reliability of the new testament.

[Ignatius]

Cheers guys.

People like Ehrman have hurt my faith recently, i am just finished reading my 350 page magnificat which contains many Bible verses and Paul’s writings.

I cant eradicate the doubt of what i am reading an fear it is not true.

If you listen to a knowledgable, orthodox, faithful Catholic scholar, it will restore your faith. Dr. Mary Healy is a professor of Scripture at at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit and senior fellow at the St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology. She has several Graduate and Postgraduate degrees in Biblical Theology. She earned her S.T.D., summa cum laude, Biblical Theology, Pontifical Gregorian University (2000). Dissertation: “What the Heart of Man Has Not Conceived”: A Theological Approach to 1 Cor 2:6-16. She also earned her S.T.L., summa cum laude, International Theological Institute, Gaming, Austria (1998).
Dr. Healy has a great book out on the Gospel of Mark (amazon.com/Gospel-Catholic-Commentary-Sacred-Scripture/dp/0801035864)

She was recently interviewed by Patrick Coffin on Catholic answers. If you would prefer audio, you can listen to the Catholic Answers Podcasts. They are available on iTunes. I urge you to listen to it. Many of the others are very good too.

Hope this helps.

 

[steve53]

I would not agree about the the preaching in the temple is later or unreliable. It’s not such a strange story if you think about it. We all know about bright children who impress their elders with what they know. It’s perfectly realistic that this could have been the case with Jesus.

What about the birth story seems like a problem? I remember a couple questions on it, but nothing that struck me as a major problem.

According to the Book of John, Jesus could neither read nor write. Josephus wrote an autobiography and his Temple story is a dead ringer for Luke’s.

Birth story? A lot of moving parts. Hagan has a chapter on it. Get a used copy on Amazon for pennies.

 

[supertubos]

But an account by a modern writer denying the holocaust would not be historical. Or at least it depends how you use the word. Some people use the word to just refer to any statement made about the past and then say if it is an accurate statement we call it true history and if a false statement, then we call it bad history.

I am not sure what you mean by the gospels are not historical. They make what the authors claim are true statements about the past and Jesus as he actually lived. The evidence for their accuracy is so good that I think we are rationally justified in considering those to be true statements about the past. Luke himself is explicitly writing as a historian.

And it is not true that no historian would agree with those statements “Jesus rose” unless he had faith. The Jewish historian and theologian Pinchas Lapide, for instance, said that he is convinced on the basis of the evidence that Jesus did rise from the dead. Yet he did not become of Christian. He believed the evidence, but did not have faith. One may believe in Jesus on the basis of faith, but I think the evidence is good enough that it is also possible to accept the portrait of Jesus in the gospels on the basis of the evidence. This should convince us to 2 things. 1. the evidence for Jesus is actually very good when we actually bother to look at it. 2. faith is still necessary, not necessarily to accept that the evidence is good or believe in it, but to make the further commitment to God that being and living as a Christian entails.

Let’s not divide with a huge gap Faith and History. There is no other person in the History of Humanity that has got so much historical evidence than Jesus Christ.

But the questions is what are we talking when talking about Jesus Christ. When Jesus was on Earth, some thought that he was the Son of the Carpenter, others that He was the Son of God. Even on earth Faith was needed to know who Jesus was.

You see to imply that knowing by Faith is knowing something that depends on Faith. No. Christ exists, either we believe in Him or not. The evidence of FAith may be stronger than the historical evidence. Or that knowledge by Faith would be inferior to knowledge by evidence. I dont think. By evidence, I have there bread and wine, by FAith, it is Jesus’ body and blood. Evidence cannot reach were FAith reaches.

Pinchas Lapide said what he said but I dont know what he said. What did he believe? That Jesus was the Messiah and the Son of God and that he rose from the dead by His own power? If so, why didnt he became Christian? Or did he belive that his risen from the dead was simply sorcery or whatever ?

What I intend to say is not that the Gospels have nothing historical. That would be dum from me! I say as an evangelist say, we wrote so that you may know that Jesus Christ is theSon of God and believing, you may have eternal life.

cheers

 

[danserr]

According to the Book of John, Jesus could neither read nor write. Josephus wrote an autobiography and his Temple story is a dead ringer for Luke’s.

Birth story? A lot of moving parts. Hagan has a chapter on it. Get a used copy on Amazon for pennies.

