June 58 – More than forty Jews plotted to kill Paul

49 resurrection that God made to the patriarchs, and to which all twelve tribes hoped to attain (Acts 26:6-8). Later in that same speech before Agrippa, Paul stated that all of his preaching and teaching about the resurrection (and everything else) came straight out of the Old Testament prophets and Moses (Acts 26:22-23). This means that the Pharisee view of the resurrection (the Individual Body View) must have been the view that was taught throughout the Old Testament, otherwise Paul is not only guilty of deceiving the Pharisees, but falsely teaching King Agrippa II as well, who knew what the Old Testament prophets taught (see Acts 26:27). Our futurist critics have seen this problem, and have relentlessly challenged us on it. To date, the Collective Body advocates have not done a satisfying job of answering it. However, it is not a problem at all for the Individual Body View advocates. We simply affirm, like Paul and the Pharisees, that at the Parousia the souls of the Old Testament dead saints would be raised out of Hades and judged.

June 58 – More than forty Jews plotted to kill Paul

Before they ate or drank. They never were able to carry out their plot, so there must have been some pretty hungry conspirators who would have been required to go to the temple and present a costly sacrifice to the priest for breaking their oath (see Lev. 5:4-13). The priests in the temple would have eaten well that day! The plot was overheard by Paul’s nephew and he went to Paul in prison and told him about it. Paul had a sister living there in Jerusalem at that time (Summer AD 58), whose son found out about the plot to kill Paul and went to the prison to inform his uncle Paul about it (Acts 23:16-22). The Roman commander Lysias decided to get Paul out of Jerusalem and have him taken to Caesarea under cover of night. Then the Jewish leaders had to come down to Caesarea to present their case before Felix the Roman governor (who had a Jewish wife, Drusilla, the daughter of Agrippa I, and sister to Agrippa II and Bernice). The case was never decided by Felix, so Paul remained in prison there in Caesarea for two years (Acts 23:23-35; 24:27). Felix gave Paul some freedom in prison and allowed his friends to minister to him. (Acts 24:22-27) At his trial in Jerusalem, and in his multiple court appearances in Caesarea, Paul did not refrain from boldly declaring the gospel to the Roman and Jewish rulers. It was in Paul’s hearing before Festus and Agrippa in Caesarea that he said there was “about to be a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.” He also mentioned the resurrection in his Jerusalem trial before the Sanhedrin.

In Martin Hengel’s masterful work on The Zealots, he talks about this “conspiracy of forty men,” and says that it “shows there were certain links between the ruling powers (Gk. dunatoi) in Jerusalem and the Sicarii. The relatively strong guard that accompanied Paul when he was taken to Caesarea can perhaps be regarded as an indication that the power of the Zealot movement lay behind this plot” (p. 351). This suggestion has a lot of merit. That very thought crossed my mind as I was reading Luke’s account of it here in Acts 23:12-35. Josephus tells us that the Jewish leadership (chief priests and Sanhedrin) had a relationship to the Sicarii, who in turn were tightly connected with the Zealots. That appears to be the very kind of relationship in view here in Acts 23:12-22. A group of Jews conspired with the chief priests, elders, and the Sanhedrin. Luke does not identify this group of conspirators, but they are clearly following the pattern of the Sicarii that Josephus says so much about.

We might wonder why the Sicarii and Zealots were so opposed to Christianity in general, and to Apostle Paul especially? It had something to do with the Gentiles. The disturbance in Caesarea only one year before Paul was arrested and imprisoned in Caesarea, had further embittered the Zealots against the Gentiles, and pushed them closer to open rebellion against the Roman Gentile control of Judea. At the very time the Jews and Zealots were trying to rid themselves of Gentile influence and associations in Judea, the Christians (under the leadership of Paul especially) were bringing the Gentiles into the faith without circumcising them or coercing them to keep the Law. It therefore does not take much imagination to figure out why Paul was so unpopular in Judea and Galilee.

