@john2:
Then it says that Paul's mission was to be a witness for Jesus "to everyone," which presumably included those in power he encountered.
First of all, it says nothing about Jesus, it talks about the Righteous One. The very point is that doing stuff like associating "the Righteous One" with Jesus is an assumption that gets made within the context of the Christian narrative, but if you take the material on its own, without brining these assumptions to it, you see its not actually saying that.
Secondly, read that passage and think about it.
"14 “Then he said: ‘The God of our ancestors has chosen you to know his will and to see the Righteous One and to hear words from his mouth. 15 You will be his witness to all people of what you have seen and heard. 16 And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptized and wash your sins away, calling on his name.’
17 “When I returned to Jerusalem and was praying at the temple, I fell into a trance 18 and saw the Lord speaking to me. ‘Quick!’ he said. ‘Leave Jerusalem immediately, because the people here will not accept your testimony about me.’"
Let's assume that the Righteous One = Jesus, i.e. that "his name" is Yeshu'a. Ananias is telling Paul that Paul has been chose to "be the voice" of this heavenly deity. Paul is chosen to be a messenger for a heavenly being. Why would Paul need to be a voice for "the Righteous One", if "the Righteous One" had just been on earth a few years prior preaching with his own mouth? The whole scenario implies that Ananias' concept of "the Righteous One" is a heavenly being who needs human messengers, i.e. prophets, to be his mouthpiece on earth.
This sounds an awfully lot like typical Jewish demonology/angelology.
Then Acts 24 says that those in power charged Paul primarily with being a "ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes," and other Jews agreed with them. Do you suppose that they all did not know that Nazarenes believed in Jesus?
What makes you think so? Nothing in the text leads to that conclusion. Its an inference you make based on assumptions about the validity of the Gospel stories. Based on this portion of Acts alone it sounds like there was some sect called the Nazarenes, who preached in opposition to the ruling powers in Jerusalem. This is a well known thread that run throughout Hellenistic and early Roman Jewish history. From the Maccabean revolt on we hear constantly of Jewish sects who were in opposition to whatever high priest was in power and were working to undermine them along with whatever ruling authorities their were, whether it was the Seleucids, the Hasmoneans, or the Romans. All along the way Jewish and foreign leaders we having various opposition groups arrested and sometimes killed. There was a constant vigil against Jewish opposition sects.
So it appears to me that Paul's trial was about his belief in Jesus and the unrest that it caused in Jerusalem and that his defense was that this belief was in keeping with normative Judaism.
You're misrepresenting the quote. You made it look like the thing Paul says the king knows about is Jesus of Nazareth. But that's now what the text says. The text says:
"22 But God has helped me to this very day; so I stand here and testify to small and great alike. I am saying nothing beyond what the prophets and Moses said would happen— 23 that the Messiah would suffer and, as the first to rise from the dead, would bring the message of light to his own people and to the Gentiles.”
24 At this point Festus interrupted Paul’s defense. “You are out of your mind, Paul!” he shouted. “Your great learning is driving you insane.”
25 “I am not insane, most excellent Festus,” Paul replied. “What I am saying is true and reasonable. 26 The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him. I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice, because it was not done in a corner. 27 King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know you do.”"
The text has Paul saying that the king is familiar with the words of the prophets, not that he's familiar with Jesus.
So according to Acts, Jews in Jerusalem and those in power (including Roman governors) were aware that Paul believed in Jesus. Then in Acts 26 it is again noted that those in power were aware of Jesus:
Indeed, this is the only real mention of Jesus in the whole trial. But in that mention we get no details at all. It says there was a Jesus "who had died" but Paul claimed "was alive." That would clearly have to be a misunderstanding or would be talking about something totally different from the Jesus of Paul's visions. Claiming that someone is alive is different from claiming to have visions of someone in heaven.
Secondly, this says, "a certain Jesus who had died," which is quite different from, "a certain Jesus that the Sanhedrin had put to death for being a seditious blasphemer."
The point is, here Paul is being interrogated by the Sanhedrin, the very body who, according to the Gospels, sentenced Jesus to death, and there is no discussion about Jesus at all. The Sanhedrin doesn't explain to Paul why Jesus was killed and why worshiping him is wrong, and Paul makes no defense of the human Jesus to explain why worshiping him is right! There is no discussion at all of the main event supposedly at the heart of the whole matter!
The entire heart of the Gospel story is the idea that Jesus' unjust execution was a sacrificial act that absolved the sins of the righteous/those who have faith in him/Gentiles/the world/whatever may be the claim. Paul is now standing before the very people who supposedly brought about that sacrifice and made all of this unfold. These people were the instrument of the most significant act in the history of the world according to the Christian narrative. And here Paul is, now standing before THE VERY PEOPLE WHO KILLED JESUS, and not a thing is said about it!
Even if you try to claim that maybe the body of the Sanhedrin had completely changed between the time of Pilate and Festus, about 20 years, surely the body would still either defend prior ruling or acknowledge its error. Either they would be defenders of the prior body or they would be an all new group of people who had been appointed to oppose the prior body. I'm sure it could be worked out to some degree from Josephus what the state of the Sanhedrin was at that point. I'm not sure. I know there was a lot of politics going on around it. But I believe that the body was stable and consisted of elders with long standing leadership in Jerusalem. No matter what the case, if anything like the Gospel scene had actually played out people on the Sanhedrin Paul was facing would have had deep knowledge of it, especially if, as you read into it, order had been given and carried out to arrest and put down a movement inspired by this person's execution.
So the claim is that this Jesus person had been executed at the order of the Sanhedrin, that a large scale campaign was being waged, of which Paul was a part, to put down a rebellion that had been incited by followers of this Jesus of Nazareth whom the Sanhedrin had sentenced. Everyone at that point would have to know who he was. He would have been an infamous figurehead - someone on the order of Osama bin Laden. And here Paul is now facing trial in front of the body who sentenced this Osama bin Laden type figure to death, and they don't even discuss it!?
"there was a Jesus guy who died that Paul says is alive." Oh, you mean the guy who was the leader of the Nazarene sect, whose execution apparently necessitated a mass order for widespread persecution to root out a rebel movement?
You see how none of this is adding up right?
So the point of all this is, the very nature of this Acts narrative leads to the conclusion that the narrative is in fact based on an earlier source that was produced prior to the Gospels, and the writer of Acts followed that pre-Gospel narrative, even though it no longer really made sense in the larger post-Gospel context.