Do you mean John 7:15? That isn’t a reference to his literal literacy so much as to his degree of formal education. “How is he so smart without having studied with a big name rabbi?”

In this passage, the rabbi as astonished at Jesus’ learned, just like in Luke’s story of the body Jesus, where they are astonished at his learning despite his not having studied. The two accounts look compatible to me.

 

[steve53]

Why consider the Bible reliable? Here is a summary of a few reasons.

Critics like to claim the gospels are unreliable, often because they are (supposedly) written 40-60 years after the events they tell about, others (like Bart Ehrman) claim the text is in doubt. Or they claims the source is not perfect and so can’t be trusted at all.

1. No historical source is perfect, not even from the 20th century. If we demanded perfect historical sources before we know anything, then we could never know any historical fact, even from the 20th century.
2. The text of the Bible is actually very well established. We have excellent manuscripts in all the original languages and when skeptics, like Ehrman, try to cast doubt on it, they are basically quibbling over a word here or there. A word in doubt is hardly a reason to doubt whether the whole text is reliable.
3. 40-60 years is really not so late as far as such sources go. Tacitus wrote about events 100 years afterward, but historians still accept him as a reliable source. The earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written 400 years after his death, but historians still consider him a reliable source. Additionally, remember, this was an oral culture used to training in memory and preservation of sacred tradition over time (especially the Jews).
4. There are reasons to think the gospels were written earlier than often thought. The order of writing is universally agreed to be Mark and Matthew, then Luke, then Acts, so if Acts was written before 63 AD, this would prove the others were written before that. John AT Robinson lists some reasons to think Acts was written before 63 AD.
   a). Peter, James, and Paul were executed in 63 AD, but Acts doesn’t mention it. This is an odd omission, so Acts was probably written before they were executed.
   b). The Author of Acts does not refer to Paul’s letters. This suggests it was written before they became widely circulated.
   c). The portrayal of Romans in Acts and Luke’s gospel is positive. This makes sense if it was written before Nero’s persecutions in 63 AD, but not if it was written later.
   -Another note, Acts sometimes switches to the first person, which suggests the author himself was traveling with Paul to learn about this stuff, that makes him a pretty reliable source.
5. Even 40-60 years in not enough time for legends to arise. Prof. A.N. Sherwin-White points out that even 2 generations is not enough time for the growth of legend to wipe out the hard core of historic fact. And the authors were using sources that were from even earlier.
6. Jesus’ radical concept of himself as the unique divine Son of God is historically probable. Take the parable of the wicked tenants in the vineyard. The owner of the vineyard sent servants to the tenants of the vineyard to collect its fruit. The tenants ignore his other messengers so he says “I will send my only son, surely they will respect him.” The point is that Jesus is the son and saw himself as God’s unique son, not just another prophet. This parable is found in the so called “Q,” and so recognized as legit even by radical skeptics.
7. There is good evidence for the Resurrection. Three facts may be established whether one considers the Bible a reliable source or not.
   A). Jesus was buried and his tomb found empty 3 days later. Habermas found that 75% of scholars admit this.
   B). Jesus’ followers experienced visions of him. Even the skeptic Ludemann admits these happened. He tries to explain them as hallucinations (which is problematic), but he admits they happened.
   C). The disciples believed Jesus rose from the dead, despite having every reason not to.
   – The most probable explanation of these facts is that Jesus really did rise from the dead, leaving behind an empty tomb.

Suggested reading and a links:
Carsten Peter Thiede, Jesus: Man or Myth, (2005).
William Lane Craig, The Son Rises, Reasaonable Faith chap 8, reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5207
NT Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, Surprised by Hope chap 3 and 4.

Nero’s persecutions began after the fires of Rome in A.D. 64 July. ACTS ends with Paul in Rome in A.D. 63, with Paul thinking about going to Spain. And it ends abruptly. So, yes, both Paul and Luke could have been caught up in the executions in Rome, along with Peter and other Christians.
Also of interest, the High Priest that Paul insulted in Jerusalem years before was actually a part of the Salon of Nero and Poppea at that time. Connection? Hagan in “Fires of Rome” suggests so.

 

[steve53]

Do you mean John 7:15? That isn’t a reference to his literal literacy so much as to his degree of formal education. “How is he so smart without having studied with a big name rabbi?”

