope, it opens vistas of glory and bliss that stretch out forever.
1. Christ has redeemed the body as well as the soul. The future life and happiness which He purchased for the one He has secured for the other.
2. Christ gave a security for our resurrection by His own.
3. Christ promised it in connection with Himself, the hope. (J. W. Burn.)
And when he had so said there arose a dissension.—
The effect of the apostles policy
It answered the end he sought. It divided the Sanhedrin, and got the Pharisees on his side. Three results came out of it.
1. A great excitement through a sectionising dogma. The resurrection of the dead, which was a grand truth to the apostle, was a mere dogma to them; but it was just that dogma that divided them into two sects. As a rule, whatever idea divides one religious sect from another is the idea which awakens sectarian bitterness. Immersion, Presbyterianism, Independency–these things make sects and awaken irritation in the parties they divide.
2. A demonstration of the apostles innocence. So little impressed was the Sanhedrin with the idea of the apostles criminality, that they forgot all about it in the disputation amongst themselves; and, more than this, the Pharisees actually said, We find no evil in this man.
3. His deliverance from Jewish persecution (verse 10). (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The strife between the Pharisees and the Sadducees
There are plenty of indications in the Talmud that there was no love lost between the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Edersheim quotes several Sadducee sayings regarding the scrupulosity of the Pharisees. It is as a tradition among the Pharisees to torment themselves in this world, and yet they will gain nothing by it in the next. By and by, said the Sadducees, the Pharisees will set about purifying the round sun itself. They also talked of the plague of Pharisaism; and enumerated seven kinds of Pharisees, of whom only one kind was praiseworthy. Nor was this strife regarding Paul the only occasion on which a serious disturbance was provoked by the differences between the Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees did not believe in pouring the water of libation upon the altar on the feast of tabernacles, and the Pharisees did. On one occasion the dispute was so intense that it led to a riot in which the blood of both parties was shed. In the modern East, such appeals as Paul made to the fanaticism of the Pharisees are matters of everyday occurrence. (S. S. Times.)
And there arose a great dissension.—
Religious dissensions
There is hardly anything which men are more ready to quarrel over than religion. And the less religion they have, the harder they will fight for it. The last thing which dies out in an ungodly mans religious life is his sectarianism; and as long as any of that remains, he will argue in its defence and denounce its opponents. When the Churches in any community are coldest and most inactive, then sectarian bitterness is most likely to prevail When those Churches are warmed into new life, and become active in their Masters service, and in zeal for souls, they think less of that which separates them in name, and more of that which they hold and love in common. Sectarian dissensions are a sign of a low spiritual state. If you are ready to note your differences with your religious neighbour, it is a pretty sure proof that you have not enough religion to quarrel over. If you are really possessed with religious zeal, you will be on the look out for points of agreement in its behalf, in your neighbours opinions and practice. (H. C. Trumbull, D. D.)
We find no evil in this man.—
Partisanship
Of course, the Pharisees found no evil in Paul when they learned that he was on their side of the question at issue. We are not inclined to see faults in the man who agrees with us in any difference we have with others. He who defends our denomination, or our political party, or our views of financial policy, or our theories of education, stands better in our eyes than he could under other circumstances. Let a prominent politician change his party associations, and how quickly the whole community is affected in its opinions of his personal character. The men who before praised his spirit and ability are now sure that he never amounted to much any way. They always knew him to be unprincipled, and he is no gain to any party. And those who have been his enemies are surprised that he had been so misunderstood. At all events, they now find no evil in him, and they wonder if a spirit hath not spoken to him, or an angel. Would not it be well–safe as well as charitable–to ask this question about a man while he is on the other side from ourselves, of questions which divide our common country, or our common Christianity? (H. C. Trumbull, D. D.)
Pauls rescue by the dissensions of his enemies
When Cadmus had sown the dragons teeth and they sprang up from the ground armed giants, a great army, he took up a rock and threw it among them. So that instead of slaying him they went to fighting one another. And they slew one another till only one tall giant remained, and he became the helper of Cadmus in carrying stones for the walls of the city of Thebes he began to build. So it is wise to let the enemies of Christianity fight one another; one tears down what another builds up. So it has been through the ages, whether they use historic criticism or geology, or antiquarian researches or development theories, or any form of science for their weapons. But always after the battle is over there is left some solid, settled truth which never fails to help build the city Of our God. (Christian Age.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 6. I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee] Instead of , of a Pharisee, ABC, some others, with the Syriac and Vulgate, have , of the Pharisees; which, if acknowledged to be the genuine reading, would alter the sense thus, I am a Pharisee, and a disciple of the Pharisees, for so the word son is frequently understood.
Of the hope and resurrection] Concerning the hope of the resurrection, the , and, being here redundant; indeed, it is omitted by the Syriac, all the Arabic, and AEthiopic. St. Paul had preached the resurrection of the dead, on the foundation and evidence of the resurrection of Christ. For this, he and the apostles were, some time before, imprisoned by the high priest and elders, Ac 4:1-3; Ac 5:17, because they preached, THROUGH JESUS, the resurrection of the dead. This they could not bear; for, if Jesus Christ rose from the dead, their malice and wickedness, in putting him to death, were incontrovertibly established.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
I am a Pharisee; in his former profession, opinion, and conversation; and now also in the points that were controverted betwixt them: and St. Paul, with his dove like innocency, does in this but make use of the serpentine subtlety, to preserve himself, and to gain credit unto the truths of the gospel.
The son of a Pharisee; the son of Pharisees, in the plural; either for several descents his ancestors had been of that sect; or that both his father and his mother were of it.
Of the hope and resurrection; or, for the hope of the resurrection; an hendyadis: although he did not agree with the Pharisees in all their opinions, yet in this he did; and the resurrection was the common subject he preached upon: and the gospel does give us the best proof and evidence of it; insomuch that Paul was taxed for preaching Jesus and the resurrection, Act 17:18; and unless there be a resurrection, his preaching was vain, and his faith vain, 1Co 15:13,14.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
6-9. when Paul perceivedfromthe discussion which plainly had by this time arisen between theparties.
that the one part wereSadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried outraising hisvoice above both parties.
I am a Pharisee, the son of aPhariseeThe true reading seems to be, “the son ofPharisees,” that is, belonging to a family who from father toson had long been such.
of the hope and resurrectionof the deadthat is, not the vague hope of immortality, but thedefinite expectation of the resurrection.
I am called in questionBythis adroit stroke, Paul engages the whole Pharisaic section of thecouncil in his favor; the doctrine of a resurrection being common toboth, though they would totally differ in their application ofit. This was, of course, quite warrantable, and the more so as it wasalready evident that no impartiality in trying his cause was to belooked for from such an assembly.
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees,…. That is, that one part of the sanhedrim consisted of Sadducees, which was often the case; sometimes the high priest was of this sect, as Ananias probably was, and sometimes the greater part of the sanhedrim were Sadducees, and even sometimes the whole;
[See comments on Ac 5:17], but this sanhedrim were only part of them Sadducees:
and the other Pharisees; of both these sects, [See comments on Mt 3:7].
he cried out in the council; with a loud voice, that he might be heard by all:
men and brethren, I am a Pharisee; he was not only brought up in that sect from his youth, and lived according to it before his conversion, but he was still a Pharisee; wherefore he does not say, I “was”, but I “am” a Pharisee; for whatever distinguished the Pharisee from the Sadducee, whether in principle, or in practice, and manner of living, which agreed with Christianity, the apostle still retained; as the belief of the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, and a future state, and strict holiness of life and conversation.
The son of a Pharisee; the Alexandrian copy, and some others, and the Vulgate Latin version, read in the plural number, “the son of Pharisees”; his father and his mother were both Pharisees; for there were women Pharisees w, as well as men; so that he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, as well as an Hebrew of the Hebrews; and this is said to show that he was by education of that sect.
Of the hope and resurrection of the dead, I am called in question; that is, either for the hope of the resurrection of the dead, Ac 24:15 or for professing the hope of eternal life, and happiness in a future state, and the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, when the soul and body will be reunited, and enjoy endless felicity together: not that these were the particular things now charged upon him, and for which he was now trying and judging; but that these were the ground and foundation of the hatred and persecution of him, because he preached the resurrection of Christ from the dead, and the resurrection of men through him, and that there was hope of eternal life and salvation by him. And in this the apostle showed the prudence and wisdom of the serpent, along with the innocence of the dove, hereby to divide the assembly, and free himself from them; and it was but just and right; for since they would not hear him about to make a fair and open defence of his cause, but ordered him to be smitten on the mouth, it was but justice to throw them into confusion, and save himself.
w Misna Sota, c. 3. sect. 4.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
| Paul’s Second Defence. |
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6 But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. 7 And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees: and the multitude was divided. 8 For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both. 9 And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees’ part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God. 10 And when there arose a great dissension, the chief captain, fearing lest Paul should have been pulled in pieces of them, commanded the soldiers to go down, and to take him by force from among them, and to bring him into the castle. 11 And the night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome.
Many are the troubles of the righteous, but some way or other the Lord delivereth them out of them all. Paul owned he had experienced the truth of this in the persecutions he had undergone among the Gentiles (see 2 Tim. iii. 11): Out of them all the Lord delivered me. And now he finds that he who has delivered does and will deliver. He that delivered him in the foregoing chapter from the tumult of the people here delivers him from that of the elders.
I. His own prudence and ingenuity stand him in some stead, and contribute much to his escape. Paul’s greatest honour, and that upon which he most valued himself, was that he was a Christian, and an apostle of Christ; and all his other honours he despised and made nothing of, in comparison with this, counting them but dung, that he might win Christ; and yet he had sometimes occasion to make use of his other honours, and they did him service. His being a citizen of Rome saved him in the foregoing chapter from his being scourged by the chief captain as a vagabond, and here his being a Pharisee saved him from being condemned by the sanhedrim, as an apostate from the faith and worship of the God of Israel. It will consist very well with our willingness to suffer for Christ to use all lawful methods, nay, and arts too, both to prevent suffering and to extricate ourselves out of it. The honest policy Paul used here for his own preservation was to divide his judges, and to set them at variance one with another about him; and, by incensing one part of them more against him, to engage the contrary part for him.
1. The great council was made up of Sadducees and Pharisees, and Paul perceived it. He knew the characters of many of them ever since he lived among them, and saw those among them whom he knew to be Sadducees, and others whom he knew to be Pharisees (v. 6): One part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, and perhaps nearly an equal part. Now these differed very much from one another, and yet they ordinarily agreed well enough to do the business of the council together. (1.) The Pharisees were bigots, zealous for the ceremonies, not only those which God had appointed, but those which were enjoined by the tradition of the elders. They were great sticklers for the authority of the church, and for enforcing obedience to its injunctions, which occasioned many quarrels between them and our Lord Jesus; but at the same time they were very orthodox in the faith of the Jewish church concerning the world of spirits, the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come. (2.) The Sadducees were deists–no friends to the scripture, or divine revelation. The books of Moses they admitted as containing a good history and a good law, but had little regard to the other books of the Old Testament; see Matt. xxii. 23. The account here given of these Sadducees is, [1.] That they deny the resurrection; not only the return of the body to life, but a future state of rewards and punishments. They had neither hope of eternal happiness nor dread of eternal misery, nor expectation of any thing on the other side death; and it was upon these principles that they said, It is in vain to serve God, and called the proud happy, Mal 3:14; Mal 3:15. [2.] That they denied the existence of angels and spirits, and allowed of no being but matter. They thought that God himself was corporeal, and had parts and members as we have. When they read of angels in the Old Testament, they supposed them to be messengers that God made and sent on his errands as there was occasion, or that they were impressions on the fancies of those they were sent to, and no real existences–that they were this, or that, or any thing rather than what they were. And, as for the souls of men, they looked upon them to be nothing else but the temperament of the humours of the body, or the animal spirits, but denied their existence in a state of separation from the body, and any difference between the soul of a man and of a beast. These, no doubt, pretended to be free-thinkers, but really thought as meanly, absurdly, and slavishly, as possible. It is strange how men of such corrupt and wicked principles could come into office, and have a place in the great sanhedrim; but many of them were of quality and estate, and they complied with the public establishment, and so got in and kept in. But they were generally stigmatized as heretics, were ranked with the Epicureans, and were prayed against and excluded from eternal life. The prayer which the modern Jews use against Christians, Witsius thinks, was designed by Gamaliel, who made it, against the Sadducees; and that they meant them in their usual imprecation, Let the name of the wicked rot. But how degenerate was the character and how miserable the state of the Jewish church, when such profane men as these were among their rulers!
2. In this matter of difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees Paul openly declared himself to be on the Pharisees’ side against the Sadducees (v. 6): He cried out, so as to be heard by all, “I am a Pharisee, was bred a Pharisee, nay, I was born one, in effect, for I was the son of a Pharisee, my father was one before me, and thus far I am still a Pharisee that I hope for the resurrection of the dead, and I may truly say that, if the matter were rightly understood, it would be found that this is it for which I am now called in question.” When Christ was upon earth the Pharisees set themselves most against him, because he witnessed against their traditions and corrupt glosses upon the law; but, after his ascension, the Sadducees set themselves most against his apostles, because they preached through Jesus the resurrection of the dead,Act 4:1; Act 4:2. And it is said (ch. v. 17) that they were the sect of the Sadducees that were filled with indignation at them, because they preached that life and immortality which is brought to light by the gospel. Now here, (1.) Paul owns himself a Pharisee, so far as the Pharisees were in the right. Though as Pharisaism was opposed to Christianity he set himself against it, and against all its traditions that were set up in competition with the law of God or in contradiction to the gospel of Christ, yet, as it was opposed to Sadducism, he adhered to it. We must never think the worse of any truth of God, nor be more shy of owning it, for its being held by men otherwise corrupt. If the Pharisees will hope for the resurrection of the dead, Paul will go along with them in that hope, and be one of them, whether they will or no. (2.) He might truly say that being persecuted, as a Christian, this was the thing he was called in question for. Perhaps he knew that the Sadducees, though they had not such an interest in the common people as the Pharisees had, yet had underhand incensed the mob against him, under pretence of his having preached to the Gentiles, but really because he had preached the hope of the resurrection. However, being called in question for his being a Christian, he might truly say he was called in question for the hope of the resurrection of the dead, as he afterwards pleaded, Act 24:15; Act 26:6; Act 26:7. Though Paul preached against the traditions of the elders (as his Master had done), and therein opposed the Pharisees, yet he valued himself more upon his preaching the resurrection of the dead, and a future state, in which he concurred with the Pharisees.
3. This occasioned a division in the council. It is probable that the high priest sided with the Sadducees (as he had done ch. v. 17, and made it to appear by his rage at Paul, v. 2), which alarmed the Pharisees so much the more; but so it was, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees (v. 7), for this word of Paul’s made the Sadducees more warm and the Pharisees more cool in the prosecution of him; so that the multitude was divided; eschisthe—there was a schism, a quarrel among them, and the edge of their zeal began to turn from Paul against one another; nor could they go on to act against him when they could not agree among themselves, or prosecute him for breaking the unity of the church when there was so little among them of the unity of the spirit. All the cry had been against Paul, but now there arose a great cry against one another, v. 9. So much did a fierce furious spirit prevail among all orders of the Jews at this time that every thing was done with clamour and noise; and in such a tumultuous manner were the great principles of their religion stickled for, by which they received little service, for the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God. Gainsayers may be convinced by fair reasoning, but never by a great cry.
