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  • From: "Hyam Maccoby" <h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: rights of extradition
  • Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2001 17:46:05 +0100

 Both Jeffrey and Mark assume that Paul, having the backing of the High Priest, also had the backing of the Sanhedrin.  But there is ample evidence, from NT alone, that the High Priest did not control the Sanhedrin:  he was outvoted at the trials of both Peter and Paul by a Pharisee majority.  Though the HP acted as chairman of the Sanhedrin, he was much distrusted by the Pharisees because of his Sadducee affiliation, and on occasions when the Pharisees had the majority (which was admittedly not always) his proposals were always liable to be overruled..  On the present occasion of Paul's mission to Damascus, we are told that he had the backing of the HP (Acts 9:2), but the Sanhedrin is not mentioned.

 There is also every reason to suppose that the Sanhedrin would not have supported Paul,s mission to persecute the Early Church.  The alleged trial and condemnation of Jesus before the Sanhedrin in all probability, never took place.  It is is omitted completely from the Fourth Gospel, and the acquittal of Peter, Jesus' chief disciple, indicates that Jesus himself would have been acquitted, if the HP had ever succeeded in bringing him before the Sanhedrin.
 The reason for the HP’s opposition to Jesus and to the EC was not religious but political.  As a Roman-appointed official, the HP opposed all threats to the Roman Occupation, and Jesus' messianic claim constituted such a threat  (which is why Vespasian afterwards sought out and killed all descendants of David , including relatives of Jesus, that could be found (Eusebius, Hist. 3:12; see also Eusebius Hist. 3;19-20).
 The Early Church was not regarded as a threat to Pharisee Judaism.  This is shown very plainly by Gamaliel's defence of Peter (Acts 5).  There is interesting confirmation of this  in the story of Paul’s visit to Damascus.  Having been converted to the EC, Paul was sheltered by Ananias in Damascus.  Ananias was an open supporter of the EC, yet he was a devout observer of the Law and well spoken of by all the Jews of that place (Acts 22:12)..  This shows quite conclusively that the EC was not regarded as a breakaway movement, but as  a legitimate faction within the accepted framework of Judaism. 
 
The conclusion is that when Paul was persecuting the EC, this was not because he was at the time a zealous Pharisee (as he claimed later).  By this time (as I argue in THE MYTHMAKER) he had ceased to be a Pharisee and had become a supporter of the High Priest’s political campaign against the EC.
 
Hyam Maccoby
 
 
Hyam Maccoby
Research Professor
Centre for Jewish Studies
University of Leeds
LS2
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e-mail: h.z.maccoby AT leeds.ac.uk
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Monday, September 10, 2001 8:29 PM
Subject: [corpus-paul] rights of extradition

I have been doing a little reading on Paul as persecutor of the EC. One of the critical issues is the reliability of the Acts testimony that Paul was somehow operating under the aegis of the Sanhedrin in his persecutions in/near Damascus, given that the Sanhedrin reputedly had no authority over Jews within that city.

But I note that F.F. Bruce disputes this. Here is the relevant section from his book _Paul: Apostle of the Heart Set Free_:

*****
Paul's own narrative implies that his conversion to the faith which he was attempting to wipe out took place at or near Damascus:' the narrative of Acts tells us what took him to Damascus. [Cf. Galatians 1: 17, "1 returned to Damascus".].  The violence of the persecution drove many of the disciples, especially the Hellenists, out of Judaea, but even so they were not necessarily out of reach of the Sanhedrin. When the Jewish state won independence under the Hasmonaeans, it had powerful patrons in the Romans, who let the countries surrounding J Judaea know this and demanded that Judaea should be granted the rights and privileges of a sovereign state, including the right of extradition. Thus, a letter delivered by a Roman ambassador to Ptolemy VIII of Egypt in 142 B.C. concludes with the requirement: "if any pestilent men have fled to you from their country [Judaea, hand them over to Simon the high priest, that he may punish them according to their law" (1 Maccabees 15: 21).

The author of the letter is "Lucius, consul of the Romans" (1 Maccabees 15: 16) - presumably L. Caecilius Metcllus, consul in 142 B.C. (E. J. Bickermann, review of M. S. Ginsburg, Rome et la Judee, in Gnomon 6 [19301, pp. 358 f.).
Those rights and privileges were confirmed anew to the Jewish people (even though they no longer constituted a sovereign state), and more particularly to the high-priesthood, by Julius Caesar in 47 B.C.
Josephus, Ant. xiv. 192-195. See S. Safrai and M. Stern (ed.), The jewish People in the First Century, i (Assen, 1974), p. 456.
Paul in his crusading zeal resolved that the high priest should exercise his right of extradition against the fugitives, and procured from him "letters to the synagogues of Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem" (Acts 9: 1).

It appears that there was already in Damascus a community of followers of the Way, with whom the fugitives from Judaea could hope to find refuge. These Damascene disciples were not the subjects of the extradition papers which Paul carried; he may not even have been aware of their presence there. It was the refugees whom he had come to apprehend [This is the implication of the adverb EKEISE "thither", in Acts 22: 5; "those who were there" are "those who had gone thither"], no doubt hoping that if he could accomplish this purpose satisfactorily in 12 Damascus, he could repeat the procedure in other foreign cities. (pp. 72-73)

*****

My question is:  Does Bruce's claim about rights of extradition hold up under scrutiny. Even assuming that there were such rights in effect in Julius Caesar's time, do we have any reason to think that they were also in effect in the fourth decade CE?

Yours,

Jeffrey Gibson
 
 
 
 
 

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