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  • From: "Stevan Davies" <miser17 AT epix.net>
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: RE: Paul the Persecutor
  • Date: Thu, 8 Apr 1999 16:10:36 -0500


> From: "Liz Fried"
> I don't understand what mechanism there would be for Paul to *arrest*
> people. Did he travel alone, or with others? Were these police? Jewish
> police or Roman? Was there a temple authority that could arrest people? Or
> was the only legal authority Rome? Did the temple have police, or was it
> just a Roman cohort? Did these temple police, if Jewish, have power in
> Damascus??? Were there Jewish courts, or only Roman courts? Josephus
> speaks of magicians and of people leading huge numbers of people as false
> messiahs. But it isn't Jews these people come in conflict with, it is the
> Romans. Josephus records a skirmish between Jews and Greeks in Caesaria.
> Many died, because they waited for Roman police to come in, and they didn't
> come. If there had been Jewish police, it seems they would have been called,
> or been on duty. Does Josephus mention Jewish police? Does this police have
> power outside the temple, if it exists at all?

Gee. I ask a question. Don't get no answer ("why did Paul persecute?")
but 158 separate questions in return.

I have one fact and common sense to be my guides to these questions.
Fact: there was a relatively small Roman garrison in Judea usually
stationed away from Jerusalem, mainly in Ceasarea as I recall, which
garrison would come to Jerusalem during pilgrimage feasts to help
keep order. The point of the garrison was to react to anti-Roman
activism and possibly to assist in collection of tribute if that
collection was threatened.

Evidence is that Jesus was found to
have engaged in anti-Roman activism of some sort or another, there's
zero evidence that his followers did so after his death. Whatever
Paul was persecuting them for it was not for anything to do with
breach of Roman law.

Otherwise, here's the common sense, there was a police force to
uphold the laws of Judea, a force overseen by Judean authority. Two
things are common-sense impossible, first that there was no law-
enforcement authority in Judea, second that Romans served as the
enforcment authority for Judean laws.

I don't know the legal condition of Jews dwelling in Damascus. It is
possible that they were indeed subject to Judean law rather than
Roman law and possible that enforcement authority could come from
Jerusalem to enforce Judean law in Damascus. There probably are
people who know the legal condition of Jews in Damascus at the time
who can say whether this 'possibility' was actually so or not.

But in any event certainly there were Jewish courts and not only
Roman courts and certainly there was enforced Jewish police power
and not just Roman soldiers. The parameters of Jewish police power
I don't know... but people weren't just "honor bound to be on good
behavior" and that was that.

Steve Davies
College Misericordia




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