4. The Pharisees hereupon (would one think it?) took Paul’s part (v. 9): They strove, diemachonto—They fought, saying, We find no evil in this man. He had conducted himself decently and reverently in the temple, and had attended the service of the church; and, though it was but occasionally, yet it showed that he was not such an enemy to it as he was said to be. He had spoken very handsomely in his own defence, and given a good account of himself, and had now declared himself orthodox in the great principles of religion, as well as regular and conscientious in his conversation; and therefore they cannot see that he has done any thing worthy of death of bonds. Nay, they go further, “If a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him concerning Jesus, and put him upon preaching as he does, though we may not be so far satisfied as to give credit to him, yet we ought to be cautioned not to oppose him, lest we be found fighting against God;” as Gamaliel, who was himself a Pharisee, had argued, ch. v. 39. Now here, (1.) We may observe, to the honour of the gospel, that it was witnessed to even by its adversaries, and confessions, not only of its innocency, but of its excellency, were extorted sometimes by the power of truth even from those that persecuted it. Pilate found no fault in Christ though he put him to death, nor Festus in Paul though he detained him in bonds; and the Pharisees here supposed it possible that Paul might have a commission sent him for heaven by an angel to do what he did; and yet it should seem, as elders, they after this joined with the high priest in prosecuting him, ch. xxiv. 1. They sinned against the knowledge which they not only had, but sometimes owned, as Christ had said of them, They have both seen and hated both me and my Father, John xv. 24. Yet, (2.) We will hope that some of them at least did henceforward conceive a better opinion of Paul than they had had, and were favourable to him, having had such a satisfactory account both of his conversation in all good conscience and of his faith touching another world; and then it must be observed to their honour that their zeal for the traditions of the elders, which Paul had departed from, was so far swallowed up in a zeal for the great and fundamental doctrines of religion, to which Paul still adhered, that if he will heartily join with them against the Sadducees, and adhere to the hope of the resurrection of the dead, they will not think his shaking off the ceremonial law to be an evil in him, but charitably hope that he walks according to the light God has given him by some angel or spirit, and are so far from persecuting him that they are ready to patronize and protect him. The persecuting Pharisees of the church of Rome are not of this spirit: for let a man be ever so sincere and zealous for all the articles of the Christian faith, yet, if he lay not his neck under the yoke of their church’s authority, they find evil enough in him to persecute him unto the death.
II. The chief captain’s care and conduct stand him in more stead; for when he has thrown this bone of contention between the Pharisees and Sadducees (which set them together by the ears, and gained a fair testimony from the Pharisees), yet he is never the nearer, but is in danger of being pulled in pieces by them–the Pharisees pulling to have him set at liberty, and the Sadducees pulling to have him put to death, or thrown to the people, like Daniel into the den of lions; so that the chief captain is forced to come with his soldiers and rescue him, as he had done, Act 21:32; Act 22:24. 1. See here Paul’s danger. Between his friends and his enemies he had like to have been pulled to pieces, the one hugging him to death, the other crushing him to death, such violences are those liable to that are eminent, and that are become remarkable, as Paul was, who was by some so much beloved and by others so much maligned. 2. His deliverance: The chief captain ordered his soldiers to go down from the upper wards, and to take them by force from among them, out of that apartment in the temple where he had ordered the council to meet, and to bring him into the castle, or tower of Antonio; for he saw he could make nothing of them towards the understanding of the merits of his cause.
III. Divine consolations stood him in most stead of all. The chief captain had rescued him out of the hands of cruel men, but still he had him in custody, and what might be the issue he could not tell. The castle was indeed a protection to him, but withal it was a confinement; and, as it was now his preservation from so great a death, it might be his reservation for a greater. We do not find that any of the apostles or elders at Jerusalem came to him; either they had not courage or they had not admission. Perhaps, in the night following, Paul was full of thoughts and cares what should become of him, and how his present troubles might be turned to answer some good purpose. Then did the Lord Jesus make him a kind visit, and, thought at midnight, yet a very seasonable one (v. 11): The Lord stood by him, came to his bed-side, though perhaps it was but a bed of straw, to show him that he was all the day long with him really as sure as he was in the night with him visibly. Note, Whoever is against us, we need not fear if the Lord stand by us; if he undertake our protection, we may set those that seek our ruin at defiance. The Lord is with those that uphold my soul, and then nothing can come amiss. 1. Christ bids him have a good heart upon it: “Be of good cheer, Paul; be not discouraged; let not what has happened sadden thee, nor let what may yet be before thee frighten thee.” Note, It is the will of Christ that his servants who are faithful should be always cheerful. Perhaps Paul, in the reflection, began to be jealous of himself whether he had done well in what he said to the council the day before; but Christ, by his word, satisfies him that God approved of his conduct. Or, perhaps, it troubled him that his friends did not come to him; but Christ’s visit did itself speak, though he had not said, Be of good cheer, Paul. 2. It is a strange argument which he makes use of to encourage him: As thou hast testified of me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome. One would think this was but cold comfort: “As thou hast undergone a great deal of trouble for me so thou must undergo a great deal more;” and yet this was designed to encourage him; for hereby he is given to understand, (1.) That he had been serving Christ as a witness for him in what he had hitherto endured. It was for no fault that he was buffeted, and it was not his former persecuting of the church that was now remembered against him, however he might remember it against himself, but he was still going on with his work. (2.) That he had not yet finished his testimony, nor was, by his imprisonment, laid aside as useless, but was only reserved for further service. Nothing disheartened Paul so much as the thought of being taken off from doing service to Christ and good to souls: Fear not, says Christ, I have not done with thee, (3.) Paul seems to have had a particular fancy, and an innocent one, to go to Rome, to preach the gospel there, though it was already preached, and a church planted there; yet, being a citizen of Rome, he longed for a journey thither, and had designed it (ch. xix. 21): After I have been at Jerusalem, I must also see Rome. And he had written to the Romans some time ago that he longed to see them, Rom. i. 11. Now he was ready to conclude that this had broken his measures, and he should never see Rome; but even in that Christ tells him he should be gratified, since he desired it for the honour of Christ and to do good.
Fuente: Matthew Henry’s Whole Bible Commentary
But when Paul perceived ( ). Perceiving (second aorist ingressive of ). Paul quickly saw that his cause was ruined before the Sanhedrin by his unwitting attack on the high priest. It was impossible to get a fair hearing. Hence, Vincent says, “Paul, with great tact, seeks to bring the two parties of the council into collision with each other.” So Alford argues with the motto “divide and conquer.” Farrar condemns Paul and takes 24:21 as a confession of error here, but that is reading into Paul’s word about the resurrection more than he says. Page considers Luke’s report meagre and unsatisfactory. Rackham thinks that the trial was already started and that Paul repeated part of his speech of the day before when “the Sadducees received his words with ostentatious scepticism and ridicule: this provoked counter-expressions of sympathy and credulity among the Pharisees.” But all this is inference. We do not have to adopt the Jesuitical principle that the end justifies the means in order to see shrewdness and hard sense in what Paul said and did. Paul knew, of course, that the Sanhedrin was nearly evenly divided between Pharisees and Sadducees, for he himself had been a Pharisee.
I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees ( ). This was strictly true as we know from his Epistles (Php 3:5).
Touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question ( ). This was true also and this is the point that Paul mentions in 24:21. His failure to mention again the fact that he was a Pharisee throws no discredit on Luke’s report here. The chief point of difference between Pharisees and Sadducees was precisely this matter of the resurrection. And this was Paul’s cardinal doctrine as a Christian minister. It was this fact that convinced him that Jesus was the Messiah and was “the very centre of his faith” (Page) and of his preaching. It was not a mere trick for Paul to proclaim this fact here and so divide the Sanhedrin. As a matter of fact, the Pharisees held aloof when the Sadducees persecuted Peter and the other apostles for preaching resurrection in the case of Jesus and even Gamaliel threw cold water on the effort to punish them for it (Ac 5:34-39). So then Paul was really recurring to the original cleavage on this point and was able to score a point against the Sadducees as Gamaliel, his great teacher, had done before him. Besides, “Paul and Pharisaism seem to us such opposite ideas that we often forget that to Paul Christianity was the natural development of Judaism” (Page). Paul shows this in Acts 23:3; Acts 23:9-11.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
The one part were Sadducees, etc. Perceiving the impossibility of getting a fair hearing, Paul, with great tact, seeks to bring the two parties of the council into collision with each other.
The resurrection. A main point of contention between the Pharisees and Sadducees, the latter of whom denied the doctrine of the resurrection, of a future state, and of any spiritual existence apart from the body.
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
PAUL APPEALS TO PHARISEES OF THE COUNCIL V. 6, 7
1) “But when Paul perceived,” (gnousde Paulos) “Then when Paul recognized,” from his observation of members of the council of elders before whom he stood – the Sanhedrin, Act 22:30.
2) “That one part were Sadducees,” (hoti to en meros estin saddoukaion) “That one part of the council was Sadducees,” who were liberals, skeptics, doubters, and deniers of 1) the resurrection of the dead, 2) of the existence of angels, and 3) of the existence of spirits, Act 23:8.
3) “And the other Pharisees,” (to de heteron phariasion) “But the other part of a different kind of councilmen were Pharisees,” of a differing religious concept, on numerous Jewish religious matters. The Sadducees also rejected all of the Old Testament, as authentic or inspired, except the Pentateuch, while the Pharisees accepted existence of all as true, Act 23:8; Psa 119:116.
4) “He cried out in the council, ‘(ekrazen en to sunedrio) “He cried out, raised his voice loudly, in the council, to identify himself in philosophy with the Pharisees, who believed all the Bible to be inspired, and in the future resurrection of all men, and in angels and spirits, Joh 5:39; Psa 119:160.
5) “Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: (andres brethren ego Pharisaios limi huios Pharisaion) “Responsible men and brethren, l am (exist as) a Pharisee, a son of a Pharisee,” or an heir of Pharisees, regarding basic truth on the issues in question, Act 26:5; Act 24:15; Act 24:21.
6) “Of the hope and resurrection of the dead,” (peri elpidos kai anastaseos nekron) “it is concerning hope and resurrection of dead ones,” Act 26:7; Act 26:23; Act 28:20.
7) “I am called in question.” (krinomai) “That I am being judged,” being called in question, called to give account. The resurrection was a cardinal tenet of the true Hebrew faith, as well as it is of the Christian faith, Job 14:14-15; Joh 5:28-29; Rom 8:11.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
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6. And when Paul knew. The policy − (529) of Paul, whereof Luke maketh mention, doth seem not to beseem the servant of Christ. For the subtilty which he used was inwrapped in dissimulation, which was not far from a lie. He saith that the state of his cause did consist in the resurrection of the dead: but we know that the strife arose about other matters: because he disannulled the ceremonies, because he admitted the Gentiles into the covenant of salvation. I answer, that though these things be true, yet did not he lie. For he doth neither deny that he was accused of other matters, neither doth this make the whole controversy to consist in one point; but he saith truly that the Sadducees were therefore offended with him, because he did hold the resurrection of the dead. He knew that those who had conspired together against him were enemies also one to another. − (530) He knew that his own conscience was clear; and it had been an easy matter for him to prove his cause good before just judges. Yet because he seeth them cry out on him clamorously, and that he had no place granted to defend himself, he setteth his enemies together by the ears. Whereby it doth also appear, that they were carried away through ignorance and blind zeal. Therefore we must note that Paul did so begin, as that he was desirous truly and plainly to unfold the whole matter; and that he did not craftily refuse to make a pure and sound confession, such as, the servants of Christ ought to make; but because the way was stopt before him, neither could he be heard, he used the last remedy, − (531) to declare that his adversaries were carried headlong with blind hatred. For the end doth show, that those are not guided with reason or judgment, who are carried out of the way by mutual discord. −
Now, if any man, which darkeneth the light of doctrine, excuse his craft, by the example of Paul, he is easily refuted. For it is one thing for a man to provide for himself alone with the loss of truth, and another to lead the professed enemies of Christ from resisting him, that they may strive among themselves. −
Furthermore, we see the nature of the wicked, though they disagree among themselves like enemies, yet when they are to make war against the gospel, they forget their own garboils [strifes]. For Satan, the father of discord, doth procure this one consent only among his, that they may be of one mind and of one affection, to extinguish godliness. So we see that the factions which are in Popery hot, − (532) are quiet only so long as they join hand in hand to oppress the gospel. For which cause, the disciples of Christ must be more courageous to foster and nourish truth, that, being joined together, they may the better resist. Also, we gather by this what manner of peace the Scripture commendeth unto us. Christ saith that the peace-makers are the children of God, ( Mat 5:9) and this is true, that they must do what they can to bring all men that they may grow together − (533) under the Lord. Yet this doth not hinder but that we may, (fighting under the banner of the same Lord) as it were, with the sound of the trumpet, stir up the wicked, that they may, like Midianites, one slay another, ( Jud 7:22) so that both simplicity of zeal, and the wisdom of the Spirit, direct us hither. −
One part were Sadducees. We see here again, as in a glass, how deformed and confused the ruin of the Church was at that day. Faith is the soul of the Church; nothing is more proper to faith than agreement, nothing more contrary than sects. And this thing must needs follow, when every man (setting aside the word of God) did draw his disciples unto his own inventions. For there is no other holy bond of unity than the natural and plain − (534) truth of God. So soon as men depart from that, no marvel if they be dispersed and drawn hither and thither like members pulled asunder. −
Therefore, the beginning of sects among the Jews was the corruption of the law; like as the Lord did revenge the profanation of his word, which was corrupt with diverse inventions of men, with like punishment in Popery. Wherefore, we must the more fear, lest horrible and more lamentable scatterings hang over our heads than was that which was in time of Popery, whereof there appear some tokens. And no marvel, seeing we provoke the Lord to wrath so many ways with our unthankfulness. But though the face of the Church be blotted and blurred with many spots and blots; and what manner of deformity soever fall out hereafter, let us comfort ourselves with this, that as God was careful then to deliver the Church wonderfully from destruction, so through his grace there shall always some seed continue. It cannot be, indeed, but that godly minds will somewhat despair, when they see things so far out of order; but let us learn straightway to hold up that buckler, that the Lord, who, in such a thick mist of errors, in such a heap of superstitions, in the unbridled licentiousness of sects, did preserve his Church among the Jews, will never suffer the same to be quite put out wholly in the world. −
The same thing did likewise happen in Popery. For when as the worship of God was overthrown there, the doctrine of salvation was oppressed, the kingdom of Christ was thrown down, and ungodliness did openly reign, yet God did save certain hidden remnants, and there was always some wheat in the chaff. It is very profitable to confer these examples together. When as we inveigh at this day against Popery, the hired patrons thereof cry out on the other side, that nothing is more absurd than that we should imagine that the Church of God was extinguished during many ages, as if we did imagine that God had no people left, when those had forsaken him who ought to have maintained his pure worship. Yea, we complain that those tyrants did corrupt the Church, that the temple was by them profaned, so that it did not greatly differ from an hog’s-sty, that the flock of Christ was scattered abroad, and his sheepfold broken down. Finally, that the Church was hidden from the eyes of men, yet so that the Lord knew his elect, though they were dispersed, and did brood them under his wings. And by this it appeareth how foolishly the Papists brag and boast of the titles of honor, in that not the common sort, or any private men, but the priests themselves did in times past divide the Jewish church by deadly dissension. −
Wherefore, there is no cause why we should be afraid stoutly to resist the pride of the Pope and of all his adherents, with whom we have the same combat which the prophets and apostles had with the priests of their time. And as the reverence of the Church did not keep back holy men, but that they did molest the tyranny of the wicked priests, so we must not be terrified with vain visures, [masks] under which the Papists do vainly boast, seeing they have, notwithstanding, cast from them the doctrine of godliness. It is certain that the people were then divided into three sects; but Luke doth only make mention of the Pharisees and Sadducees, omitting the Essenes, because it was most fit for his purpose thus to do. And though this be the common opinion concerning their names, that the former took their name of separating, because they withdrew themselves from the company of other men, by reason of their reigned holiness; and that the second sort took their name of righteousness, as if they were called zeduchim; notwithstanding, for mine own part, as I have said elsewhere, I am rather of their mind who say that the Pharisees took their name of interpreting. For phrus signifieth exposition, whereupon also interpreters are called phruschim; and we know that the Pharisees, being not content with the natural doctrine of the law and prophets, did put in many inventions which they said they received − (535) of the fathers. −
(529) −
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Stratagema,” stratagem.
