Bible Study: Acts 21-22

These chapters are a transition. Paul has completed his third missionary journey, and is now on his way to Jerusalem to rejoin with the Jewish community there for the Passover celebration. From there he plans to go, at long last, to Rome. Along the way, Paul is warned or delayed several times by the Holy Spirit, because Jerusalem will be dangerous for Paul. This is an echo of the Jesus story, when he sets his sights on going to Jerusalem although he knows of the danger.

Once Paul does arrive in Jerusalem, he must do some extraordinary and unusual rituals to prove his loyalty to his Jewish heritage, as his credentials are at stake. He has proclaimed that the Gentiles do not need to follow Torah fully, as agreed upon by the leaders in Jerusalem in ch. 15. The word on the street about Paul, however, is that he has also allowed or encouraged Jews living in Gentile areas to be lax about their Torah observance. We can see that it will be a problem to have two sets of standards for Christians—those of Jewish heritage are expected to be fully Jewish, including dietary restrictions and circumcision, but those of Gentile heritage have only some basic tenets of Torah to observe.

In order to prove his allegiance to Judaism, Paul pays for some Jews to complete their Nazirite vow. [side note: the Nazirite vow is a promise made to God, and the sign of it is that the promiser will not cut his hair until the vow is fulfilled, nor drink any alcohol. Sometimes a person is dedicated as a Nazirite for life, including the prophet Samuel (1 Sam 1:24-28) and the judge Samson (Judges 13:2-7), and perhaps John the Baptizer (Luke 1:14-15). See Numbers 6:1-21 for details of the Nazirite vow.¹] This full participation in completing an important ritual is supposed to “prove” he is still Jewish. But some Jews from Asia (v. 27; perhaps those who followed him from Thessalonica to Beroea, to stir up the crowds?) begin to speak against him, which results in a full-blown riot. He is given an opportunity to speak, and, miraculously, this large crowd quiets enough to listen to him—until they don’t. He is taken into custody for his own protection.

These scenes are the beginning of Paul’s arrest, defense, trial, and imprisonment in Rome, which will occupy much of the rest of the book of Acts. In this first scene, Paul offers his own defense by retelling his conversion story (which we will hear again in ch. 26). He clearly sees that being a faithful Jew = belonging to the Way of Jesus; those who do not follow Jesus are unfaithful Jews.² In his zeal for proclaiming the Gospel to Gentiles, Paul is not abandoning his Jewish faith, he asserts; he’s just trying to “keep up with the movements of the God of Judaism”.³ The crowds listen to Paul to a point, but then the riot breaks out again, and he is taken into protective custody as a Roman citizen, which also subjects him to the Roman judicial process⁴, which we see in the next chapters.

A replica of the Antonia Fortress, from which front steps Paul makes his speech in ch. 22, and where Jesus was tried by Pilate. 

Our guiding questions:

1.     What is God doing?

2.     What are the people doing?

3.     What do we learn as church?

1. Levine, Amy Jill and Mark Zvi Brettler, eds. The Jewish Annotated New Testament. NY: Oxford, 2011. 241

2. Willimon, William H. Acts. Atlanta, John Knox Press, 1988. 163

3. Ibid, 168

4. Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Acts of the Apostles (Sacra Pagina, v. 5). Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1992. 394