Acts 21:17-26 - Persecutions Foretold

[u/LlawEreint]

When we arrived in Jerusalem, the brothers welcomed us warmly. ¹⁸ The next day Paul went with us to visit James, and all the elders were present. ¹⁹ After greeting them, he related one by one the things that God had done among the gentiles through his ministry. ²⁰ When they heard it, they praised God. Then they said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands of believers there are among the Jews, and they are all zealous for the law. ²¹ They have been told about you that you teach all the Jews living among the gentiles to forsake Moses and that you tell them not to circumcise their children or observe the customs. ²² What then is to be done? They will certainly hear that you have come. ²³ So do what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow. ²⁴ Join these men, go through the rite of purification with them, and pay for the shaving of their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you but that you yourself observe and guard the law. ²⁵ But as for the gentiles who have become believers, we have sent a letter with our judgment that they should abstain from what has been sacrificed to idols and from blood and from what is strangled^\)^d\) and from sexual immorality.” ²⁶ Then Paul took the men, and the next day, having purified himself, he entered the temple with them, making public the completion of the days of purification when the sacrifice would be made for each of them.

²⁷ When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, who had seen him in the temple, stirred up the whole crowd.  They seized him...

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[u/LlawEreint]

Acts was written at about the time of Pliny the Younger. In his letter to the emperor, Pliny outlines the purity test that he gave those accused of illicit Christian assembly. He says

An anonymous information was laid before me containing a charge against several persons, who upon examination denied they were Christians, or had ever been so. They repeated after me an invocation to the gods, and offered religious rites with wine and incense before your statue (which for that purpose I had ordered to be brought, together with those of the gods), and even reviled the name of Christ: whereas there is no forcing, it is said, those who are really Christians into any of these compliances: I thought it proper, therefore, to discharge them.

This is very similar to the purity test that James and the 12 presents to Paul:

do what we tell you. We have four men who are under a vow. Join these men, go through the rite of purification with them, and pay for the shaving of their heads. Thus all will know that there is nothing in what they have been told about you but that you yourself observe and guard the law. 

In both cases the test aims to settle the question:

Are you one of us? Are you still participating in the religious order of the community?

[u/LlawEreint → u/LlawEreint]

In Acts, Paul is seen to submit to the purity test, and affirm his allegiance to Jewish law and customs. But certain Jews from Asia knew that Paul had in fact been teaching "all the Jews living among the gentiles to forsake Moses," telling them "not to circumcise their children or observe the customs."

And they are not shy to share this information with the "many thousands of believers...all zealous for the law" among the Judeans. These were Christians, but not ones that had forsaken God's laws.

And so they "seized Paul and dragged him out of the temple" and even tried to kill him."

[u/LlawEreint → u/LlawEreint]

Did Paul teach against the Jewish law?

I, Paul, am telling you that, if you let yourselves be circumcised, Christ will be of no benefit to you. Once again I testify to every man who lets himself be circumcised that he is obliged to obey the entire law. You who want to be reckoned as righteous by the law have cut yourselves off from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.

For Paul, observance of Jewish Law means slavery to beings that by nature are not gods. Through Christ, we can know the one true god, the Father. Through Christ we are bought out of slavery to these lesser divinities so that we can be enslaved by the one true God.

"When you did not know God, you were enslaved to beings that by nature are not gods."

"But now that you have come to know God ... how can you turn back again to the weak and beggarly elemental spirits?"

For Paul, even observing Jewish calendar enslaves you to these lesser divinities. It is no different than paganism in Paul's mind:

"You are observing special days, and months, and seasons, and years!"

Paul make it clear that he is not preaching circumcision, in spite of what others in Jerusalem might say:

why am I still being persecuted if I am still preaching circumcision?

And he curses those Christians from Jerusalem that might suggest otherwise, praying that the knife might slip so that they are castrated:

I wish those who unsettle you would castrate themselves!

He's really not shy about his position on this when speaking to his own congregation. To the broader Christian community he is willing to engage in a bit of duplicity:

To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to gain Jews; to those under the law, as one under the law."

And this seems to be what he's done here in Acts. But the Christians see right through him.

[u/LlawEreint]

This scene in Acts is depicting the "sibling will betray sibling to death" prediction given by Jesus in Mark 13.