(530) −
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Intestinis dissidiis laborare,” were involved in intestine dissensions.
(531) −
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Extremo remedio,” an extreme remedy.
(532) −
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Fervent,” prevail.
(533) −
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Fraterne,” like brothers, omitted.
(534) −
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Simplex et genuina,” simple and genuine.
(535) −
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Per marius tradita jactabant,” boasted, bad been handed down.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
ARE THE FUNDAMENTALISTS PHARISEES?
Act 23:6-8.
OUR subject sounds like a confession. Among the epithets applied to Fundamentalists, Pharisaical is a favorite. It is almost as popular as reactionaries, opponents of science, seventeenth century thinkers, and kindred descriptions. Let me frankly admit that there is a measure of truth in all of these descriptive epithets. We are reactionaries from present infidelity. We do repudiate science falsely so-called; we do hold that the truth of the seventeenth century is the truth of the twentieth. In a very real sense we are Pharisees, and, I fear, in some instances, we are the sort of Pharisees meant by the Modernists description, the bigoted, ugly, hateful, kind; but, in bigotry, enmity, and evil speech, we know we have no monopoly. The reading of modernist literature will easily show that we hardly hold second place.
But I have not selected this subject in scorn, nor raised the question to repudiate the suggestion; rather, to make an earnest Biblical study of the Pharisees and Sadducees and find out what kinship the Fundamentalists have with the first, and the Rationalists with the second. Youngs Analytical Concordance of the Bible requires a whole column in which to print the passages in which the word Pharisee in some form appears. On the other hand, it takes less than two inches of the same size column to cover all that the Scriptures have to say about the Sadducees. The importance of the first the Pharisees, and the minor place of the second the Sadducees, is plainly suggested in that circumstance. We can do, then, as the Bible itself does, treat the Pharisees as a major subject and the Sadducees as an understudy.
In looking up the many passages relating to the Pharisees, I was impressed with three facts: The Pharisees were the Official Sect in Israel; The Pharisees were the Traditionalists of Christs Time, and the Pharisees were the Truth Lovers and Truth Defenders.
THE PHARISEES WERE THE OFFICIAL SECT IN ISRAEL
For the most part they held the offices of the day. The Sanhedrin, the most august body of Christs day, supreme Council of the Jewish people (an assembly that probably traced its origin to the seventy that Moses was divinely commissioned to appoint (Num 16:17), and which perhaps never exceeded seventy-one in number), was largely made up of Pharisees. That fact alone would account for every feature of New Testament teaching; for the fact that they were so prominent in discussing Him, and finally, in demanding His crucifixion; for the fact that out of their assembly a number of converts were made to Christ, chief among them being Nicodemus and Paul, and for the additional fact that when Paul, standing before this trial body, declared himself a Pharisee, he shortly found his liberty.
It is not likely that these men had attained to this office without personal merit. They were not such keen politicians as were the Sadducees, as will be seen by a careful study of Scripture. Herod, the ruler, was a Sadducee, and the high priest, whose consent was essential to the deliverance of Christ, held equally with that body. So it would look as though the politicians were Sadducees, and the plain judges commonly Pharisees, exalted to office by reason of their knowledge of the law; and their disposition to dispense it fairly.
In the current literature of this day, present ecclesiastical office holders are greatly perturbed by the Fundamentalist movement. They charge its leaders with unholy ambition for office, with a frenzied desire to be exalted to power and prominence, to rule their fellow Christians. This charge against them would come with better grace if it fell not from the tongues of men who are themselves professional office-holders, and office-lovers. Years since, at Detroit, Michigan, a Baptist, whose station was not despised, but whose orthodoxy was not acceptable to the rising Sadducee rulers, called the attention of his denomination, in public assembly, to the circumstance that their program was made year after year without the appearance upon it of a single uncompromising conservative. The florid faced man, who had sat in the seat of authority for twenty full summers, and of whose love of office no one had any doubt, rose to his feet with the remark, Some men are never satisfied unless they stand constantly before a full-length mirrora fling at conservative men who were demanding some recognition. It came from the lips of a man who was not only always in office but always on parade. The official platform seldom lacked his presence. It was hurled at men who held far more prominent pastorates, whose churches provided more money for denominational operation, and who had an inherent right to be heard on the great subjects of denominational concern.
The spirit of that speaker has not perished. It is significant that the present-day writers, who are bitterly assailing the ambitions of Fundamentalists, are, almost without exception, office-holders, and office-lovers; and, in a multitude of instances, Sadducees or ModernistsRationalistic doubters.
In spirit the Pharisees were often egotistical and exclusive. Hear the prayer of one of them: God, I thank Thee, that I am not as other men. The very meaning of the word Pharisee, coming as it does from the Aramaic form of the Hebrew word perushim isSeparated. One could not read the New Testament and doubt that they entertained splendid opinions of themselves. We meet not a few Fundamentalists who seem to be similarly constructed. When Satan cannot tempt a man to open sin, he may yet eminently succeed by leading him to spiritual egoism and pride. If I were in the great secret fraternity of my fellow fundamentalists and were frankly confessing our faults, I should be compelled to say that too many of us are Pharisees at this point. In the language of current phraseology, We highly commend ourselves, and are eminently satisfied with our opinions. We are not as much given to boasting that we are the only living scholars, that the sure results of science are with us, that we are authorities upon all subjects of historical, philosophical and scientific interest, as are our Sadducee opponents, but we too often create the impression that, in our judgment, our opinions are well-nigh infallible, and our abilities superb, if not supreme; and the very truth we seek to defend suffers not alone in the judgment of our opponents, but in the opinion of the world in general, when we present ourselves as splendid exponents, and even expression, of the same. I say without hesitation that if all the Fundamentalists who have written to me, parading their abilities, were as competent as they willingly concede themselves to be, we would control every considerable pulpit in the land, capture a majority of the professorships, and the progress of the church would be assured. It is not unusual to receive a letter from some man desirous of moving to a new pastorate, who tells us that he is eager to defend the faith, and capable of doing it, but in the place where he is located they will not let the faith be defended, and it is all said as seriously as if there were no conflict of ideas in the affirmation.
But a third fact impresses one as he pursues the study of the Pharisees.
They were, beyond all doubt, the educated and competent of their day. Again and again you will read, There were there Pharisees and doctors of the law (Luk 5:7), or else the equally popular phrase, The scribes and Pharisees (Luk 5:21), The Pharisees and lawyers (Luk 7:30). In other words, they were not only associates of the most competent men of their day; they were regarded as among them; and the converts made to Christ from among them prove that competency in the history of early Christianity. There was never a boast that had back of it so little claim of all knowledge and all scholarship as that of modern critics. Leander Keyser, of Wittenberg College, Springfield, O., in his volume entitled, Contending for the Faith, calls attention to the fact, and fact it seems to be, that the Sadducee of the present momentthe twentieth century Modernist, the Rationalist of our dayis in no sense a true scholar. That is not to say he has not studied books; that is not to say he has not secured titles. He has done both! But it is to say that his education is a biased and unbalanced one; that he will read nothing that opposes his prejudice, but anything and everything that confirms them. He refuses any recognition to the masterly works emanating from the pens of his opponents. He will, parrot-like, echo the views of Kuenen, Wellhausen, Cheney, Driver, and such sort, but he will not even read, or put himself in position to hear the arguments produced by such scholars as Sayce, or Green, or Orr, or Johnson, or Strong, or Wilkinson, or Wilson, or Robertson; and that, notwithstanding the fact that this latter series of writers are more scholarly, more painstaking, more careful, more dependable than the skeptics whose opinions he swallows. It is this one-sided study that made the Sadducee of Christs day a sect of minor influence, and that makes the skeptical Professor of this day the poorest and most non-dependable leader to whom gullible students were ever compelled to give audience. The product of such teaching Prof. Leuba, himself an infidel, has fully shown in his volume resulting from a questionnaire. This questionnaire, sent out by Leuba, to professors and students, showed that a majority of the professors in history and philosophy now deny the existence of God and the immortality of the soul; while an increasing proportion of the student body follow in their wake, leaving thirty-five per cent of them in the sophomore year either atheists or agnostics, and fifty-one per cent of them to graduate without God and without hope. That is Sadduceeism!
To make competent men out of atheists is an impossibility. The man whose mind is so constructed that he can scientifically study this Universe and yet doubt the existence of God, is incapable of clear reasoning and dependable conclusion. Mere scholarship is one thing, conclusions and competent conduct are often quite another thing. Do you remember how ten years ago the whole world was agog over a prodigy, of whom it was reported that at the age of two he could read and write, at seven he passed the Harvard examination in medical anatomy, at eight could speak fluently in German, French and Russian, and passed the entrance examinations of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; at ten entered Tufts, and at eleven astonished professors of mathematics at Harvard with a lecture on the fourth dimension. He was a student, and in the judgment of some, he was a scholar, although the true definition of a scholar might call that claim into question. He is now twenty-nine; he has been out of the University for thirteen years. He was a notable professors son and received his B.A. in Harvard in 1914. His non-competency today is the greatest characteristic of his life. He earns $23.00 a week pushing an adding machine, thereby proving his mathematical genius, and begs newspapers and curious people who want to know why he has attained to so little, to let him alone! The failure of this student is no argument against scholarship, but it is a proof positive that a man may know much about science and yet be a mortal fool; and I am not guilty of acrimonious speech when I so speak, for I can bring my phraseology from the Bible itself. Three thousand years ago and more the Psalmist said it, The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. That folly never characterized a Pharisee! In his education he never came to such a nonsensical conclusion, and his ready competence never led him into such incompetence.
THE PHARISEES WERE THE TRADITIONALISTS OF CHRISTS TIME
They revered Moses but often reversed him by tradition.
Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying,
Why do Thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread.
But He answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition?
For God commanded saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, he that curseth father or mother, let him die the death.
But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me;
And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition (Mat 15:1-6).
And again,
In vain do they worship Me, teaching for doctrine the commandments of men.
Revealed, truth has always been endangered by the acceptance of non-inspired traditions as its substitute. There are not a few men in our denomination who are more anxious to prove that a thing is according to the traditions of the elders than to demonstrate that it is in the divinely inspired Word. Thomas Dixon truly said, Tradition was the most constant, most persistent, most dogged, most devilish opposition the Master encountered; it openly attacked Him on every hand, or silently refused His teachings. Even the Samaritan woman He finds armed with the ancestral bludgeon, Our fathers worshipped in this mountain. There are men who are more anxious to be Presbyterian than to be Scriptural, more anxious to be Baptist than to be Biblical. Denominationalism with such men is above Deity. It is not so long ago that a middle-of-the road man, in a great Baptist convention, preaching the Convention sermon, contended that no man was a Baptist who did not stand for immersion, and in the same sermon slurred defenders of plenary inspiration, as if an ordinance had any meaning save as the same is found plainly required by the Divine revelation.
We happen to be of the company of those who believe that the Bible plainly teaches baptism by immersion, but we have no sympathy with baptism merely because our fathers did it; we believe in immersion because Christ practiced it and the Bible requires it. But even at that, we are compelled to say with A. J. F. Behrends, The traditional solution is better than one which leaves everything hanging in the air; which begins with guesses and ends with fog. In other words, Phariseeism is certainly not less desirable than Sadduceeism. Prof. Shailer Mathews declares of the church, The danger is that some of its more modern representatives of the present time shall mistake negation for scholarship, and dubiety for illumination.
Traditions are not inspired, but they are seldom wholly fiction or legend. There is commonly in them a kernel of truth, and the longer they have gained currency and the longer they have held their ground, the more entitled are they to fair treatment! But never are they to take the place of the Word of God; and never, even in spirit, to traduce the plain teachings of Scripture. Intelligent Fundamentalists are not at all anxious to accept leaders who are simply sticklers for old forms, to adopt the principle of no progress, or to be found at any time opposing scientific or philosophical truths; but they are determined to prove all things, and they utterly refuse to swallow unproven statements, merely because they are made in the name of science, or adopt false philosophies because they have become world maxims.
The Pharisees also exalted ceremonial practices beyond the essential spirit. Christ once said to the multitude and to His disciples,
The Scribes and the Pharisees sit in Moses? seat:
All therefore whatsoever they bid you observe, that observe and do; but do not ye after their works: for they say, and do not.
For they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay them on mens shoulders; but they themselves will not move them with one of their fingers.
But all their works they do for to be seen of men: they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the borders of their garments,
And love the uppermost rooms at feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues,
And greetings in the markets, and to be called of men Rabbi, Rabbi.
But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your Master, even Christ; and all ye are brethren (Mat 23:1-8).
Again,
The Pharisees, and all the Jews, except they wash their hands oft, eat not, holding the tradition of the elders.
And when they come from the market, except they wash, they eat not. And many other things there be, which they have received to hold, as the washing of cups, and pots, brazen vessels, and of tables (Mar 7:3-4).
Ceremonialism has always endangered the Church of God; outward forms have been the enemies to inward grace. In the Apostles day he felt that many had kept the form of godliness and had lost the power thereof. Personally I sympathize with those members of my church who fear formality. It has played a cruel part in church history. The Christ Himself has been crucified by the symbol of the cross, and holiness has been discredited by the sprinkling of holy water, and sanctification brought into contempt by professed but not-existent piety. Do you remember how the author of Quo Vadis, writing of Peter, speaks of him after this manner? The old man had no mitre on his head, no garland of oak leaves on his temples, no palm in his hand, no golden tablet on his breast; he wore no white robe embroidered with stars; in a word, he bore no insignia of the kind worn by priestsOriental, Egyptian, or Greekor by Roman flamens. And Vincius was struck by that same difference again which he felt when listening to the Christian hymns; for that fisherman, too, seemed to him, not like some high-priest skilled in ceremonial, but as it were a witnesssimple, aged, and immensely venerablewho had journeyed from afar to relate a truth precisely because he believed it. There was in his face, therefore, such a power of convincing as truth itself has.
Certainly, taking the country over, there is far less formality of dress, far less ceremonialism in church order, characterizing the Fundamentalists of today, than is assumed and exploited by their Sadducee opponents, the Modernists. Caps and gowns are the universal habiliments of modernist professors, and ceremonialism, combined with exhibitions in dramatic art, moving pictures, and dance halls, to give the gilded semblance of life to modernist sanctuaries now destitute of the Spirit these are common. So here, at least, the Fundamentalists are not with the Pharisees of old, nor yet with the Sadducees of today.
