Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 23:15

Acts 23:15. Now therefore ye with the council signify to the chief captain that he bring him down unto you tomorrow... and we, or ever he come near, are ready to kill him. This seems at first sight a strange story, that so monstrous a design should have been conceived and communicated to the chief priests and elders, to the leading members, in fact, of the august council of the Sanhedrim, and positively should have received the approval of these venerable men; ay, more than their approval, their hearty concurrence and the promise of their assistance. Still, strange as it may seem, it was in perfect accordance with the practice of the leading members of the Jewish state in these unhappy days. We read, for instance, in the Antiquities of Josephus, how zealots of Jerusalem had conspired together to assassinate Herod the Great because he had built an amphitheatre and celebrated games in the Holy City. Philo, the famous Alexandrian Jew, who wrote in this age, and may be taken as a fair exponent of the views of morality which were held in the first century of the Christian era in the great Jewish schools, thus writes: ‘It is highly proper that all who have a zeal for virtue should have a right to punish with their own hands without delay those who are guilty of this crime' [that is, forsaking what the orthodox Jew considered the worship of the true God]... ‘not carrying them before any magistrate, but that they should indulge the abhorrence of evil and the love of God which they entertain, by inflicting immediate punishment on such impious apostates regarding themselves for the time as all things... judges... accusers, witnesses, the laws, the people; so that, hindered by nothing, they may without fear and with all promptitude espouse the cause of piety' (Philo, quoted by Dr. Hackett). ‘It is melancholy,' writes Professor Plumptre, ‘to remember how often the casuistry of Christian theologians has run in the same groove. In this respect the Jesuit teaching absolves subjects from their allegiance to heretical rulers, and the practical issue of that teaching in the history of the Gunpowder Plot and of the murders perpetrated by Clement (Henry 111.) and by Ravaillac (Henry IV.) presents only too painful a parallel.'

Continues after advertising

BibliaPlus

Philip Schaff's Popular Commentary (4 vols)

Acts 23:15

Old Testament

New Testament