One of my podcast listeners asked about the Sadducee and Pharisee dispute on the resurrection issue which erupted in the middle of Paul’s trial there in Jerusalem (Acts 23:610). He wondered how the Sadducees (who did not believe in a resurrection) felt about the resurrections that Jesus and the apostles performed (such as Lazarus, Dorcas, Eutychus, etc.). How could the Sadducees miss this overwhelming evidence for a resurrection and a conscious afterlife? And in regard to Acts 24:15, where Paul said there was “about to be” (Gk. MELLO) a resurrection of both the righteous and wicked, did the Pharisees believe the resurrection was imminent, like Paul did? If so, wouldn’t that lend more credibility to the idea that the word MELLO really meant “about to happen” and not just “certain to happen.” Those are excellent questions and observations. Let us try to shed some light on it.

Regarding the Sadducees, it is clear that they thought the resurrection of Lazarus by Jesus was a mere magician’s trick. However, they could not disprove it, so they instead tried to kill Lazarus. It is the old gangster strategy of killing all the witnesses before the trial, so there would be no witnesses to testify against them. It is also like the kings, if they didn’t like the message that their messenger brought to them, they killed the messenger. However, that does not refute the resurrection. The truth stands regardless of their killing of the messengers.

The Sadducees not only rejected the idea that the dead were still conscious after death, but any kind of resurrection of the dead or a conscious afterlife. They did not believe in any kind of conscious life after death for anyone, and especially not a resurrection and eternal life afterwards. They believed in what we would label as “universal annihilation,” meaning that everyone would permanently cease conscious existence at their death, even the righteous. However, the Pharisees believed in both a resurrection and a conscious afterlife for all.

In regard to Acts 24:15, in Paul’s hearing before Felix in Caesarea (AD 58), it is not difficult to figure out who these Jews were that were making the accusations. They were associated with Ananias b. Nedebaeus, who we know was tightly connected with the Sanhedrin, most of whom were Sadducees. Even though this does not guarantee that Ananias was a Sadducee, it certainly points in that direction. Some of the High Priests were Pharisees, while others were not openly committed to either side. However, here in Acts 23 it seems apparent that Ananias was closely allied with the Sadducean element in the Sanhedrin, implying that he was probably Sadducean himself. The Pharisee party within the Sanhedrin was opposed to the Sadducee party (kind of like the Democrat and Republican parties here in the USA). It seems clear from the intensity of the controversy that arose at Paul’s trial, that Ananias was on the Sadducean side of the dispute against Paul, while the Pharisees defended Paul’s side of the debate about the resurrection.

This defense of Paul by the Pharisees raises an interesting point. It is highly doubtful that the Pharisees would have defended Paul if they had understood that he was teaching a radically different concept of resurrection than they were. Paul goes out of his way to identify with the Pharisees, necessarily implying that he agreed with them in their concept of “a resurrection of both the righteous and the wicked.” If he had a radically different concept of that resurrection than the Pharisees (i.e., the collective body idea), then he has to be charged with deliberate deceit in leading the Pharisees to think that he was advocating the same kind of resurrection that they were. There is a real problem here that the collective body advocates have not honestly faced, nor adequately dealt with. Either Paul agreed with the Pharisaic concept of a resurrection of the dead disembodied souls out of Sheol, or he deliberately deceived them into thinking that he did. Such deceit is unbecoming of an inspired Apostle who challenges us to follow him as He follows Christ. If he was deliberately deceptive on this occasion when he was supposedly preaching the gospel, how can we trust him anywhere else. Paul elsewhere claims that he NEVER preached the gospel in craftiness, or deceitful scheming (2 Cor. 4:2; Eph. 4:14). Such deceit would discredit not only Apostle Paul, but the whole gospel message. The clear implication here in Acts (24:15, 21, 25; 26:6-8, 22-23; 28:20) is that Paul was proclaiming in Christ a resurrection of dead souls (both righteous and wicked) out of the underworld (Sheol, Hades), just like the Pharisees believed