The Pharisees were much given to fasting and prayer. There came to Him the disciples of John saying, Why do we and the Pharisees fast oft, but Thy disciples fast not? (Joh 9:14). And the disciples of John and the Pharisees used to fast (Mar 2:18). Two men went up into the Temple to pray. One was a Pharisee; the other was not a Sadducee. So far as the New Testament teaches, Sadducees do not pray, and do not fast. It is very easy for experts, in fasting, and repeaters in all-night prayer meetings, to become spiritual egotists. If once we could hear of an all-night prayer service that was not boasted as a sure evidence of spirituality, or of fasting in spiritual interests, that did not give away its own secret, we should be glad. But even at that, better poor praying and egotistical fasting than no praying at all and eternal feasting. We cannot expect a complete confession in this matter, but we are receiving a partial one. Modernists are more and more letting it leak that they seldom or never pray. A recent writer tells the story of a young man who went to a Modernist theological seminary and asked ten men to come to his room to pray with him, and not one of them responded, but one of them said, Pray! Tell me, to whom shall we pray? Just as long as the spiritual life craves fellowship with the Father and instruction from the Spirit, just that long Spirit-born men will seek schools where such opportunities are accorded, and such practices are acceptable, and will shun schools which are strangers to both. We wonder whether that does not account for the declining attendance upon modernist theological seminaries, and increasing attendance upon Fundamental Bible Training Schools? We wonder whether that is not why Shailer Mathews conceded in one of his volumes, In some denominations, like the Baptist and Congregational, the entire output of the denominational colleges, North and East of the Ohio and Mississippi, would barely make a single entering class in a school of each denomination. In the South and Southwest the situation is not yet so serious. Let it be remembered that in the South and Southwest new theology has not obtained as in the Northeast and North to the Mississippi river. Prayerless people, prayerless pastors, prayerless churchesthese combine to doom the Church of God. If we must be charged with Phariseeism, God grant us to have at least in common with them the continued custom of fasting and prayer.
But this theme was selected with a view to another fact, namely:
THE PHARISEES WERE THE TRUTH LOVERS AND DEFENDERS
They held to the verbal authority of the Bible. Their constant appeal was, Moses said, and Moses wrote, and while they laid almost as much emphasis upon the traditions which they believed had come from Moses mouth, as they did upon the plain writings that had been framed by his pen, they were loyal to the doctrine of plenary inspiration. That is a thousand fold more than could be said of the Sadducees! Moses assertions were not final with them, for in Moses writings are found angel and spirit, and in those same writings (Exo 3:6; Exo 3:16), when interpreted by Christ (Mar 12:26-27), the resurrection was assured. They believed in none of them. Like two modernist professors of a certain great University, located in Chicago, they said of the Second Coming, The Bible plainly teaches it, but we will not, on that account, accept it. So the Sadducees of Christs day declared with reference to angel, spirit and resurrection. A Pharisee, on the contrary, finding all three in his Book, believed in them, stood steadfastly for them, and was ready, on any occasion, to contend for that as the faith once delivered.
Is it not an interesting circumstance that the battle wages today on the same ground fought over again and again by Sadducee and Pharisee? And as there were two parties then, one affirming what the Bible taught and the other opposing it; so there are two now. When, therefore, the Rationalist of this day charges us with being Pharisees like Paul, we confess, After the way in which they call heresy, so worship we the God of our fathers, believing all things that are written in the law and in the prophets. A thousandfold such a faith than an undefined and indefinable one.
Shailer Mathews again gives his own co-laborers and theological friends occasion to pause, when he says, There was once a man who had a rather stormy financial career and became insolvent, and with philosophical pleasure in the fact declared himself independently poor. The theological position of the Modernist is after the same manner. Evangelically he is poor indeed!
The Pharisee carefully questioned every apparent departure from the faith. Here again we confess a kinship between them and the Fundamentalists. It was the Pharisees who asked Christ to their houses again and again (Luk 7:36; Luk 11:37; Luk 14:1), and who put to Him questions of both the captious and serious sort. The Sadducees dealt only in the former, and that seldom. Why should they care who He was, or what He believed? His teaching only concerned them when, concerning the resurrection, it seemed to oppose them. They never opened their houses to Him; they never put one serious question to Him; they did not even seem to give Him serious audience.
Dr. Van Dyke, whose new theology is now of such a pronounced type that he cannot sit through an orthodox deliverance, but must quit the church of which he is a member in high indignation because the acting pastor dare defend the faith, once truly said, The reduction of scientific naturalism to an absurdity falls far short of the establishment of a religious faith as a verity. John Fox, speaking of the controversy between Premillennialists and Modernists, said, I am not a Chilliast, but better a thousand years of such positive teaching as these Fundamentalists represent than any further deliverances of the mole-eyed unbelief of the Rationalists and Modernists of the present moment. So say we all!
Finally,
The Pharisees provided to the church its worth while converts. Nicodemus was a Pharisee; Saul of Tarsus was a Pharisee. What marvelous converts they became! The Apostle of Christianity is easily the Apollo of Christianitythe most outstanding figure of all the centuriesPaul, a converted Pharisee. Will some man tell us when and where a Sadducee was ever converted? Show us the chapter and verse that records the same. We learn that Herod was a Sadducee. He had John beheaded. We also know that the high priest of Christs time was a Sadducee. He gave his consent to the crucifixion. The Pharisees cried, Crucify Him! The Sadducees did the deed. Doubtless now he is crucified again and again and put to an open shame by some Pharisee; but daily is He rejected and scorned by the Modernist Sadduceemen who doubt His Deity; men who deny His miracle working; men who reject His Blood atonement; men who declare against His resurrection from the dead, His ascension to the right hand of the Father, His promised return.
Of all the sins of which man is capable, unbelief is the most deleterious and damning. You can take a boy who has gone as deeply into iniquity as Harry Monroe has gone, but who in youth was steeped by his mother in the Scriptures, and one day you can win him back and recover him to the faith. You can take a young man who has given himself entirely to worldliness, as George C. Lorimer did, but whose parents had him study the Bible in his youth; and one night, hearing that Word again, he will come under conviction of sin, turn from the stage to the pulpit and become the mightiest preacher of his times. You can take a Paul Rader, who, though the schools injected their skepticism into his intellect, and, turning him temporarily from the truth took him out of the ministry, sent him into sin, and yet the early teaching of a Christian and minister father will follow him, and one day he will be converted and will call his thousands to repentance.
But expect no such results from Sadducee families; from the children of so-called scientific skeptics. Not one Sadducee was ever converted or became an ardent apostle of the faith, and I say to you tonight, that if you are here as a doubter, I have little hope, for doubt is damning. But if you are here tonight, believing that there is a God and that the Bible is the revelation of His will, and the way of salvation through Christ is made plain in that Wordthough you are sinners, there is every reason to expect that you will yet turn from your sin, for Christ came to call sinners to repentance. Through the silent voice of the Spirit, that call is in your ears now, and you know that He wants you to come, and that you can come, and that you ought to come, and blessed be God, some of you will come!
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
THE CONSPIRACY THAT FAILED
Act 23:6-35.
THE best works of fiction are produced in order to illustrate and argue some certain convictions. Those convictions are made to voice themselves in personalities, and as we read the novel we keep constantly in mind the hero or heroine. In fact, every chapter after the first is eagerly begun because of our interest in the individual and our anxiety to know what is to happen to him now.
The Book of the Acts, though so evidently history, is a volume planned on the personal basis. While it was written to illustrate the progress of the Church in the fulfilment of the prophecy, Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth (Act 1:8), its illustrations of interest are individuals. In the early chapters, Peter, James and John, Philip and Stephen, hold conspicuous place, but with the ninth chapter the true hero is introduced, namely, Saul converted and named Paul. From that chapter until the end of the Book, he holds central place in the picture, and one eagerly peruses chapter after chapter to see what next will happen to Paul.
The remaining portion of this twenty-third chapter presents him in a most conspicuous role. As usual, he is in trouble; and, as usual, competent to care for himself. An analysis of these verses might involve The Smoke Screen, The Sworn Conspiracy and The Successful Deliverance.
THE SMOKE SCREEN
When Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.
And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees: and the multitude was divided.
For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both.
And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God (Act 23:6-9).
Here Paul created his own barrage. Our language was much enriched by the world war. The words most commonly employed were, many of them, nonexistent or unknown when that war began, but its fortunes brought them to the fore. Barrage is among such words. Originally, it referred merely to the act of barring, as a dam across the watercourse, and then it began to mean a concentrated fire on a sector of an enemys line, and in the late war, was often used in the sense of a fire, intended especially by smoke and shell to cover the real movements of the army, either in attack or retreat.
Certainly Paul threw up a smoke screen in this speech. It resulted in instant controversy and consequent confusion, and it put one-half of his enemies out of commission and set the other half of them in Pauls defense. For while the Pharisees and Sadducees would occasionally unite against a common enemy, they themselves were old enemies of long standing, and it was not difficult to break their mutual agreements.
Paul adroitly used that fact. By affirming himself a Pharisee, he split the opposing forces and converted them into enemy camps. There are men who would hesitate to employ such tactics. But Paul did not belong with them. He knew that in war many things were justifiable that might not be approved in times of peace, and that was warwar of the most serious sortwar, so to speak, to the very death. The Apostle must either defeat his enemies or be defeated by them. His victory, if won, will not be a personal victory, and if lost, will not be a personal defeat. The whole cause of Christ is involved. The Apostle fights as one who fully realizes the responsibility of his undertaking. He would not lie in order to conquer, but if, by a bold declaration of the well-known truth, he could win, why be silent?
There are times when one ought to speak. There are enemy camps that ought to be split. There are enemy plans that ought to be exposed, and enemy objectives that ought to fail. Paul was facing such, and with these sentences he flung the whole opposing camp into confusion and started one-half of them to fighting against the other half.
In the midst of such a controversy, escape was made easy. Paul could have literally walked away and left those men in a war of words, and they would not even have missed him, for the dissension was great and the multitude was divided, and the Sadducees were shouting, There is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit, and the Pharisees were saying, If a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God. Paul did not walk away; and Paul was never known to run away. But he is out of the controversy. Having clearly voiced himself on the great question of constant debate, as between these Jewish sects, he was silent. He was like the man who sics dogs on. He could complacently sit down now and watch the fight.
In the judgment of this writer, there are many occasions when the principle that Paul here employed is perfectly justified. We believe that liberalism today is made up of men who have little or nothing in common, except their agreement against fundamentalists. If dissensions can be brought into their ranks and they can be set to fighting one against the other, who will say that that would not be a blessing? Take the situation in China today. It is a situation in which China and Russia are combined. The watchword in China is nationalism. The objective of Russia is sovietism, and the two unite against Christianity and determine to drive it from the great Chinese continent. These two are not one. They have no right to be together. Their union is not healthy. The objective that they have is dastardly, and the combination they have effected should be broken.
America has wisely refused to give any full recognition to soviet Russia, and when America sent her forces to Chinese waters to defend the Christians whose lives were put in peril by the combination of a rising national (?) spirit in China, and a corrupting Russian sovietism, America did right, and we know, now, that but for the firing of certain naval and English men-of-war upon the so-called nationalist soldiers a bit ago, many more American and English missionaries would have perished, and many more foreign women would have suffered outrage and indignity, if not destruction; and the whole spirit of the so-called revolutionists would have been more threatening and dangerous.
We cannot join, then, with that liberalizing organization known as The Federal Council of the Churches of Christ. We belong in a better companythe company of the true Christians, who make up His body, and who believe with Paul that evil combinations deserve to be broken, that Christianity may have a free passageway to follow the leadings of its own deep, ethical and religious convictions.
Mark further,
The Lord seems to have approved Pauls policy in this, matter. The night following the Lord stood by him, and said, Be of good cheer, Paul: for as thou hast testified of Me in Jerusalem, so must thou bear witness also at Rome (Act 23:11).
After all, there is but one supreme judgment in the universe, and that is the judgment of God. The man who secures favor in that direction need not bother his brain about what very wise and very statesmanlike citizens or ecclesiastics say about him. There are some men that are always anxious to have their prominent brethren stand by them. There are ministers who are greatly distressed if their prominent brethren do not compliment them.
Alas, for our superficial thinking and our shallow judgment! There is only one in the universe that the Christian needs to have stand by him, and that is the One who stood by Paul, even the Lord. There is only One in the universe who never makes a mistake when He bids us Be of good cheer! There is only One in the universe whose commendation of our testimony is eternally valuable, and there is only One in the universe who can determine what our future testimony will be, and where it will be given. That is the One who speaks to Paul in Act 23:11.
You have heard of songs in the night. There is something sweeter than the songs of men or the songs of nightingales, or the songs of angels; and the night air is only wholly musical when it is laden with the speech of the Lord, and that speech is always best heard at night. It is when other voices are silenced; it is after the curtain of darkness has been drawn; it is when ones soul is bared before His eye; it is in the secret place He speaks, and oh, what blessing, what comfort, what cheer!
Do you remember the words of Martha to her sister Mary, The Master is here and calleth for thee? No night is dark after He has arrived; no silence is oppressive when once He has spoken; no discouragement can victimize us after we have heard His cheering voice. Speak, Lord, and we will hear!
Mark, however, in further study,
THE SWORN CONSPIRACY
It held the Apostle Paul as its proposed victim. Certain of the Jews handed together, and bound themselves under a curse, saying that they would neither eat nor drink till they had killed Paul (Act 23:12)
There are some men that cannot be tolerated; they are commonly the men who tell the truth. There are some men who must not be let to live. Often they are the men that are living the noblest and most conquering of lives; but ignobility and indifference cannot endure such men.
This determination to kill Paul was a dual revelation. It showed the superiority of Paul. Murdering mobs do not commonly speak of any slothful, or indifferent, or dumpy individual, and say, He must die. They hate, rather, the man whose accomplishments call the attention of the world, whose character and conduct contrast unfavorably that of the common rambler. That is particularly true in the theological realm.
The spineless ecclesiastic is seldom or never attacked. The half-baked delegate never comes in for denunciation or even concern. It is the independent thinker that annoys, and it is the man who consults God only as to the way he should take that is tracked and hounded, and, were it possible, would be sent to hell.
If there was no other indication of Pauls greatness than that forty Jews bound themselves with an oath to take his life, that fact alone would prove him extraordinary. Furious warriors train their guns against the strongest centers of opposition and seek the death, or capture, of the most competent in the enemys camp.
This conspiracy involved forty determined men. Why so many? Paul is supposed to have been a small man in stature. On this occasion, there is no record that any of his Christian friends were with him, or that any competent police had been appointed to protect him, and yet, four men dare not go against him; ten men refuse to undertake; twenty and thirty are not enough. The oath must be taken by forty. Therein is their proof of intelligence. The enemies of Paul may have been knaves every one. They seem not to have been fools. Somehow they knew that a man in the right was more than a match for one, or even a dozen, of his own size. Somehow, they understood and half believed it, that God was with the Apostle, and that made the undertaking a serious one. The world could never frame the Biblical philosophy that One chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight. But, somehow, the world feels the fact it has not voiced.
In all the years of life, I have never known an instance where liquor men, or gamblers, or bad hoodlums of any sort, would undertake to meet an outstanding Christian man and risk a test of strength, man for man. That is all the more remarkable when it is remembered that most Christians, like their Lord, neither strive nor cry. They dont strike back. They are feared, none the less!
On that night, when the mob went out to take Jesus, in the Garden of Gethsemane, at the sight of His face and the sound of His voice, the whole crowd went backward and fell on the ground.
The strength of this world is abashed when it comes into the presence of God, and it grows cowardly at once if it must face Christianity.
There are reported instances of butchery, indignity, rape, and indescribable horrors wrought in China in connection with the present revolution, and against foreigners, and for the most part, missionaries. Who works them? The individual loyalist Chinaman? Not at all! He would not dare it. His courage would fail him at the thought. It is a great company of armed menmen with guns in their hands and two governments back of them that have wrought these godless, and in some instances, even nameless deeds. They are like these forty cowards converted into bullies by their number, and even then they seek to strengthen their case, and reveal a fear lest it fail, for they begged the chief captain that he, with his cohorts and army of men back of him, bring Paul down. Why didnt they go after him? Why didnt they bring him? They did not dare!
Cowardice is never conscious of strength. Somehow it seems to know, strength belongeth unto the Lord, and fears to fight with Him.
