NOTES for Act 17:1-15

The arguments used by the opponents of the Christians in the communities of the diaspora did not differ from those used by their opponents in Judea. And that argument was first of all political: they shifted the testimony about the Messiah and the Kingdom into the political sphere. What was this: a malicious lie or a mistake?

It is not simple to answer this question unambiguously, at least when the diaspora is in view. The fact is that messianism in general was far more influential in Judea itself than in the large and wealthy cities of the Roman Empire. And the wealthier the city, the fewer messianists there were, at least active ones. That is no surprise: in those days messianism was a religious and political movement, at least if we are speaking of traditional messianism. This means that when people spoke about a messianic movement, they always also had in mind the messianic war that would be inevitable in the end.

It was a war no one wanted: neither the Jewish community itself, which often lived quite well in a wealthy trading city, though not without problems, nor still less the Roman authorities, both local and central. Messianic political movements and messianic uprisings were in those days an integral part of the religious life of Judea, but by no means of the Jewish diaspora. Therefore the reaction of the local Jewish communities to messianic preaching in the cities of Macedonia and Achaia, as well as Asia Minor, was predictably negative. Of course, both Paul himself and his companions kept repeating that the matter concerned a Kingdom "not of this world," but this apparently did not fully dispel the fears of the local Jewish leaders. Hence their harsh reaction to the apostles as messianist preachers, and therefore as disturbers of the peace.

But one cannot, of course, exclude the simple desire to get rid of dangerous competitors through the hands of the local authorities, since there was a convenient pretext: the Roman authorities did not like messianists. And since they usually did not delve into the subtleties of internal Jewish debates, it was not especially difficult to frighten them with the possibility of an uprising even where one could not possibly occur. Here, of course, we must speak already of an open lie and a provocation, like the one organized before Pilate by representatives of the temple elite when the question of Jesus' execution was being decided.

After all, then too the question was shifted into the political sphere, and only in that way did Jesus' enemies manage to get what they wanted. Be that as it may, one thing is clear: moving questions of spiritual life into the political sphere is always spiritual degradation, and in any case it ends in nothing good. And who will use that degradation, and how, depends on the sincerity of a particular person's intentions. That very sincerity is what distinguishes a conscientious error from a malicious lie.