In this passage, the rabbi as astonished at Jesus’ learned, just like in Luke’s story of the body Jesus, where they are astonished at his learning despite his not having studied. The two accounts look compatible to me.

That depends on your translation. Recent translations play fast and loose with the original Greek, IMO.

 

[AuroraB]

A good reference on this is the Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Gospels by the pontifical biblical commission and Pope Paul VI (available online).

Thanks for this, it’s always good to go to the source. It’s on my list of “must reads”. After years of searching around I’ve found that the Vatican usually has got there first. I’ve just finished reading the “Lineamenta” guidelines for the Bishop’s Synod next year on the New Evangelization. Anyone who thinks the Pope is out of touch needs to read it, he’s got his finger on the pulse of the world.

“Ten thousand diffiulties do not make one doubt.” Blessed J.H. Newman

 

[danserr]

Nero’s persecutions began after the fires of Rome in A.D. 64 July. ACTS ends with Paul in Rome in A.D. 63, with Paul thinking about going to Spain. And it ends abruptly. So, yes, both Paul and Luke could have been caught up in the executions in Rome, along with Peter and other Christians.
Also of interest, the High Priest that Paul insulted in Jerusalem years before was actually a part of the Salon of Nero and Poppea at that time. Connection? Hagan in “Fires of Rome” suggests so.

Right, but the fact that Luke never mentions their deaths, Paul, Peter, etc., suggests they had not yet died. Which we know they did in 63/64 AD. This suggests the gospel was written before then.
An interesting thought on the fires of rome and hagan.

 

[Frankenfurter]

According to the Book of John, Jesus could neither read nor write.

According to Luke, chapter 4: ‘He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.’

Seems to me he could read.

 

[steve53]

According to Luke, chapter 4: ‘He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him.’

Seems to me he could read.

Ah, Luke again…

 

[danserr]

Ah, Luke again…

On Luke:

"The Gospel writers have a proven track record of historical reliability. Again I only have time to look at one example: Luke. Luke was the author of a two-part work: the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles. These are really one work and are separated in our Bibles only because the church grouped the gospels together in the New Testament. Luke is the gospel writer who writes most self-consciously as an historian. In the preface to this work he writes:

Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us, just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed. (Lk. 1.1-4)

This preface is written in classical Greek terminology such as was used by Greek historians; after this Luke switches to a more common Greek. But he has put his reader on alert that he can write, should he wish to, like the learned historian. He speaks of his lengthy investigation of the story he’s about to tell and assures us that it is based on eyewitness information and is accordingly the truth.

Now who was this author we call Luke? He was clearly not an eyewitness to Jesus’s life. But we discover an important fact about him from the book of Acts. Beginning in the sixteenth chapter of Acts, when Paul reaches Troas in modern-day Turkey, the author suddenly starts using the first-person plural: “we set sail from Troas to Samothrace,” “we remained in Philippi some days,” “as we were going to the place of prayer,” etc. The most obvious explanation is that the author had joined Paul on his evangelistic tour of the Mediterranean cities. In chapter 21 he accompanies Paul back to Palestine and finally to Jerusalem. What this means is that the author of Luke-Acts was in fact in first hand contact with the eyewitnesses of Jesus’s life and ministry in Jerusalem. Sceptical critics have done back-flips to try to avoid this conclusion. They say that the use of the first-person plural in Acts should not be taken literally; it’s just a literary device which is common in ancient sea voyage stories. Never mind that many of the passages in Acts are not about Paul’s sea voyage, but take place on land! The more important point is that this theory, when you check it out, turns out to be sheer fantasy.4 There just was no literary device of sea voyages in the first person plural—the whole thing has been shown to be a scholarly fiction! There is no avoiding the conclusion that Luke-Acts was written by a traveling companion of Paul who had the opportunity to interview eyewitnesses to Jesus’s life while in Jerusalem. Who were some of these eyewitnesses? Perhaps we can get some clue by subtracting from the Gospel of Luke everything found in the other gospels and seeing what is peculiar to Luke. What you discover is that many of Luke’s peculiar narratives are connected to women who followed Jesus: people like Joanna and Susanna, and significantly, Mary, Jesus’s mother.