This conspiracy failed for unexpected reasons. Pauls nephew heard of the plan and told it to the chief captain, and the chief captain, instead of falling in with the scheme, sets about thwarting the same. Two centurions, backed by two hundred soldiers, he sends to Caesarea to bring the Apostle, and to bring him in safety.
Alas, for the unexpected! It is that that always happens. The plans of men go awry. Those upon whom they depend refuse to perform as directed, and the finger of divinity often controls the movements of even ungodly men. Watch the result!
THE SUCCESSFUL DELIVERANCE
Gods army always outnumbers that of men. The Jews had forty oath-bound dependables with which to attack Paul. The chief captainGods unconscious agenthas two hundred soldiers and seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen. Paul will be brought in safety, then.
When did the forces of man ever equal the forces of God? We recall the time in the Old Testament when Elisha had sent for him
horses and chariots, and a great host; and they came by night, and compassed the city about.
And when the servant of the man of God was risen early, and gone forth, behold, an host compassed the city both with horses and chariots. And his servant said unto him, Alas, my master! how shall we do?
And he answered, Fear not: for they that be with us are more than they that be with them.
And Elisha prayed, and said, Lord, I pray thee, open his eyes, that he may see. And the Lord opened the eyes of the young man; and he saw: and, behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.
And when they came down to him, Elisha prayed unto the Lord, and said, Smite this people, I pray thee, with blindness. And he smote them with blindness according to the word of Elisha (2Ki 6:14-18).
You remember, also, that when Jonathan and his armour-bearer went, single handed and alone, against the Philistines, they perished by the hundreds. They that be with us are more than they that are with them, since all the forces of heaven and all the forces of earth are at His command.
Gods enemies may even be made Gods agents. There is nothing in this story to indicate that the chief captain, the two centurions, or the two hundred soldiers were any of them Christians, and there is nothing even to indicate that Claudius Lysias was a believer on Pauls Christ, but he became the Apostles defender none the less. He provided him abundant protection. He prayed that he might have a fair hearing. He performed like a friend.
God can, and at His pleasure, does determine the course of men. Our thought and decision is not outside the pale of His influence. We imagine ourselves independent in what we think and do, but are we? Who is independent of God? Who can successfully resist Him? For agencies, God is not shut up to believers. He maketh His enemies to do His bidding, and even the wrath of man to praise Him.
Gods plan appears only in its outworking. The plan of these forty Jews was stated clearly. To that, each of them subscribed with his own hand and bound himself, at the cost of life, to carry the same out.
The Divine plan was never stated. It was never seen save in its workings, and it was never understood until it was a finished fact; and then, Luke, moved by the Holy Spirit, wrote it down for the first time.
We read that the soldiers took Paul, and brought him by night to Antipatris. We read that On the morrow they left the horsemen to go with him, and returned to the castle, who, when they came to Caesarea, and delivered the epistle to the governor, presented Paul also before him (Act 23:32-33).
That is all true, but it is a very partial truth. The soldiers took Paul, and brought him at night to Antipatris, but the soldiers only wrought Gods will. When they came to Caesarea, and delivered the epistle to the governor, and presented Paul also before him, they were unconsciously working out the Divine plan, and when the governor had read the letter, he asked of what province he was. And when he understood that he was of Cilicia, the governor supposed that he was in the place of power, and that his judgment would be final. But, alas, for the folly of shortsighted men! The final judgment belongs always with God. The governor may decide to leave the Apostle in Herods hall. That does not determine what shall be done with Paul. If you would know Gods will, you will follow on, and when the final sentence is written and the Apostles earth history is finished, you will see clearly the Divine plan and approve ardently the wisdom and grace Divine.
Fuente: The Bible of the Expositor and the Evangelist by Riley
(6) But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees . . .We recognise the same parties in the council as there had been twenty-five years before. Whether they sat in groups on different sides, after the manner of the Government and Opposition benches in the House of Commons, or whether St. Paul recognised the faces of individual teachers of each sect with whom he had formerly been acquainted, we have no data for deciding.
I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee.It is natural, from one point of view, to dwell chiefly on the tact of the Apostle. He seems to be acting, consciously or unconsciously, on the principle divide et impera, to win over to his side a party who would otherwise have been his enemies. With this there comes, it may be, a half-doubt whether the policy thus adopted was altogether truthful. Was St. Paul at that time really a Pharisee? Was he not, as following in his Masters footsteps, the sworn foe of Pharisaism? The answer to that question, which obviously ought to be answered and not suppressed, is that all parties have their good and bad sides, and that those whom the rank and file of a party most revile may be the most effective witnesses for the truths on which the existence of the party rests. The true leaders of the Pharisees had given a prominence to the doctrine of the Resurrection which it had never had before. They taught an ethical rather than a sacrificial religion. Many of them had been, like Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimatha, secret disciples of our Lord. At this very time there were many avowed Pharisees among the members of the Christian Church (Act. 15:5). St. Paul, therefore, could not be charged with any suppressio veri in calling himself a Pharisee. It did not involve even a tacit disclaimer of his faith in Christ. It was rather as though he said, I am one with you in all that is truest in your creed. I invite you to listen and see whether what I now proclaim to you is not the crown and completion of all your hopes and yearnings. Is not the resurrection of Jesus the one thing needed for a proof of that hope of the resurrection of the dead of which you and your fathers have been witnesses?
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
6. I am a Pharisee It is sometimes said that this statement of Paul was false. Yet his additional words, the son of a Pharisee, gave fair warning that he applied the term Pharisee to himself in a modified sense. On that point of the variation between himself and the Pharisees he had yesterday fully and frankly explained himself. Not merely may we say that on the points of division between the Pharisees and Sadducees he was with the former; but Paul might say that he was the truest and most consistent Pharisee present; that a true Phariseeism, being orthodox Judaism, ought by its own premises to develop into Christianity.
Son of a Pharisee The preferable reading is, the son of Pharisees; that is, the descendant of a Pharisaic lineage.
The hope Probably this word is a term for the Messiah. (See note on Act 26:6.)
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.” ’
We are not told the details of the proceedings that followed this rather inauspicious opening. Some discussion clearly took place and it would seem that no one was quite sure what he was guilty of and it seems probable, in view of what follows, that the Sadducees began to harp on about his claim that ‘angels’ had spoken to him and refer to his talk about Jesus having risen from the dead. Both these ideas would be totally unacceptable to them, but they were not sufficient to condemn a man for. No alternative charge of any weight appears to have been put forward. The whole situation seems to have been remarkably vague.
So we need not assume that what is said in this verse happened immediately. Indeed it actually probably arose from things that were being said, which were being allowed to pass unnoticed simply because the Pharisees were too busy disdaining Paul and not sufficiently busy in following what was being said. But Paul’s astute mind recognised only too well the true significance behind some of the things being said by the Sadducean opposition, things which the Pharisees were allowing to slip by because their minds were on Paul as someone worthy to be condemned.
Thus when he surveyed the Council and recognised there a number who would in fact agree with his main proposition, the resurrection from the dead, and should have been supporting him more vociferously in his claim that angels spoke to men, that is, if they had been properly following what lay behind what was being said, he decided to draw their attention to this fact.
We must not see this as just a ploy. Paul, who saw these proceedings as having become weighed down by inessentials, was genuinely concerned to establish the truth of the resurrection, and of ‘heavenly beings’ speaking to men, and of his defence of them, especially in the eyes of Claudius Lysias. That was after all what his testimony had been all about. And he would thus want the trial to follow that course. He certainly did not want to finish up condemned on false grounds simply because of the prejudice of the Sadducees reacting against his Pharisaic beliefs. If he was to be condemned let it be for something worth while, something that will enable Claudias Lysias to recognise that what he is being charged with is simply a subject on which the Jews themselves were in dispute. For the trial to become a dispute about Jewish teaching would strongly aid his case.
Furthermore, once the subject of the trial altered and became fixed on the resurrection he would then be able to remind them that Jesus had risen from the dead. That was what he really wanted men’s thoughts to be concentrated on, and the arguments to be about.
So he points out that what he is really being condemned for is something that is dearly held by a number of them, the hope of the resurrection. For every genuine Pharisee lived his life with only one final aim in view, that he might attain eternal life and the resurrection from the dead.
‘I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, touching the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question’ he declares. Let all now recognise what is central in his thinking, the resurrection from the dead. This is what his ministry is all about, life from the dead. From this point on this subject of the ‘hope of the resurrection’ becomes a theme in Acts, appearing again in Act 24:15; Act 26:6-8, and being sandwiched between two descriptions of the appearance of the risen Jesus. His trial as it is being conducted here, he points out, should have nothing to do with the trumped up charges that have been previously brought. It is the basic teaching about angels and the resurrection and the afterlife and how they are viewed and whether they are accepted that is the important question. That is the real reason why the High Priest and his set are so strongly against him, and want to condemn him, because of the Sadducean prejudice against the resurrection and against angels, and the Pharisees among them do not seem to be noticing it. Paul felt that it was time that the Pharisees supported him on this.
Some have referred the reference to ‘the hope’ as meaning the hope of the Messiah, which was also held by the Pharisees, to be held along with that of the resurrection. However, Act 24:15 suggests that ‘the hope’ is of the resurrection of all men, both the just and the unjust. On the other hand Act 26:6-8 might be seen as confirming that the hope in mind is the hope of both the Messiah and the resurrection. This would also tie in with Act 17:18, ‘Jesus and the resurrection’.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
A division among the members of the Sanhedrin:
v. 6. But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the Council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee; of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.
v. 7. and when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees; and the multitude was divided.
v. 8. For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit; but the Pharisees confess both.
v. 9. And there arose a great cry; and the scribes that were of the Pharisees’ part arose and strove, saying, we find no evil in this man; but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God. Paul had come down to the meeting in the hope that there would be a real hearing. He had attempted a calm defense, which had been rudely interrupted by an unwarranted interference of the high priest. Since neither a fair inquiry nor a just decision was to be expected in the presence of such prejudiced fanatics, he now adopted a different method. Knowing that a part of the Sanhedrin, the smaller portion, consisted of Sadducees, and the other of Pharisees, he called out before them all that he was a Pharisee and a son or disciple of Pharisees. This statement was not a petty trick or malicious deception, as some have thought. Everyone in the assembly knew that he was a Christian; his assertion was therefore understood by them as it should be understood by us, that he had been a member of that sect and still agreed with them, as many other former Pharisees did, in certain doctrines. It was concerning one of these that he was now on trial, namely, that of the hope and the reality of the resurrection of the dead. This was literally true, and cannot be regarded as a subterfuge; for the fundamental doctrine of the Gospel, as preached by Paul, was the fact that Christ had risen from the dead, and that because of His resurrection all believers were sure of their own rising unto eternal life. No sooner had Paul said this than there was a controversy, a dissension, a contention of the Pharisees and the Sadducees. Before this the body of the Sanhedrin, the entire mass, had been united against Paul, but now they were divided into two parties, into the two factions which were usually at enmity with each other on account of their different doctrinal positions. For, as Luke here inserts by way of explanation, the Sadducees are in the habit of saying that there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit. Their position was one of negation, of denial. But the Pharisees confessed and believed in both the resurrection of the dead and the existence of spirits. The uproar over the matter increased with every moment, finally becoming violent. It was the custom in the debates of the Jews to walk over to the side of him whose cause one espoused, thus incidentally recording one’s vote. And so here some of the scribes among the Pharisees openly took Paul’s part, going over and standing near him, and contending forcibly, arguing very vehemently in his favor. They maintained that they found nothing evil in the accused, and what if a spirit had spoken with him or an angel, as he had stated on the previous day? -that was no reason why the man should be condemned. Thus the Jewish rulers were in a worse predicament than ever. The commander’s purpose in calling the meeting was to have the Jews show cause why they had clamored for the death of Paul, and here they sat, not only without any accusation that would have had any weight in the eyes of the Romans, but actually engaged in a bitter controversy among themselves. Thus the dissension of the unbelievers has often redounded to the liberty or to some other benefit of the believers. That is one of the ways in which God keeps and protects His Church in the midst of this evil world, that He creates dissension in the midst of its enemies.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Act 23:6. Of the hope and resurrection, &c. The apostle here refers particularly to the resurrectionof Jesus, and, by him, of all mankind. All the Jews, long before, knew this to be the Christian doctrine; and therefore here was no fraud nor artful gloss to obtain favour with the Pharisees; but only an appeal to their prevailing doctrine, as a point in which the apostle agreed with them, and as what greatly favoured the Christian doctrine which he preached, and for which he suffered. See Act 4:2; Act 5:17.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Act 23:6-7 . Whether the irony of Act 23:5 was understood by the Sanhedrists or not, Paul at all events now knew that here a plain and straightforward defence, such as he had begun (Act 23:1 ), was quite out of place. With great presence of mind and prudence he forthwith resorts to a means all the more effectual in the excited state of their minds of bringing the two parties, well known to him in the council, into collision with one another , and thereby for the time disposing the more numerous party, that of the Pharisees, in favour of his person and cause . He did not certainly, from his knowledge of Pharisaism and from his previous experiences, conceive to himself the possibility of an actual “internal crisis” among the Pharisees (Baumgarten); but by the enlisting of their sectarian interests, and preventing their co-operation with the Sadducees, much was gained in the present position of affairs, especially in presence of the tribune, for Paul and his work.
.] so that he thus did not direct this exclamation ( ) to any definite individuals.
. , .] i.e. I for my part am a Pharisee, a born Pharisee . The plural refers to his male ancestors (father, grandfather, and perhaps still further back), not, as Grotius thinks, to his father and mother, as the mother here, where the sect was concerned, could not be taken into account (it is otherwise with Phi 3:5 , .). We may add, that Paul’s still affirming of himself the is as little untrue as Phi 3:5 (in opposition to Zeller). He designates himself as a Jew , who, as such , belonged to no other than the religious society of the Pharisees; and particularly in the doctrine of the resurrection, Paul, as a Christian, continued to defend the confession of the Pharisees (in opposition to all Sadduceeism) according to its truth confirmed in the case of Christ Himself (Act 4:1 f.). His contending against the legal righteousness, hypocrisy, etc., of the Pharisees, and his consequent labouring in an anti-Pharisaical sense, were directed not against the sect in itself , but against its moral and other perversions. Designated a Jew, Paul still remained what he was from his birth, a Pharisee, and as such an orthodox Jew, in contrast to Sadducean naturalism.
. . . .] on account of hope , etc.; hope and ( and indeed , as regards its object) resurrection of the dead it is, on account of which I ( has the emphasis of the aroused consciousness of unjust treatment) am called in question . Comp. Act 24:15 , Act 26:6-8 . As the accusations contained in Act 21:28 , , [147] were nothing else than hateful perversions of the proposition: “This man preaches a new religion, which is to come in place of the Mosaic in its subsisting form;” and as in this new religion, in point of fact, everything according to its highest aim culminated in the hope of the Messianic salvation, which will be realized by the resurrection of the dead (1Co 15 ): so it follows that Paul has put the cause of the in the form most suited to the critical situation of the moment, without altering the substance of the matter as it stood objectively. [148]
. . ] without repetition of (see the critical remarks): the Pharisees and Sadducees , the two parties conceived of together as the corporation of the Sanhedrim (comp. on Mat 3:6 ), became at variance (Act 15:2 ), and the mass the multitude of those assembled was divided .
[147] The untruth added to these accusations, . . ., Paul might here with reason leave entirely out of consideration.
