The Roman commander treated Paul’s case as a routine matter. It belonged to the jurisdiction of the local authority, the Sanhedrin, and so to that authority he referred it. But then we have the extraordinary spectacle of such violence erupting in the Sanhedrin that Paul’s life was again in jeopardy and he had to be rescued. This was in some measure due to Paul himself, who showed neither tact nor any desire, as he had on the previous day, to conciliate his audience. A curious feature of the incident as Luke has reported it is that no mention is made of the charge that Paul had “brought Greeks into the temple area” (21:28b). But then we have already suggested that the real issue was his alleged teaching against “our people and our law and this place” (21:28a). The other was probably raised…