Shortly after Paul's removal to Caesarea, the Sadducean contingent of the Sanhedrin, the high priest Ananias . . . with some of the elders, arrives to bring charges before the governor. After Paul is called in by the crier at the beginning of the court session, Tertullus presents the Jews' case. He was probably a Hellenistic Jew who served as the Sanhedrin's expert legal counsel in Roman affairs.

Tertullus's exordium with its extensive captatio benevolentiae (it takes up half the speech as Luke reports it, vv. 2-4) curries the judge's favor with conventional flowery rhetoric. First is an appreciative assessment of Felix's tenure in office. In fact, the governor's rule brought anything but a long period of peace, and there is no record of many improvements, reforms. Felix did maintain a tense peace through an ongoing series of search-and-destroy missions against hoodlum terrorists (Josephus Jewish Wars 2.253, 264-65; Jewish Antiquities 20.160-61). Yet this fanned the fires of Jewish political rebellion into fiercer and fiercer flame. Second, Tertullus curries favor by declaring his intent to move to the charges directly and deal with them briefly, depending on Felix's kindness to hear him.

Moving from general to specific, Tertullus carefully clothes the charges in mainly political terms so that they may be viewed as violations of Roman law. He begins with empirewide insurrection. The lawyer labels Paul a troublemaker (literally, "plague-spot") and accuses him of stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. Whether the implication is general insurrection (Latin seditio) or simply disrupting Jewish communities, this charge is serious (compare Lk 23:2; Acts 17:6-7). Emperor Claudius's letter to the Alexandrines (November 10, A.D. 41) uses similar language. He warns the Jews that if they persist in suspicious activities, he "will by all means take vengeance on them as fomenters of what is a general plague [nosos] infecting the whole world" (Greek Papyri in the British Museum [P. Lond.] 1912, line 99).

Tertullus next charges disruptive heresy, which may carry with it the implication of fomenting theologically motivated civil unrest. He uses a contemptuous nickname for Christians, Nazarene (compare Jn 1:46; nosrim in the Talmud [for example, Ta`anit 27b]; Williams 1985:397), and labels them a sect—no more than an unauthorized minority movement within Judaism—and Paul their ringleader. Felix had to constantly deal with civil uprisings from such movements (Josephus Jewish Wars 2.253-65).

The temple defilement charge is cautiously stated as an attempted desecration. Does this show that the Jewish leaders know they have a weak case? They have witnessed no defilement, and the Asian Jews are not present to give testimony (Acts 24:19). Such testimony in any case would have been perjured. Has Tertullus also turned this into a political charge, since the Romans had given the Jews permission to impose the death penalty on any who defiled the temple (Josephus Jewish Wars 6.124-26)? Tertullus is at least justifying the Jews' initiative in Paul's arrest. He is confident that the judge's cross-examination of the defendant will verify the accusations. As the enemies of the righteous one surround him to attack (Ps 3:6 [7 LXX]), so the Jews joined in the accusation against Paul.

This full formulation of charges reveals several characteristics of persecutors' words. They will be broad, exaggerated, unsubstantiated, untruthful allegations. Double entendre and a trimming of charges will be used to fit what can barely be proved. Should we expect any less from those in the kingdom of the "father of lies" (Jn 8:44; Acts 26:18)?