Was the author reliable in getting the facts straight? The book of Acts enables us to answer that question decisively. The book of Acts overlaps significantly with secular history of the ancient world, and the historical accuracy of Acts is indisputable. This has recently been demonstrated anew by Colin Hemer, a classical scholar who turned to New Testament studies, in his book The Book of Acts in the Setting of Hellenistic History. 5Hemer goes through the book of Acts with a fine-toothed comb, pulling out a wealth of historical knowledge, ranging from what would have been common knowledge down to details which only a local person would know. Again and again Luke’s accuracy is demonstrated: from the sailings of the Alexandrian corn fleet to the coastal terrain of the Mediterranean islands to the peculiar titles of local officials, Luke gets it right. According to Professor Sherwin-White, "For Acts the confirmation of historicity is overwhelming. Any attempt to reject its basic historicity even in matters of detail must now appear absurd."6 The judgement of Sir William Ramsay, the world-famous archaeologist, still stands: "Luke is a historian of the first rank . . . . This author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."7

taken from:
reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5207

 

[steve53]

As I said, Luke mis-identified the High Priest of the Second Temple in A.D. 58 and the Jesus-as-a-child-in-the-Temple is a Josephus rip-off.

But these are not intentional, granted. And his sources were “eyewitnesses” but also “ministers”, and god knows who they were. And when he wrote in the mid-A.D. 60’s, anyone could claim to be anyone, and claim to see anything. So all thus gushing over Luke should be tempered with the reality of people being people.

Even Paul doesn’t admit to meeting Jesus when Jesus was alive, or even resurrected.

The Book of John was written by a self-admitted eyewitness, and it is curious when scholars try to discount it.

 

[melbanglican]

reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5207

It’s a short pop article but will give you an idea of some of the issues. You do have to sign in to read it though.

Ehrman is pretty radical, but he does get alot of attention from the media.

There is a lot to watch with him. First of all, many of the things that he says are technically true, they just don’t matter as much as he claims they do. You have to understand, he was a Fundamentalist Christian, so he interpreted every single line and word in the bible literally and was apparently so traumatized when he learned that the bible contained scribal errors that he gave up his faith.

So to someone like him, learning that some of the letters attributed to Paul might not really be by Paul, was very traumatic. To a Catholic or more mainline Protestant, that’s not really such a big deal. He will also pick out a word here or there to quibble over in a gospel and then claim that because these few words are in doubt, how can we possible trust the gospel? Obviously, though, this is just silly, a few words in doubt hardly makes the whole gospel unreliable. By the same logic we could not consider any text reliable, not even from the 20th century before computers were invented.

Anyway, there are a great many other books out there by authors who show that there are good reasons for considering the New Testament as a whole to be reliable.

• Carsten Peter Thiede, Jesus: Man or Myth amazon.com/Jesus-Myth-Carsten-Peter-Thiede/dp/0745951473/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1309300556&sr=8-1
• NT Wright has a lot of good stuff, both scholarly and popular.
  amazon.com/Challenge-Jesus-DVD-N-Wright/dp/0830838325/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1309300745&sr=1-1
• Lee Strobel is a popular writer on the Resurrection
  amazon.com/Case-Christ-Journalists-Personal-Investigation/dp/0310209307/ref=pd_sim_b_1

It’s a long list, but these few can get you started.

To these names and sources, I would suggest that you add E P Sanders’ ‘The Historical Figure of Jesus’.

One popular belief among biblical scholars is that the Gospels were ‘assembled’ from a series of pericopes, which accounts for the slightly disjointed nature of the structure of the Gospels in some instances. That some of these pericopes may not record the exact words spoken by Our Lord does not bother me in the slightest! My faith (and that’s what Christianity is, a faith, not a Humanity or a Social Science) will carry me through, past the vagaries or inaccuracies that may or may not exist in the Bible.

Luke was not a historian, in the modern sense. If anything, in our terms, he was a raconteur or an antiquarian. Those among us who are historians by education and training will recognise that the style used by Luke and the other Gospel writers is not what’s used by the modern historian. That hardly matters. They wrote to the best of their ability, using the information they had to hand, in order to provide the most accurate record they could and to persuade readers that Jesus was God, had risen from the dead and had sent out believers to spread the faith to every corner of world.

If I might risk a blasphemous paraphrase, the Resurrection (for which there is ample evidence) is what matters, the rest is merely commentary!

 

[Bob_Crowley]

How reliable is the new testament? Does it really construct the life of Jesus and was it his words that were written down?

According to scholar Bart Ehrman the New Testament is full of forgeries, and the authors wrote to decieve.

Any good books on this subject?

