The life and work of St. Paul

THE LAST JOU&ttSfr TO JKIi'JSALEM. 533
but nowhere more essential than in a city which Prefect after Praefoct and
Procurator after Procurator had learnt to detest as the head-quarters of
burning, senseless, and incomprehensible fanaticism. A single word was
enough to surround Lysias with a well- disciplined contingent of centurions
and soldiers, and he instantly dashed along the cloister roof and down the
stairs into the Court of the Gentiles. The well-known clang of Roman arms
arrested the attention of the mob. They had had some terrible warnings very
lately. The memory of that awful day, when they trampled each other to
death by thousands to escape the cohort of Cumanus, was still fresh in their
memory. They did not dare to resist the mailed soldiery of their conquerors.
Lysias and his soldiers forced their way straight through the throng to the
place where Paul was standing, and rescued him from his enraged opponents.
When he had seized him, and had his arms bound to two soldiers by two chaiiia,
he asked the question, " Who the man might be, and what he had done ? " l
Nothing was to be learnt from the confused cries that rose in answer, and, in
despair of arriving at anything definite in such a scene, Lysias ordered him
to be marched into the barracks. 1 But no sooner had he got on the stairs which
led up to the top of the cloister, and so into the fortress, 3 than the mob, afraid
that they were going to be baulked of their vengeance, made another rush at
him, with yells of " " * Kill him ! kill him ! and Paul, unable in his fettered
condition to steady himself, was carried off his legs, and hurried along in the
arms of the surrounding soldiers. He was saved from being torn to pieces
chiefly by the fact that Lysias kept close by him ; and, as the rescue-party
was about to disappear into the barracks, Paul said to him in Greek, " May
I speak a word to you P " " Can you speak Greek ? " asked the commandant
" 5
in surprise. Are you not then really that Egyptian who a little while ago
made a disturbance, 6 and led out into the wilderness those 4,000 sicarii ? " J
"
No," said Paul
"
; I am a Jew, a native of Tarsus, in Cilicia, a citizen of
1 XXI. 33, rt? iv f IT), KOI ri ccrnv weTroiTJKoit.
* Tra.pf[j.{io\rj.
<
* Fort Antonia was a four-square tower, at the N.W. angle of the Temple area, with
a smaller tower fifty cubits high at each corner except the southern, where the tower was
seventy cubits high, with the express object of overlooking everything that went on in
the Temple courts. Stairs from these towera communicated with the roofs of two porticoes,
on which at intervals (juOTajievoi) stood armed Human soldiers at the times of the
great festivals, to prevent all seditious movements (Jos. JJ. /". v. 5, 8 ; Antt. xx. 5, 3).
4 Of. Luke xxiii. 18, and the cry of Pagan mobs, a!peroi>$ adcW.
5 Ver. 38, OVK apa (TV tl o Aivvirrios .... . j One hardly sees why Lysias should have
inferred that the Egyptian could not speak Greek, but he may have known that this was
the fact. Since the Egyptian had only escaped a few months before, and the mass of the
people never favourable to him would be exasperated at the detection of hia imposture,
the conjecture of Lysias was not surprising.
avcurraTwra?. Cf. XVli. 6.
7 Ver. 38, roi/s TerpajcwrxtXiovt appa; Ttav triKopiiav. Josephus (Antt. XX. 8, 6) says that ;
Felix, when he routed them, killed 400 and took 200 prisoners. In B. J. ii. 13, 5, he
says that he collected 30,000 followers, and led them to the Mount of Olives from the
wilderness, and that the majority of them were massacred or taken prisoners. Most
critics only attach importance to such discrepancies when they find or imagine them in
the sacred writere. For the sicarii, see Jos. B. J. ii. 13, 3. He says that they murdered
people in broad day, and in the open streets, especially during the great feasts, and
that they carried their daggers concealed under their robes,