outhouse wrote: ↑Sat Sep 29, 2018 8:34 pm
Where I really blame your failure is in that the anthropology of this time period, which shows these were all very violent people, who did terrible things in the name of religion. While I do not use Acts, its descriptions were never vilified as rhetoric, or as lies or exaggerations, its reporting of said violence was not fictional or even viewed as such in context. This was a time of torture, starvation, death and disease. Pauls usage is actually an understatement by all credible accounts, without Acts. With Acts he has taken part in a murder, and its my opinion any part he had was down played.
Jesus is even said to stop a stoning, stoning was popular for perceived actions against their god/s
While Pauline text does exaggerate greatly as all text did, look at what Paul is said to have gone through on his journeys.
out,
My understanding, from reading sources like Josephus, etc., and Fabian Udoh's book on Roman taxation, laws, etc., was that almost all government action was carefully controlled. Judeans, regardless of where they lived in the empire, were considered an "Ethnos" (a distinct and identifiable people) and had been given the right to self-regulate through their own "courts" which were legal as well as deliberative bodies of elders.
This was mainly because Judeans, especially in the Diaspora, were unwilling to participate in civic cults of the towns, colonies & cities where they lived (sacrifices to idols, oaths to the divine emperor, et cetera), so were not local citizens. Very few would have had Roman citizenship. They might have negotiated some level of consultative input into the regional affairs, but were considered "foreigners" and thus apart from the local governments.
The Romans appointed a titular head of the Ethnos, the Ethnarch (such as Hyrcanus II, Herod the Great, Archelaeus, Agrippa I, and probably the High Priests during periods when the Romans set up caretaker governments between regents). However, this titular head, even the HP, did not have much legal authority outside of Judea, but existed as a advocate for the Judean peoples before the Romans.
The Temple Police served as the enforcers in Judea, but outside, the HPs probably could only present warrants to the local Judean elders and recommend actions. The HP was a ritual post mainly, not like the head of a "chain of command." However, those local Judean councils and associated courts were the absolute final authority over other Judeans under their jurisdictions, and could arrest and detain the heterodox and apply some level of punishment.
There were probably occasions where vigilante "justice" was applied when the Judean legal standards called for death, since the local elders probably did not have authority to apply the death sentence. I could dig up some references if you are interested.
What I think Acts was suggesting was that Saul/Paul was carrying some of these "warrants" from the HP to the Judean elders of regional centers in the eastern empire, indicating what the HP considered good practices for Judeans, and perhaps requesting firm actions against the heterodox, but IMHO the rules could only have been very general covering what were the "minimum standards" for one to be considered a Judean, and subject to the local elders.
Paul himself (assuming the general authenticity of the Pauline letters to regional congregations) just says he was exceedingly zealous in the application of ancestral laws and practices. Considering the things he says the local Judean elders did to spite and thwart him for spreading his heterodox POV, he may well have at one time recommended to these same authorities that they do the very same things to those faithful gentiles that were now his friends. Beatings, whippings, you get the idea.
I do not think that Judeans resident in the Diaspora were disposed to be too strict, as inscriptions record many many cases where synagogues and Judeans of the Diaspora got along very cozily with pagan patrons, even letting them equate the Judean god with some local god. Of course the local Judeans did not really think that, but they were willing to let the local pagans think so for the sake of getting along.
Now in the homeland, well, that is another matter. While religious nationalism ruled the day there, there were still religious courts, and plenty of gentiles who lived there in Greek cities, Roman colonies, and as tenant farmers on private estates controlled by Roman elites, had their own protections (sort of the reverse of the situation in the Diaspora).
DCH