Journal: Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society
Volume: JETS 67:3 (Sep 2024)
Article: “Inconceivable”? Exploring The Plausibility Of Claudius Lysias’s Decision In Acts 21:40
Author: Benjamin Browning

JETS 67:3 (September 2024) p. 519

“Inconceivable”? Exploring The Plausibility Of Claudius Lysias’s Decision In Acts 21:40

Benjamin Browning*

* Benjamin Browning is the director of distance learning and prison programs at New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. He can be contacted at bbrowning@ nobts.edu.

Abstract: Would the tribune, Claudius Lysias, have allowed the Apostle Paul to speak to an angry crowd on the temple mount as described in Acts 21:40? Unlike previous contributions, this article seeks to answer this question by examining how other officials within the Roman empire responded to hostile crowds and then comparing Lysias’s behavior with that of his peers. This exploration reveals that ancient Roman writers frequently recorded Roman officials responding to crowds by making public addresses or allowing others to address the crowd on their behalf. Therefore, when compared with his peers, Lysias’s behavior in Acts 21:40 is indeed plausible.

Key words: Apostle Paul, Claudius Lysias, Acts 21, mob violence, riots, Roman government.

In Acts 21:40, a Roman tribune named Claudius Lysias made a critical decision. He allowed Paul to speak to an angry crowd that had just beaten the apostle severely. The tribune’s decision serves an important narrative function because it introduces a key speech. This raises a question: Is Lysias’s decision merely a narrative device, or is it a historically plausible depiction? In other words, would a Roman official like Lysias have allowed the Apostle Paul to speak to an angry crowd on the temple mount as described in Acts 21:40?1

The debate over the plausibility of Lysias’s actions began with critical scholars of the nineteenth century. In 1845, Ferdinand C. Baur asked a rhetorical question, “Is it likely that the Roman tribune, who had arrested the Apostle in a highly tumultuous scene, should have given permission to a prisoner, whom he held to be a rebel of a most dangerous kind, to deliver a public speech, … especially when it could not be foretold how this speech would operate on people already in a state of

JETS 67:3 (September 2024) p. 520

suspicious excitement?”2 In 1854, Edward Zeller built on Baur’s question by suggesting that it was “suspicious [Verdacht] that, contrary to all the rules of prudence [Vorsicht], the Roman tribune so readily granted h...