I picked up a small second hand book, “The New Testament Documents - Are They Reliable?” by FF Bruce. He was a Protestant, but he knew his stuff, being Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis in the University of Manchester.

I’m slowly working through it. He made the comment that generally “it is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ stories”. It is more often theologians, and of course, atheists, and some journalists, who seek to deny a historical Christ. Historians, having sifted the evidence, generally favour a historical Jesus Christ.

 

[Bob_Crowley]

As an aside to my post above, there are numerous little side notes which give credence to the New Testament. FF Bruce wrote -

"The reader of Acts will remember on Paul’s last visit to Jerusalem, a riot arose in the temple because the rumour got around that he had polluted the sacred precincts by taking Gentiles into them. Gentiles might enter the outer court, which was not really part of the temple buildings proper; but they might not penetrate farther on pain of death. So anxious were the Roman authorities to conciliate the religious susceptibilities of the Jews that they even sanctioned the execution of Roman citizens for this offence. That none might plead ignorance of the rule, notices in Greek and Latin were fastened to the barricade separating the outer from the inner courts, warning Gentiles that death was the penalty for trespass. One of these Greek inscriptions, found at Jerusalem in 1871 by CS Clermont-Ganneau, is now housed in Istanbul, and reads as follows :

“NO FOREIGNER MAY ENTER WITHIN THE BARRICADE WHICH SURROUNDS THE TEMPLE AND ENCLOSURE. ANYONE WHO IS CAUGHT DOING SO WILL HAVE HIMSELF TO THANK FOR HIS ENSUING DEATH.”"

You might remember that Pilate placed a sign on his cross “The King of the Jews” in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. There had already been a precedent in the Temple grounds.

 

[steve53]

As an aside to my post above, there are numerous little side notes which give credence to the New Testament. FF Bruce wrote -

"… So anxious were the Roman authorities to conciliate the religious susceptibilities of the Jews that they even sanctioned the execution of Roman citizens for this offence. That none might plead ignorance of the rule, notices in Greek and Latin were fastened to the barricade separating the outer from the inner courts, warning Gentiles that death was the penalty for trespass. One of these Greek inscriptions, found at Jerusalem in 1871 by CS Clermont-Ganneau, is now housed in Istanbul, and reads as follows :

“NO FOREIGNER MAY ENTER WITHIN THE BARRICADE WHICH SURROUNDS THE TEMPLE AND ENCLOSURE. ANYONE WHO IS CAUGHT DOING SO WILL HAVE HIMSELF TO THANK FOR HIS ENSUING DEATH.”"

You might remember that Pilate placed a sign on his cross “The King of the Jews” in Greek, Latin and Hebrew. There had already been a precedent in the Temple grounds.

It was hardly a barricade. The walls of the Inner Courtyard were sixty feet tall and served as a fortress of last resort. Titus with his Roman Army had a heck of a time taking it after he had secured the outer courtyard.

I would like to know specifically the instance where a Roman citizen was executed for violating a Jewish law. In fact, being a Roman citizen is what saved Paul from death more than once.

Josephus War V 5:2…When you go through these [first] cloisters, unto the second [court of the] temple, there was a partition made of stone all round, whose height was three cubits: its construction was very elegant; upon it stood pillars, at equal distances from one another, declaring the law of purity, some in Greek, and some in Roman letters, that “no foreigner should go within that sanctuary” for that second [court of the] temple was called “the Sanctuary,”

 

[Bob_Crowley]

It was hardly a barricade. The walls of the Inner Courtyard were sixty feet tall and served as a fortress of last resort. Titus with his Roman Army had a heck of a time taking it after he had secured the outer courtyard.

I would like to know specifically the instance where a Roman citizen was executed for violating a Jewish law. In fact, being a Roman citizen is what saved Paul from death more than once.

Josephus War V 5:2…When you go through these [first] cloisters, unto the second [court of the] temple, there was a partition made of stone all round, whose height was three cubits: its construction was very elegant; upon it stood pillars, at equal distances from one another, declaring the law of purity, some in Greek, and some in Roman letters, that “no foreigner should go within that sanctuary” for that second [court of the] temple was called “the Sanctuary,”

One would be hard put to find an individual case of a Roman citizen being put to death for trespassing in the Temple, in an age when the Romans were said to have crucified about a million people, most of whom died without written evidence of their trial or death, and human life was cheap. Even Christ’s crucifixion has few references outside the New Testament itself.