[148] The procedure of Paul in helping himself with dialectic dexterity was accordingly this: he reduces the accusations contained in Act 21:28 to the pure matter of fact, and he grasps this matter of fact (the announcement of the Messianic kingdom) in that form which was necessary for his object. “Non deerat Paulo humana etiam prudentia, qua in bonum evangelii utens, columbae serpentem utiliter miscebat et inimicorum dissidiis fruebatur,” Grotius.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. (7) And when he had so said, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees: and the multitude was divided. (8) For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel, nor spirit: but the Pharisees confess both. (9) And there arose a great cry: and the scribes that were of the Pharisees’ part arose, and strove, saying, We find no evil in this man: but if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not fight against God. (10) And when there arose a great dissension, the chief captain, fearing lest Paul should have been pulled in pieces of them, commanded the soldiers to go down, and to take him by force from among them, and to bring him into the castle.
I need not dwell upon the evident design of Paul, by this declaration of his. Neither will it be necessary for me to go into the subject, of those very different sects, of which the present Council consisted. But, I would rather take occasion from hence to remark, what an awful day must it have been, in the Jewish Church, when the Seventy, or Sanhedrim, forming the High Court for judgment in all things sacred, was made up of such a motley body of men. Reader! do, I beseech you, look at the Scripture account of the Lord’s institution of this Council, as stated in the book of Numbers. Attend to what the Lord himself said, concerning this Council of Seventy of the Elders, chosen for this express purpose. Remark Jehovah’s promise, of putting his Spirit upon them; and then, look at this degenerate Council, with such a character as Ananias at the head of them! Oh! what an awful change! See Num 11:16-17 . See also Act 4:7 and Commentary.
Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
XV
PAUL’S EARLY LIFE BEFORE HE ENTERS THE NEW TESTAMENT STORY
Act 21:39
This discussion does not make much headway in the text book, but it covers an immense amount of territory in its facts and significance. This section is found in Goodwin’s Harmony of the Life of Paul, pages 15-17, and the theme is Paul’s history up to the time that he enters the New Testament story. Saul, now called Paul, a Jew, of the tribe of Benjamin, of the sect of the Pharisees, yet a freeborn Roman citizen, by occupation a tentmaker, by office a rabbi, and a member of the Sanhedrin, was born in the city of Tarsus, in the province of Cilicia, about the time of our Lord’s birth. Tarsus was situated on the narrow coast line of the eastern part of the Mediterranean, just under the great Taurus range of mountains, and on the beautiful river Cydnus, which has a cataract just before it reaches the city, and a fall, beautiful then and beautiful now, coming down into that fertile plain where the city goes into a fine harbor, which opens the city to the commerce of the world through the Mediterranean Sea. It was on the great Roman thoroughfare, which was one of the best roads in the world. There were two of these mountain ranges, one of them right up above the city through the Taurus range into the coast of Asia Minor, the other following the coast line, which leads into Syria. This is the way that the mountains came down close to the sea, making a certain point very precipitous, and there was a typical beach between those mountains and the sea. That road into Syria was called the Oriental way. Over the Roman thoroughfare passed the land traffic, travel and marching armies for centuries. It was in that pass that Alexander fought his first great battle against the Persians, and thus obtained an entrance into the East. It was through that pass that, marching westward, and before Alexander’s time, Xerxes the Great, the husband of Esther (mentioned in the Bible), marched his 5,000,000 men to invade Greece. I could mention perhaps fifty decisive battles in ancient history that were set and were successful conquests by preoccupation of that pass. That shows the strategical position of this city that it commanded the passes of the Taurus into Asia Minor, and the pass into Syria, and through its fine harbor came in touch with the commerce of the world on the Mediterranean Sea.
Paul says that it was “no mean city,” in size or in population. It was notable, (1) for its manufacture, that of weaving, particularly goat’s hair, for on that Taurus range lived goats with very long hair, and this was woven into ropes, tents, and things of that kind; (2) because it was the capital of the province of Cilicia; (3) because, under Rome, it was a free city, i.e., it had the management of its own internal affairs, which constituted a city a free city, like the free city of Bremer in the early history of Germany. Other cities would be under the feudal lords, but there were a number of cities free, and these elected their own burghers, and governed their own municipal matters a tremendous advantage.
Tarsus received from the Roman Emperor the privilege of being a free city. Keep these facts well in mind, especially and particularly as regards the land and sea commerce. (4) Because it possessed one of the three great world-famous universities. There were just three of them at that time: One at Tarsus; one at Alexandria, at the mouth of the Nile; and one at Athens. It was not like some other cities, remarkable for its great buildings, its public games and its works of art. You could see more fine buildings in Athens or in Ephesus or in Corinth than you had any right to look for in Tarsus. It celebrated no such games as were celebrated in the May festivals at Ephesus, and in the great Greek amphitheater in that city, or in such games as the Isthmian, celebrated in Corinth. It was not remarkable for any of these. Its popular religion was a low and mixed order of Oriental paganism. There is this difference between the Oriental and Occidental heathen the former in the East, and the latter at Rome, and the West. Ephesus had an Oriental religion, though it was a Greek city. Tarsus, too, was a Greek city, but was partly Phoenician and partly Syrian. There were more arts and intellectuality in western paganism than in the Oriental, which was low, bestial, sensual, in every way brutal, shameful, immodest, and outrageous. The Phoenicians, who had a great deal to do with establishing the city of Tarsus, had that brutal, low form of paganism. That infamous emperor, Sargon, celebrated in the Bible, the Oriental king of the original Nineveh, was worshiped in that city. There never lived a man that devoted himself more than he to luxury in its fine dress, gorgeous festivals, its gluttony, its drunkenness, its beastiality. Paul was born in that city, and he could look out any day and see the heathen that he has so well described in chapter 1 of the letter to the Romans.
Citizenship in a free city under Rome did not make one a Roman citizen, as did citizenship in Philippi, a colony. To be born in a free city did not make one a Roman citizen. It conferred upon its members, its own citizens, the right to manage their own municipal affairs. To be born in Philippi would make one a Roman citizen, because Philippi was a colony. The name of its citizens were still retained on the muster roll in the city of Rome. They had all the privileges of Roman citizenship. Their officers were Roman officers. They had processions, with the magistrates, and the lictors and with the bundles of rods. But there was nothing like that in Tarsus. The question came up in Paul’s lifetime, when the commander of a legion heard Paul claiming that be was a Roman citizen. This commander says that with a great sum of money he did purchase his citizenship in Rome. Paul says, “But I was freeborn.” If freeborn, how then could he have obtained it? In one of two ways: Before Christ was born, Pompey invaded Jerusalem, and took it. He was one of the first great triumvirate, with Julius Caesar and Marcus L. Crassus. Pompey’s field of labor was in the East, Caesar’s was in the West, and he (Pompey) took Jerusalem and led into slavery many Jews of the best families. When these slaves were brought to Rome, if they showed culture, social position, educational advantages, they were promoted to a high rank or office, among slaves; and if they particularly pleased their owners they were manumitted, either during the lifetime of their owner, or by will after his death. In this way many noble captives from all parts of the world were carried as slaves to Rome. They were first set free and then had conferred upon them the rights of Roman citizenship. It could have been that Cassius, who with Brutus, after the killing of Julius Caesar, combined against Mark Anthony, and Octavius (Augustus), who became the emperor and was reigning when Christ was born, captured this city of Tarsus and led many of its citizens into Rome as slaves. Paul’s grandfather, therefore, or his father, might have been led away captive to Rome, and through his high social position and culture may have been manumitted, and then received as a citizen. Necessarily it occurred before this boy’s time, because when he was born, he was born a Roman citizen. It could be transmitted, but he had not acquired it.
There is a difference between the terms Jew, Hebrew, Israelite, Hellenist, and a “Hebrew of the Hebrews.” All these are used by Paul and Luke in Acts. We get our word, “Hebrew” from Heber, an ancestor of Abraham. Literature shows that the descendants of Heber were Hebrews, and in the Old Testament Abraham is called “the Hebrew.” That was not the meaning of the word in New Testament times. We come to the New Testament meaning in Act 6 , which speaks of the ordination of deacons, and uses the word “Hebrew” in distinction from “Hellenist.” They both, of course, mean Jews. While a Hebrew in the New Testament usually lived in Palestine, but not necessarily, he was one who still spoke or was able to read the original Hebrew language and who practiced the strict Hebrew cult. A “Hellenist” was a Jew who had either been led into exile, or who, for the sake of trade, had gone into other nations, and settled among those people and had become liberalized, lost the use of the Hebrew tongue entirely, and neither spoke nor wrote the Hebrew language, but who spoke and wrote mainly in Greek. “Hellenist” is simply another term for “Greek.” Whether used in the New Testament Greek or the Hellenistic Greek, it means Jews living among Greek people, and who had acquired the language, and in the many respects had followed more liberal Greek customs. Then a Hebrew living in Palestine would not allow himself to be liberalized.
Paul lived out of Judea. He, his father, and indeed his grandfather, adhered strictly to all the distinguishing characteristics of the Hebrews. The “Israelite” and the “Jew” mean anybody descended from Jacob. “Israelite” commenced lower down in the descent. “Hebrew” gets its name from the ancestor of Abraham, but an Israelite was a descendant of Jacob. The distinction of “Jew” came a little later to those descendants of Jacob living in Judea. The “Hebrew of the Hebrews” means a Jew-who went to the greatest possible extreme in following the Hebrew language, cult, habits, training, and religion. He was an extremist among them.
Some people would suppose from Paul’s occupation tentmaking (he worked at that occupation, making tents with Aquila and Priscilla) that from this unskilled labor his family were low in the social position, and poor. The inference is wholly untenable. In the first place, every Jew had to have a trade, even though he were a millionaire, and Paul’s old teacher, Gamaliel, used this language: “Any kind of learning without a useful trade leads to sin.” Paul took up this trade because he lived at Tarsus. There anybody could go out and learn the trade of weaving ropes and check-cloth made out of the long hair of Mount Taurus goats. The trade would not simply satisfy the Jewish requirement, but a man could make his living by it. We see Paul a little later making his living just that way. Well for Paul that he knew something besides books.
I am more and more inclined to follow an industrial idea in systems of education. We have our schools and universities where the boys and girls learn a great deal about books, and the girl goes home and does not know how to make bread. She does not know how to rear a brood of chickens; she does not know how a house is to be kept clean, nor how to keep windows clean. The floors in the corners and in places under the beds and sofas are unswept. Boys come home that cannot make a hoe handle. They have no mechanical sense, no trade. They can neither make a pair of shoes nor a hat nor a pair of socks, nor anything they wear. And thus graduates of universities stand with their fingers in their mouths in the great byways of the world practically beggars not knowing how to do anything.
The Jews guarded against that. Let Paul fall on his feet anywhere, and withdraw from him every outside source of financial support, and he would say, “With these hands did I minister to my necessities.” He could go out and get a piece of work. He knew how to do it. All this is bearing on the social and financial position of Paul’s family. Everything indicates the high social position of his family, and that it occupied a high financial position. They did not take the children of the lowest abode and give them such an ecclesiastical training as Paul had. They did not educate them for the position of rabbi, nor let them take a degree in the highest theological seminary in the world. Paul’s family, then, was a good one.
Paul’s religious and educational advantages were on two distinct lines: Purely ecclesiastical or religious, and I can tell just exactly what it was. A little Hebrew boy five years old had to learn the Ten Commandments, and the hallelujah psalms. When six, he advanced to other things which could be specified particularly. His education commenced in the home and went on until he entered the synagogue, which trained him in all the rudiments of biblical education. When he was twelve or thirteen years old he was called “a son of the commandments.” Just like the occasion suggests when Jesus was twelve years old he had them take him to Jerusalem, and he was allowed to go into the Temple and to be with the great doctors there.
When Paul was twelve or thirteen his influential father sent him to the great theological seminary. There were two of these seminaries. One had a greater influence than the other in the city of Jerusalem. Therefore, he says, “I was brought up in this city. I was born in Tarsus, but brought up in the city of Jerusalem, at the feet of Gamaliel.” He was a very noble character. The opposite seminary differed from this one. It was the Shammai Seminary, differing from the other on this point: The Shammai Seminary was very narrow; did not allow its pupils to know anything about literature whatsoever except religious literature. But the aged Gamaliel said to Paul and to all his other students, “There are certain classical lines along which you may study and learn.” This is the kind which Paul attended, the school of Gamaliel, graduating there and becoming a doctor of divinity, or a rabbi. He studied profoundly. This religious part of his education he got in the original Hebrew. When he and Jesus met at the time of his conversion, they spoke in the Hebrew tongue to each other. “There came a voice which said in the Hebrew [the old Hebrew tongue], Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” And he answered in the Hebrew. Then, of course, he spoke and wrote in the Aramaic, which was the common dialect in Judea, and different from the Hebrew, since the Hebrew had gone altogether out of use in the ordinary speech, and almost in the ordinary reading.
The New Testament abounds in evidence of Paul’s general educational advantages. The city of Tarsus possessed one of the three great universities of the world. Did Paul take a course in that? There is no evidence that he did, and no probability that he did. For the universities in that day did not mean as much as they do today in a certain line, though I am sorry to say that the great universities of the present day are dropping back and adopting the old utterly worthless studies of the universities of that day; that is, speculative philosophy about the origin of things, and they do not know anything more when they get through than when they began. Also the Epicurean philosophy, which we now call “Darwinism,” making a speculative study of biology, botany, geology, etc., trying to prove that everything came from a primordial germ, and that man not only developed from a monkey, but from a jellyfish, and that the jellyfish developed from some vegetable, and that the vegetable is a development of some inorganic and lifeless matter.
There never was at any time in the world one particle of truth in the whole business. None of it can ever be a science. It does not belong to the realm of science.
Saul never had a moment’s time to spend in a heathen university, listening to their sophistries, and to these philosophical speculations, or vagaries. If he were living now he would be made president of some university. We learn from the Syrians that one of these universities, the one in Tarsus, had a professor who once stole something, and was put in “limbo.” Their university professors were also intensely jealous. They had all sorts of squabbles, one part in a row with another part; so that after all there was not much to be learned in the universities of those times, and after a while there will not be much in ours, if we go on as we are now going. I am not referring to any university, particularly, but I am referring to any and all, where philosophical speculations are made thee basis of botany, zoology, natural history of any kind, geology, or any kindred thing. Paul struck it in the city of Athens, its birthplace, and smote it hip and thigh.
I do not suppose at all that Paul was a student in the university of Tarsus, but that while he was at Jerusalem, and under the teaching of Gamaliel, he did study such classics as would be permitted to a Jewish mind. Hence we find in his letters expressions like this: “One of themselves, a prophet of their own said, Cretans are always liars,” and when at Athena he says, “Certain, even of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.” How could he become acquainted with those classical allusions if he had never studied such things? That chiliarch, who commanded a thousand men a legion said to Paul, “Do you speak Greek?” He had heard him speaking Greek. Of course he spoke Greek, and wrote Greek, All of his letters were written in Greek. He had learned that Greek language somewhere. He had not learned it in that university at Tarsus, but in the Seminary at Jerusalem. Take his letters and see his profound acquaintance with the Greek games of every kind. Some of them he may have attended, but he certainly knew all about them as though he had witnessed them. He may have seen only an occasional game. So he must have learned it from the literature, for he discusses every phase of it, especially the foot-racing, the combats in the arena between the gladiators, and the wrestling with the lions in the arena. His letters are full of allusions that indicate his acquaintance with the Greek literature. At Alexandria there was one of the other universities, a much greater one in its Greek literature than the university of Tarsus. Alexandria was founded by a Greek, Alexander the Great. One of the Ptolemies had a great library, the greatest library in the world, which was destroyed by the Saracens. But notice also how Paul puts his finger right upon the very center and heart of every heathen philosophy, like that of Epicureanism our Darwinism; that he debated in Athens; and note the Stoics whom he met while there, and the Platonians, or the Peripatetics. You will find that that one little speech of his, which he delivered in the city of Athens, contains an allusion which showed that he was thoroughly and profoundly acquainted with every run and sweep of the philosophic thought of the day, and anybody not thus acquainted could not have delivered that address. This is to show the general culture of his mind.