However, Philo quotes from Agrippa’s letter to Gaius: “And if any one else, I will not say of the Jews, but even of the priests, and those not of the lowest order, but even those who are in the rank next to the first, should go in there, either with him or after him, or even if the very high priest himself should enter in thither on two days in the year, or three or four times on the same day, he is subjected to inevitable death for his impiety, so great are the precautions taken by our lawgiver with respect to the holy of holies, as he determined to preserve it alone inaccessible to and untouched by any human being”

Other evidence that a Gentile found in the inner Temple court was to be executed: “. In the midst of which, and not far from it, was the second, to be gone up to by a few steps: this was encompassed by a stone wall for a partition, with an inscription, which forbade any foreigner to go in under pain of death.” (Josephus Ant. 15.417-418) as well as archaeological evidence - see the temple warning inscription [External Link])

So the warning was there. If the Romans allowed the Jews to execute Gentiles for trespassing in the temple area, it would have been to avoid riots due to Jewish sensitivity regarding their religion. The Romans were a pragmatic bunch when they needed to be.

As for Paul being saved by his Roman citizenship, there were other factors at work. One was the Roman fear of an insurrection, and they wanted to find out what was going on. Another was the fact Paul had not let Gentiles into the inner court, as his judges agreed when it was found he had not done anything wrong, and could have been released if he had not appealed to the emperor; and of course God would have had a hand in the process, since He wanted Paul to go to Rome. That was part of His plan.

 

[DavidPalm]

I picked up a small second hand book, “The New Testament Documents - Are They Reliable?” by FF Bruce. He was a Protestant, but he knew his stuff, being Rylands Professor of Biblical Criticism and Exegesis in the University of Manchester.

I’m slowly working through it. He made the comment that generally “it is not historians who propagate the ‘Christ-myth’ stories”. It is more often theologians, and of course, atheists, and some journalists, who seek to deny a historical Christ. Historians, having sifted the evidence, generally favour a historical Jesus Christ.

You beat me to it, as I was going to recommend this work as well. So I still will. It’s very good.

Craig Blomberg’s work The Historical Reliability of the Gospels is also excellent.

 

[steve53]

So you agree that the Romans didn’t care a whit about Jewish law, only in keeping the peace. The only reason Pilate crucified Jesus was when the Priests pressed the point that Jesus was trying to usurp Roman authority by challenging Caesar.
The Temple Priests did whatever they had to do to preserve their positions. Remember, the Romans let them have administrative authority, because the Jews had such an intricate series of laws. So the Romans enforced Jewish law only by the most tortured of logic.

"As for Paul being saved by his Roman citizenship, there were other factors at work. One was the Roman fear of an insurrection, and they wanted to find out what was going on. Another was the fact Paul had not let Gentiles into the inner court, as his judges agreed when it was found he had not done anything wrong, and could have been released if he had not appealed to the emperor; and of course God would have had a hand in the process, since He wanted Paul to go to Rome. That was part of His plan. "

Felix kept Paul locked up hoping to get a ransom from Paul’s well-off Jerusalem family, or the Christians themselves. But he grew to like Paul- who was part-Greek, as was Felix. Felix probably especially like to unleash Paul in Caesarea when the Jewish pilgrims came through for the festivals, just to take a “dig” at the high-toned Jewish orthodoxy of the times. This further infuriated the Jerusalem high Priesthood.
When Festus arrives on the scene in A.D. 60, he wanted to release Paul, but the High Priest still wanted to kill him. This surprised Festus, and he knew that if he released him into the streets of Caesarea, the Jewish assassins would make short work of the harmless man. So, in a move just short of brilliant, Festus sent Paul to Rome for “trial” with an armed escort. Even though Paul arrived months late, Festus probably didn’t even send ahead an indictment, doing Paul a favor by getting him safely to Rome and, supposedly, out of harm’s way. Of course, with Paul and his evangelizing style, trouble always seemed to be just around the corner- Paul was a proverbial lightning rod in that respect…

source Hagan “Roman Fires”

 

[Frankenfurter]

Ah, Luke again…

I have reviewed the other Gospels an acts and I see that they all describe Jesus as quoting scripture, having great knowledge of scripture, and describing what he has read in scripture.

While it does not come out and claim that ‘Jesus could read’, seems to me it is taken for granted. The burden of proof is on you if you think he can’t read IMHO.