Take the mountain torrent of his passion in the rapid letter to the Galatians. Take the keen logic, the irresistibility of its reasoning, which appears in the letter to the Romans, or take that sweetest language that ever came from the lips or pen of mortal man, that eulogy on love in 1Co 13 . Then take the letter to Philemon, which all the world has considered a masterpiece in epistolary correspondence. It implies that he was scholarly. Look at these varieties of Saul’s education. He was a man whose range of information swept the world. He was the one scholar in the whole number of the apostles the great scholar and I do not see how any man can read the different varieties of style or delicacy of touch, the analysis of his logic or reasoning, which appear in Paul’s letters, and doubt that he had a broad, a deep, a high, and a grand general education.
As to Paul’s family the New Testament tells us in Act 23:16 that he had a married sister living in Jerusalem, and that that sister had a son, Paul’s nephew, who intervened very heroically to help Paul in a certain crisis of his life. And in Rom 16:7-11 are some other things that give light as to his family: “Salute Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen, and my fellow-prisoners . . . who also have been in Christ before me.” Here are a man and a woman, Andronicus and Junias, Paul’s kinsfolk, well known to the apostles in Jerusalem, for he says, “Who are of note among the apostles.” They were influential people, and they had become Christians before Paul was a Christian. Take Rom 16:11 : “Salute Herodion my kinsman,” and Rom 16:21 : “Timothy, my fellow worker saluteth you; and Lucius and Jason and Sosipater, my kinsmen.” So here we have found six individuals who are kinspeople to Paul, and who were all members of the church at Rome. We know that much of his family, anyhow.
The things which distinguished a Pharisee from a Sadducee were of several kinds: (1) The latter were materialists, whom we would call atheists. They believed in no spirit; that there was nothing but matter; that when a man died it was the last of him. (2) There were Epicureans: “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die,” they said. (3) Also in their political views they differed from the Pharisees. The Pharisees were patriotic, and wanted the freedom of their nation. The Sadducees were inclined to the Roman government, and wanted to keep up the servitude to the Romans. (4) The Pharisees also cared more about a ritualistic religion. They were Puritans stern, and knew no compromise, adhering strictly to the letter of the law, in every respect. If they tithed, they would go into the garden and tithe the cummin and the anise. The phrase, “Pharisee of the Pharisees,” means one who would whittle all that down to a very fine point, or an extremist on that subject. He said (Gal 1:14 ), “I advanced in the Jews’ religion beyond many of mine own age among my countrymen, being more exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers.” They were just Pharisees he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees. He went all the lengths that they would go, and he topped them. It meant something like this: “I am a son of Abraham; I am freeborn; I have never sinned; I need no vicarious expiation for me; I need no Holy Spirit; I was never in that bunch; you need not talk or present regeneration to me; I am just as white as snow.” It followed that they were not drunkards, they were not immoral; they were chaste, and did not have any of the brutal vices.
Paul had perhaps never met Jesus. They were about the same age. Paul went to Jerusalem when he was thirteen years old, and stayed there until he graduated in the same city. Some contend from certain expressions, as, “I have known Christ after the flesh; henceforth I will know him . . . no more,” that he had known Jesus in the flesh. It will be remembered that in the public ministry of Christ he was very seldom in Jerusalem. He stayed there a very short time when he did go. His ministry was mainly in Galilee. Even in that last mighty work of his in Jerusalem there is a big account of it but it just lasted a week. And Saul may have been absent at Tarsus during that time. I think when he saw Jesus the fact that he did not recognize him is proof enough, for if he had known him in the flesh he would have recognized him. But he said, “Who art thou?” when he saw him after he arose from the dead.
Paul, before conversion, was intensely conscientious in whatever he did free from all low vice, drunkenness and luxurious gluttony and sensuality of every kind. He was a very chaste man, a very honest man, a very sincere man, a very truthful man, and all this before conversion. I take it for granted that he was a married man. An orthodox Jew would not have passed the age of twenty unmarried. He could not be a member of the Sanhedrin without marrying; and in that famous passage in Corinthians he seems to intimate clearly that he was a married man. Speaking to virgins (that means unmarried men and women and includes both of them that had never married) he says so and so; and to widows and widowers, “I wish they would remain such as I am.” It seems to me that the language very clearly shows that at that time he was a widower. Luther says that no man could write about the married state like Paul writes if he was an old bachelor. I think Luther is right; his judgment is very sound. Paul did not marry again; he remained a widower, and in the stress of the times advised other widowers and widows to remain in that state; but if they wanted to marry again to go ahead and do so; that it was no sin; but the stress of the times made it unwise; and he boldly took the position that he had a right to lead about a wife as much as Peter had, and Peter had a wife.
QUESTIONS
1. What the theme of this section?
2. What Saul’s name, nation, tribe, sect, citizenship, occupation, office, birthplace, and date of birth?
3. Give an account of Tarsus as to its political, strategical, commercial, manufacturing, educational advantages, and its popular religion.
4. Did citizenship in a free city under Rome make one a Roman citizen as did citizenship in Philippi, a colony?
5. How, then, could one obtain it?
6. Distinguish the difference between these terms: Jew, Hebrew, Israelite, Hellinist, and a “Hebrew of the Hebrews.”
7. What the social and financial position of Paul’s family, particularly in view of his occupation?
8. What Paul’s religious and educational advantages?
9. What New Testament evidences are there of Paul’s general educational advantages?
10. What do we know about Paul’s family as seen in the New Testament?
11. Was Paul a rabbi? If so, where did he probably exercise his functions as a rabbi?
12. What is the meaning of the phrase, “Pharisee of the Pharisees?”
13. Did Paul ever meet Jesus before his death? If not, how account for it in view of the interest and publicity of the last week of our Lord’s life?
14. What was Paul’s character before conversion?
15. Was he a married man, and what the proof?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
6 But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.
Ver. 6. But when Paul perceived ] Paul lacked not human prudence; wise as serpents we should be to improve all advantages that we may with the safety of our consciences. Religion doth not call us to a weak simplicity; but allows us as much of the serpent as of the dove. The dove without the serpent is easily caught; the serpent without the dove stings deadly. Their match makes themselves secure, and many happy.
Of the hope and resurrection ] For fiducia Christianorum est resurrectio mortuorum, the faith of the Christians is the resurection from the dead, saith Tertullian. Christians look for great things at that great day, and in that other world, which the Hebrews call saeculum mercedis, the world of wages.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
6. ] Surely no defence of Paul for adopting this course is required, but all admiration is due to his skill and presence of mind. Nor need we hesitate to regard such skill as the fulfilment of the promise, that in such an hour, the Spirit of wisdom should suggest words to the accused, which the accuser should not be able to gainsay. All prospect of a fair trial was hopeless: he well knew from past and present experience, that personal odium would bias his judges, and violence prevail over justice: he therefore (Neand.) uses, in the cause of Truth, the maxim so often perverted to the cause of falsehood, ‘divide et impera.’ In one tenet above all others, did the religion of Jesus Christ and the belief of the Pharisees coincide that of the resurrection of the dead . That they looked for this resurrection by right of being the seed of Abraham, and denied it to all others, whereas he looked for it through Jesus whom they hated, in whom all should be made alive who had died in Adam, this was nothing to the present point : the belief was common in the truest sense it was the hope of Israel in the truest sense does Paul use and bring it forward to confound the adversaries of Christ. At the same time (De W.) by this strong assertion of his Pharisaic standing and extraction, he was further still vindicating himself from the charge against him. So also ch. Act 26:7 .
. ] A son of Pharisees , i.e. A Pharisee of Pharisees ,’ ‘by descent from father, grandfather, and upwards, a pure Pharisee.’ This meaning not having been apprehended, the – was altered into – .
. . .] the hope and the resurrection of the dead . The art. is omitted after the prep., see Midd. ch. vi. 1.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Act 23:6 . . On : see Simcox Language of the N.T. , pp. 71, 72. That Pharisees and Sadducees alike had seats in the Sanhedrim during this period is borne out not only by the N. T., but by Jos., Ant. , xx., 9, 1, B.J. , ii., 17, 3, Vita , 38, 39. It is possible that the Pharisees might have attracted the attention of the Apostle by their protest against the behaviour of Ananias and their acceptance of the words of apology (so Felten, Zckler), but it is equally probable that in St. Luke’s apparently condensed account the appeal to the Pharisees was not made on a sudden impulse (see below), but was based upon some manifestation of sympathy with his utterances. In Act 23:9 it is evidently implied that the story of Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus had been narrated, and his acceptance of the Messiahship of the Risen Jesus carried with it his belief in a resurrection. : the word may here as sometimes elsewhere, cf. Joh 7:37 ; Joh 12:44 , indicate no isolated cry, but a reference to something previously said, and it is probable that St. Luke may have passed over here as elsewhere some portions of the Apostle’s speech, which were less intimately connected with the development and issue of events. It must however be noted that the verb may mean that the Apostle cried aloud so that all might hear him amidst the rising confusion. . . . .: the words have been severely criticised, but in a very real sense they truthfully expressed the Apostle’s convictions. Before Felix St. Paul made practically the same assertion, although he did not use the word . ( cf. also Act 26:5 ), Hort, Judaistic Christianity , p. 111. Moreover it is difficult to see why the Apostle should not describe himself as a Pharisee in face of the statement, Act 15:5 , that many members of the sect were also members of the Christian Church. They, like St. Paul, must have acknowledged that Jesus was the Messiah. But that Messiahship was attested by the avowal of the resurrection of Jesus, and the resurrection was a prominent article of the Pharisees’ creed. In the acceptance of this latter doctrine St. Paul was at one not only with the “Pharisees who believed,” but with the whole sect, and that he used the title in this limited way, viz. , with relation to the hope of the resurrection, is plain from the context, which fixes the limitation by the Apostle’s own words. But because the declaration shows the tact of St. Paul, because it is an instance of his acting upon the maxim Divide et impera , has it no higher side in relation to his character and purpose? May we not even say that to the Pharisees he became as a Pharisee in order to save some, to lead them to see the crown and fulfilment of the hope in which he and they were at one, in the Person of Jesus, the Resurrection and the Life? That the Apostle’s action met with Divine approval seems evident, Act 23:11 . See “Paul” (Dr. Llewellyn Davies), B.D. 1 , iii., 754, 755, and amongst recent writers, Luckock, but on the other hand Gilbert, Student’s Life of Paul , p. 187 ff. Bethge attributes to the Apostle an apologetic aim, viz. , to show the chiliarch that Christianity should be protected by the State, since it was no new religion, but really proceeded from Judaism; and in support he refers to the words of Lysias, Act 23:29 ; but although the Apostle’s appeal may have helped Lysias to form his judgment, it seems somewhat strained to attribute to the Apostle the motive assigned by Bethge. .: “a son of Pharisees,” R.V. plural, which is the best reading, i.e. , his ancestors, 2Ti 1:3 , Phi 3:5 , possibly including his teachers by a familiar Hebraism. .: generally taken as a hendiadys (so Page), “hope of a resurrection of the dead” (see, however, Winer-Moulton, lxvi. 7). In Act 26:6 is used of the hope of a future Messianic salvation the hope of Israel but in Act 24:15 St. Paul distinctly makes mention of the hope of a resurrection of the dead, and his own words again in Act 24:21 seem to exclude anything beyond that question as under discussion on the present occasion.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Act 23:6-10
6But perceiving that one group were Sadducees and the other Pharisees, Paul began crying out in the Council, “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees; I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead!” 7As he said this, there occurred a dissension between the Pharisees and Sadducees, and the assembly was divided. 8For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, nor an angel, nor a spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledge them all. 9And there occurred a great uproar; and some of the scribes of the Pharisaic party stood up and began to argue heatedly, saying, “We find nothing wrong with this man; suppose a spirit or an angel has spoken to him?” 10And as a great dissension was developing, the commander was afraid Paul would be torn to pieces by them and ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force, and bring him into the barracks.
Act 23:6 “perceiving” Paul may have realized that he could not get a fair hearing from this Sadducean high priest.
“Sadducees” See Special Topic at Act 4:1.
“Pharisees” Paul had been a Pharisee (cf. Act 26:5; Php 3:5-6) from a family of Pharisees. See Special Topic at Act 5:34.
“I am on trial for the hope and resurrection of the dead” Paul threw out a theological issue that the Sadducees and Pharisees disagreed about. The Sadducees denied the afterlife, while the Pharisees affirmed it (cf. Job 14:14; Job 19:23-27; Isa 25:8; Isa 26:19; Dan 12:2). This set the two factions of the council against each other (cf. Act 23:7-10).
Act 23:7 “the assembly was divided” This term’s basic meaning is “to tear” (cf. Luk 5:36; Luk 23:45). It came to be used metaphorically of division within groups (cf. Act 14:4; Act 23:7). The division between these two Jewish sects was always just under the surface. Paul fanned the flames.
Act 23:8 “nor an angel, nor a spirit” Act 23:8 is a comment by Luke on his source. Does this phrase imply there are two categories of spiritual beings or one? The origin of both is biblically ambiguous, but Heb 1:5; Heb 1:13-14 imply they are the same.
What the Sadducees denied was the dualism of good and evil spiritual beings (Zoroastrian dualism). The Pharisees had elaborated the OT concept into rigid Persian dualism and even developed a hierarchy of angelic and demonic (seven leaders of each). The best source I have found for first century Jewish angelology is Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Appendix XIII.
Act 23:9
NASB”there arose a great uproar”
NKJV”there arose a loud outcry”
NRSV”then a great clamor arose”
NJB”the shouting grew louder”
This same phrase is found in the Septuagint of Exo 12:30 (also note Exo 3:7; Exo 11:6; Est 4:3; Isa 58:4; Isa 65:19). The word “cry” (kraug) is also in Mat 25:6; Luk 1:42; Eph 4:31; Heb 5:7; Rev 21:4. Only context can determine the kind of loud “cry” (i.e., positive or negative).
Another emotional word “to argue heatedly” (diamachomai) is also used in the LXX in Dan 10:20. Paul’s comment caused a loud, emotional confrontation, which is exactly what he wanted!
“the scribes” These were the legal experts in both the oral (Talmud) and written law (OT). Most of them were Pharisees.
SPECIAL TOPIC: SCRIBES
“this man” The use of this noun phrase in this context shows it is not automatically a negative phrase.
“suppose” This is a partial or incomplete first class conditional sentence. These scribes were asserting that Paul had seen something from the spiritual realm, but exactly what they were not sure. Their immediate and forceful defense of Paul shows how biased they were for their own group. Apparently they disliked Sadducees more than a supposedly renegade Pharisee.
Because this is an incomplete grammatical structure, the Textus Receptus, following the uncial Greek manuscripts H, L, and P, adds, “Let us not fight against God,” which is taken from Act 5:39.
Act 23:10 “ordered the troops to go down and take him away from them by force” Twice now the Roman government had saved Paul’s life in Jerusalem. No wonder Paul saw the government as a minister of God (cf. Romans 13). This may relate to “the one who restrains” in 2Th 2:6-7.
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
But = Now.
perceived = got to know. Greek. ginosko. App-132. Some may have heard Paul’s address on the stairs (Act 22:1-21), and were discussing his statement about the risen Lord, and might have put a question to him.
Sadducees . . . Pharisees. App-120.
other. Greek. heteros. App-124.
son. Greek. huios. App-108.
of = concerning. Greek. peri. App-104.
the = a.
hope and resurrection = resurrection-hope. Figure of speech Hendiadys. App-6.
resurrection. Greek. anastasis. App-178.
of the dead. Greek. nekron. No art. App-139.
called in question = judged. Greek. krino, as in Act 23:3.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
6.] Surely no defence of Paul for adopting this course is required, but all admiration is due to his skill and presence of mind. Nor need we hesitate to regard such skill as the fulfilment of the promise, that in such an hour, the Spirit of wisdom should suggest words to the accused, which the accuser should not be able to gainsay. All prospect of a fair trial was hopeless: he well knew from past and present experience, that personal odium would bias his judges, and violence prevail over justice: he therefore (Neand.) uses, in the cause of Truth, the maxim so often perverted to the cause of falsehood, divide et impera. In one tenet above all others, did the religion of Jesus Christ and the belief of the Pharisees coincide that of the resurrection of the dead. That they looked for this resurrection by right of being the seed of Abraham, and denied it to all others,-whereas he looked for it through Jesus whom they hated, in whom all should be made alive who had died in Adam,-this was nothing to the present point: the belief was common-in the truest sense it was the hope of Israel-in the truest sense does Paul use and bring it forward to confound the adversaries of Christ. At the same time (De W.) by this strong assertion of his Pharisaic standing and extraction, he was further still vindicating himself from the charge against him. So also ch. Act 26:7.
. ] A son of Pharisees, i.e. A Pharisee of Pharisees,-by descent from father, grandfather, and upwards, a pure Pharisee. This meaning not having been apprehended, the – was altered into -.
. . .] the hope and the resurrection of the dead. The art. is omitted after the prep., see Midd. ch. vi. 1.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Act 23:6. , he cried out) Making an open profession, in order that all in the crowd might hear: ch. Act 24:21. Here the saying held good, in a good sense, Divide et impera, divide, and you will thereby command. Paul did not use craft of reason or dialectical stratagem, but simply invites to his defence those who were less far removed from the truth.- , I am a Pharisee) according to my ancient discipline (training); and even yet am so, as far as concerns faith in the resurrection.- ) , others read, whose testimony is corroborated by the ancient authority, Tertullian. [The Gnomon here follows, not the margin of the larger Edition, but that of the 2d Edition, along with the Germ. Vers.-E. B. is read by [126]
[127]
[128] Vulg. Syr[129]; but of the Rec. Text, only by [130]
[131] of the very old authorities.] Moreover Paul calls himself a son of the Pharisees, not meaning his preceptors, which would give tautology in the sense, a Pharisee, a son of the Pharisees, nor does Paul mention in ch. Act 22:3 a number of preceptors, but Gamaliel alone; but he means that he had parents, or a father and grandfather or forefathers, Pharisees: comp. 2Ti 1:3. In this way there is a Climax: a Pharisee, the son of Pharisees.- , of the hope and resurrection) A Hendiadys: for it was the resurrection that they hoped for.- , I am judged, called in question) In the present judicial procedure, in which Ananias acts the part of president, saith Paul, the case has come to this, that the hope and resurrection of the dead is being impugned. The predecessors of Ananias had been Sadducees, ch. Act 5:17, and now also he himself was a Sadducee. Now, when more than twenty years had elapsed from the resurrection of Jesus Christ, they did not so unceasingly assail the preaching concerning Jesus Christ and His resurrection, as they did the dogma itself concerning the Resurrection of the dead, which was long ago odious to them; as indeed they had already done, ch. Act 4:2 : whereas the Pharisees, in this respect, were not so far removed from the Christian faith. Therefore Paul conciliates them to himself, whilst the Sadducees were the more enraged in consequence. This then was what at that time the state of the controversy became, which Paul earnestly and stedfastly mentions subsequently, ch. Act 24:15; Act 24:21, Act 26:6-7, Act 28:20.
[126] the Alexandrine MS.: in Brit. Museum: fifth century: publ. by Woide, 1786-1819: O. and N. Test. defective.
[127] Cod. Basilianus (not the B. Vaticanus): Revelation: in the Vatican: edited by Tisch., who assigns it to the beginning of the eighth century.
[128] Ephrmi Rescriptus: Royal libr., Paris: fifth or sixth cent.: publ. by Tisch. 1843: O. and N. T. def.
[129] yr. the Peschito Syriac Version: second cent.: publ. and corrected by Cureton, from MS. of fifth cent.
[130] Laudianus: Bodl. libr., Oxford: seventh or eighth cent.: publ. 1715: Acts def.
[131] Laudianus, do.: Acts.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Sadducees
(See Scofield “Mat 3:7”).
Fuente: Scofield Reference Bible Notes
Paul: Mat 10:16
I am: Act 26:5, Phi 3:5
of the hope: Act 24:15, Act 24:21, Act 26:6-8, Act 28:20
Reciprocal: Psa 55:9 – divide Jer 38:27 – and he told Mat 3:7 – the Pharisees Mat 16:1 – Sadducees Mat 22:23 – the Sadducees Mar 12:18 – say Luk 18:10 – a Pharisee Luk 20:27 – the Sadducees Joh 11:24 – I know Act 1:16 – Men Act 4:1 – the Sadducees Act 5:17 – all Act 22:1 – brethren Act 22:3 – taught Act 23:1 – earnestly Act 23:29 – questions Phi 3:11 – attain Col 1:5 – the hope Heb 6:2 – resurrection Heb 11:35 – that they
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
6
Act 23:6. Having disposed of their quibble over the highpriesthood of Ananias, Paul used the divided condition of sentiment in the Sanhedrin to bring to the fore the fundamental principle of the Gospel, the truth of which was the basis of his diffictulties with the Jews. (See the note at Mat 16:12 on the differences between the Pharisees and Sadducees.) With regard to the most important difference between these sects, the belief in the resurrection, Paul declared he was a Pharisee.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Act 23:6. But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees. The great council now for many years seems to have been divided roughly into two great parties, the Sadducees and the Pharisees. (See on the position held in Israel at this time by these two sects, Excursus at the end of the chapter.)
He cried out in the council, Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee and the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question. The true reading here is the son of Pharisees. Pauls conduct in thus involving the Pharisees and Sadducees present in the Sanhedrim in a violent dispute, has been the theme of much controversy. The very praise lavished on what has been called a strategic act on the part of the apostle, raises doubts in the mind of the seeker after God, whether or no Pauls action here was right and wise. For instance, the celebrated Roman Catholic expositor Cornelius A. Lapide, builds on it the famous maxim, The war of heretics is the peace of the Church. He calls this the only method of maintaining the unity of the Church. Alfords words here are singularly happy: Surely no defence of Paul for adopting this course is required, but our admiration is due to his skill and presence of mind. Nor need we hesitate to regard such skill as the fulfilment of the promise, that in such an hour the Spirit of Wisdom should suggest words to the accused, which the accuser should not be able to gainsay. All prospect of a fair trial was hopeless. He well knew, from past and present experience, that personal odium would bias his judges, and violence prevail over justice; he therefore uses in the cause of truth the maxim so often perverted to the cause of falsehood, Divide et impera.
On considering Pauls words, I am a Pharisee, it must not be forgotten that after all, the great doctrine which distinguished the Pharisees of those days was their belief in the resurrection. It was this which really separated them from their rivals the Sadducees. The Pharisee teachers, it has been truly remarked, had given to this doctrine a prominence which it never had before. Many of their noblest members, even leaders, mainly on this account had been secret disciples of our Lord, such as Nicodemus, Joseph of Arimathea, and possibly the Rabbi Gamaliel. Some seven or eight years before this time we know that already among the members of the Christian Church were many avowed Pharisees (see chap. Act 15:5). The apostle really said, to use Plumptres paraphrase of his words here: I am a Pharisee; yes, I am one with you in all that is truest in your creed. I invite you to listen and see whether what I now proclaim to you is not the crown and completion of all your hopes and yearnings. Is not the resurrection of Jesus the one thing needed for a proof of that hope of the resurrection of the dead of which you and your fathers have been witnesses?
There was a common ground on which Paul with the Christian teachers and the Pharisees met together, and the apostle longed to lead those who had already grasped a part of the truth yet higher into the regions of gospel light. The hope of the fathers fulfilled by the coming of Jesus the Messiah, and the resurrection of the dead sealed by the resurrection of Christ, these two themes were the groundwork of all Pauls preaching. We gather from the Acts and the inspired Epistles that the Christianity of the first days was founded on the fact of the resurrection of Christ (see 1Co 15:15-20, where the apostle presses home this argument with what we may dare to term a sublime temerity). Thus Paul in his words, I am a Pharisee …. of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question, took his standing on the same platform with his former friends and now jealous and relentless foes the Pharisees. My only crime, he urged with passionate earnestness, is that I preach with a strange success that great doctrine of the resurrection, the maintaining of which at all risks, in an unbelieving and faithless generation, is the reason of existence of the whole Pharisee sect. On that doctrine Paul as a Christian knew how to flash a new strong light, but the teaching itself for which he really suffered was only the teaching of the purest Pharisee school.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Observe here, The innocent policy which the apostle uses for his own preservation: he, perceiving that the council before whom he stood were not all of a piece, but patched up of Pharisees and Sadducees, he publicly professes himself a Pharisee by education, and of that persuasion now in point of the resurrection.
Thus at once he cast in a bone of contention between the Sadducees who denied the resurrection, and the Pharisees who owned it; and obliged the Pharisees, at least as to that opinion, to take his part, and so by pious prudence he turned their opposition against him upon one another: that by setting them at variance he might the better escape.
Learn hence, that an innocent and prudent policy may warrantably be made use of by the members and ministers of Jesus Christ, without any blemish to their holy profession, in order to our preservation from the hands of persecutors; a serpentine subtilty may be made use of, together with a dovelike innocincy. Thus did St. Paul here: when he perceived that one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out, &c.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Act 23:6-8. But when Paul perceived , Paul knowing, in consequence of his being personally acquainted with many whom he saw sitting round; that one part of the council were Pharisees, and the other Sadducees, cried out, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee I am such both by birth and education, as also by my own free choice, having voluntarily attached myself to that sect: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question Meaning, that he was brought before them as a criminal for preaching the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, as a proof of the resurrection of all the dead at the last day. Certainly this was a principal part (though not the whole) of the truth, since the chief thing which enraged the Sadducees against Christianity, was the demonstration it gave to the doctrine of a resurrection, which they so eagerly opposed. When he had so said, there arose a dissension A disagreement and contention producing a separation between the Pharisees and Sadducees, several persons of each sect becoming warm in the debate. For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection Of the dead. See on Mat 22:23. Neither angel nor separate spirit It seems strange that the Sadducees should deny that there were angels, considering that they acknowledged the authority of the five books of Moses, in which mention is frequently made of angels; but it seems they either understood the passages that speak of angels, in those books, allegorically, or, as Dr. Whitby observes, supposed that when they are said to appear, they were framed at that particular time for that purpose, and afterward ceased to have any being: so that, after the giving of the law, at least, no angel existed. And with regard to their denying the existence of spirits, the meaning probably is, not that they denied God to be a spirit, or that there was any spirit in man, but, as Josephus testifies, they denied, , the permanency of the soul after death, or, that any spirits existed in a state of separation from mens bodies. But the Pharisees confess both Both the resurrection and the existence of angels and separate spirits.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
6-10. The presence in which Paul stood was not unfamiliar to him. He doubtless remembered the faces of many in the Sanhedrim, and was intimately acquainted with the party feelings which often distracted their councils, and which had been known to stain the streets of Jerusalem with blood. Seeing that they were determined not to do him justice, he resolved to take advantage of their party feuds in order to secure his own safety. (6) “But when Paul knew that one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the Sanhedrim, Brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee. Concerning the hope of the resurrection of the dead I am called in question. (7) And when he had said this, there arose a dissension between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, and the multitude was divided. (8) For the Sadducees say there is no resurrection, nor angel, nor spirit. But the Pharisees confess both. (9) And there arose a great outcry; and the scribes, who were of the Pharisees’ party, arose and contended, saying, We find no evil in this man. And if an angel or a spirit has spoken to him, let us not fight against God. (10) And there being a great dissension, the chiliarch, fearing that Paul would be torn in pieces by them, commanded the soldiers to go down and take him by force from their midst, and lead him into the castle.” It will be observed, that in stating the difference between the two parties, Luke uses the term both when the reference is to three specifications, viz.: resurrection, angel, and spirit. This arose, no doubt, from the fact that the three specifications are really combined in two, as the existence of angels or spirits involves but the one question of the existence of purely spiritual beings.
Under ordinary circumstances, it is not probable that so violent a dissension could have been so easily excited. The circumstance is indicative of an unusual exasperation of the parties just preceding this event. Such a state of things, combined with the complete agreement declared by Paul with the Pharisees on the points at issue, naturally inclined them to favor this release. He declared this agreement in strong terms, asserting not only that he was a Pharisee, but the son of a Pharisee, and that it was for the hope peculiar to the party that he was arraigned as a criminal. They saw that the establishment of his doctrine would certainly be the ruin of the opposing sect, and losing sight, for a moment, of its effects upon their own party; forgetting, too, the ill-founded charge against Paul, in reference to the law and temple, they declared that they could find no fault in the man. Perhaps, also, the awkward position they were in with reference to the proof of those charges rendered them somewhat willing to find an excuse for admitting his innocence. But the slightest hint, on their part, of his innocence, was sufficient to arouse the Sadducees, because they saw that it was prompted chiefly by hatred to themselves. On the part of the Sadducees, the two most violent passions to which they were subject, hatred toward the disciples and jealousy toward the Pharisees, combined to swell the uproar which broke up the deliberations of the assembly. Paul was near being a victim to the storm which he had raised, when the Roman soldiery came to his rescue. Lysias was once more disappointed in his efforts to learn the truth about his case, and must have been in greater perplexity than ever, as he commanded the soldiers to lead him back into the castle.
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
Verse 6
Of the hope, &c. Here was another artifice, (Acts 21:26;) for, although what Paul said was strictly true, as he had actually met with opposition on this account, still it was not this, but other and very different charges, (Acts 21:28,22:22,) which had been the exciting cause of the present tumult; so that, at this time, such a statement was adapted to give a false impression. The conduct of Paul in this, and in the former case, has generally been approved,–the cases having been regarded as examples of commendable adroitness. But whether it was best to resort to these indirect measures, rather than to take the bold and perfectly honest course usually characteristic of him, ought not to be considered as settled simply by the fact that he did resort to them. We was liable to fall into error and sin in his conduct and measures, as well as all other inspired men. We observe that no permanent good resulted from the artifices in either case.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
23:6 {5} But when Paul perceived that the one part were Sadducees, and the other Pharisees, he cried out in the council, Men [and] brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.
(5) We may sometimes lawfully set the wicked against themselves, so that they stop assaulting us, in order that the truth is not hindered.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
Paul recognized that he could not get a fair trial in a court that did not even observe the law it purported to defend, so he changed his tactics. He decided to divide the jury and began his defense again ("Men brethren"). This time he took the offensive.
The issue of the resurrection of the dead was fundamental in Paul’s case (cf. Act 17:32). Israel’s national hope of deliverance by her Messiah rested on the resurrection of that Messiah as predicted in the Hebrew Scriptures. By raising the old controversy of whether resurrection is possible, Paul divided his accusers.
"Paul keeps coming back to the theme of hope and resurrection even when it no longer provokes disruption (cf. Act 24:15; Act 24:21; Act 28:20), and it will be a central theme in Paul’s climactic defense speech before King Agrippa (Act 26:6-8; Act 26:23). Paul is doing more than injecting a controversial subject into the Sanhedrin hearing. He is trying to change the entire issue of his trial, and he will persist in this effort in subsequent scenes. Therefore, the significance of Paul’s statement that he is on trial ’concerning hope and resurrection of the dead’ can be understood only by considering the development of this theme in later scenes." [Note: Tannehill, 2:287.]