The success of the thesis expressed in this study relies upon the weight of cumulative evidence. In the earlier chapters it was shown that the traditional portrayal of Paul raises several problems. Luke, it appears, was attempting to portray Paul as a man of high social status and moral virtue at the expense of strict historical accuracy.

The focus of this investigation will now shift to those scenes in Acts in which Paul confronts Roman or provincial legal authority. However, the importance of the perception of Paul's social status will remain primary.

The last eight chapters of Acts are made up of a number of scenes in which Paul has to defend himself and his ministry before the leaders of the Christian community in Jerusalem (21:17ff.), before the Jewish people (22:1ff.), before the council of the Jews (23:1ff.), before Felix in Caesarea (24:1ff.), before Festus and his tribunal (25:1ff.), before Festus, Agrippa, and Bernice (25:13ff.), and before the Jews of Rome (28:17). Some have argued that Paul's trials on the sea are a symbolic hearing before the court of Nature (27:1 to 28:67). Assuming that a final court appearance would occur before Nero, it is undeniable that Paul is on trial for almost the entirety of the last eight chapters of Acts.

The first readers of Luke-Acts were introduced to a panoply of individuals who would have appeared in the life of the cities, villages, and rural outposts of the Roman empire. The characters mentioned by Luke include individuals of every contemporary ethnic and political community. Furthermore, in his narrative Luke introduces shepherds, vinedressers, fisherfolk, tanners, silversmiths, purple-dye sellers, charismatic leaders and their followers, priests and scribes, prostitutes, tax-collectors, beggars, Roman soldiers of every rank, slaves and freemen, landowners, tenant farmers, stewards, representatives of Roman authority, local non-Roman officials, rich and poor, men, women, and children. These dramatis personae represent every position on the social scale, suggesting that it may be appropriate to use modern sociological terminology when studying Luke-Acts.

Social stratification

“Social status,” “rank,” and “class” are concepts that are often used indiscriminately; however, they should be more clearly distinguished. “Class” denotes a group of people who, from the standpoint of specific interests, have the same economic position. “Status” is a “quality of social honor or lack of it and is, in the main, conditioned as well as expressed through a specific style of life.” Hence, class is a term which more strictly defines economic earning power.

Social status is a term which possesses wider connotations denoting various levels of prestige, not limited in its definition by economic factors.

The case against Paul seems straightforward as he comes before Festus. Luke reports that the Jews from Jerusalem have accused Paul of “many serious charges” (25:7). Luke, at this juncture, does not specify the charges although Paul, in verse 8, denies the unstated accusations that he has broken the law of the Jews, brought a non-Jew into the Temple, or preached against Caesar. That Paul had broken the law of Moses had been raised previously even by the Jewish Christians in Jerusalem (21:21). Furthermore, the allegation that Paul had brought a Gentile into the Temple led to the uproar by the Jews which, in turn, brought out the Roman soldiers who then arrested Paul (21:33). Although serious charges, breaking the religious laws of the Jews did not fall within the legal competence of the Roman authorities. This is clearly expressed by Gallio's response to the Jews of Corinth (18:14–15). The more serious charge against Paul, which would be of great interest to the Roman authorities, was the matter of riotous behavior caused by Paul's preaching and the potential for political rebellion. Paul is, after all, called a “pestilent fellow,” an “agitator” and a “ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” (24:5). Potential political insurrection and provincial unrest were causes of considerable concern to Rome, particularly in Judaea in the middle decades of the first century of the Common Era.

In Acts 21–23 Luke describes Paul in two ways which seem to be at odds with one another. On the one hand, Paul is described as a Jew, on the other as a citizen of the Greek city of Tarsus (21:39). Paul claims that, from an early age, he was brought up in Jerusalem at the feet of Gamaliel (22:3). Furthermore, Paul is quick to assert that he is both a Roman citizen (22:25,27,28), and a strict Pharisee from a Pharisaic family (23:6). This description presents difficulties.

The purpose of this chapter will be to show that in Acts 21:27 to 23:11 Luke has described Paul in such a way as to make him a most striking figure in the first-century Greco-Roman world. As has been stressed in the previous chapter, and will be indicated in the chapters to come, the Greco-Roman world placed great significance upon one's breeding, one's social status, one's prestige, and one's authority.

In both what is explicitly stated and what is implicitly presented, Luke is concerned to show that Paul was just such a man of prestige, status, and authority. Therefore a proper understanding of the biographical data presented by Luke in 21:17 to 23:11, is crucial to a correct comprehension of all subsequent events recorded in Acts.

The Greco-Roman world was, to a great extent, conscious of and indeed built upon a hierarchical system of social status where each person had a place. Furthermore, men of wealth, education, and good pedigree were those who held power. Given this fact, it is no wonder that Luke seemed intent on emphasizing his hero's social credentials. According to his portrayal in Acts, Paul was a man of wealth, good birth, and education who was proud of his standing in his city of Tarsus, relied upon the advantages of an inherited Roman citizenship, and was also a strict Pharisee. It is evident that each of these attributes possessed correspondingly high prestige or status. However, Luke's description of Paul as a Greek citizen of Tarsus, a strict Pharisee, and a Roman citizen raises many problems. It appears that in these last chapters of Acts, Luke was not simply recording historical facts but was intentionally portraying Paul as a man of high social status.

However, Luke was not satisfied to testify to Paul's social credentials alone. He also set Paul forth as an individual who exhibited, particularly after his conversion, the various cardinal virtues of ϕρόνησις, σωϕροσύνη, ἀνδρεία, and δικαιοσύνη. It was recognized by the various philosophical traditions which interested those of power and wealth of the day, that the advantages of good pedigree, wealth, and education were no guarantees of virtuous action.

The purpose of this work was to investigate the Lucan portrayal of Paul. The evidence suggests that Luke was highlighting, if not creating, Paul's high social status and moral virtue. By the end of Acts, the Paul who has been described is, quite frankly, too good to be true.

Two questions remain: why would Luke have done this? To whom was Luke writing? It would presume too much to seek complete answers here. However, our study suggests a certain direction in which to go to resolve these crucial queries.

The majority of present day scholars are convinced that Luke-Acts was written for a specific Christian community. Furthermore, there is a growing consensus which describes Luke as a pastor writing to assuage the anxiety of his congregation in the time in between Jesus' ascension and his return. Issues such as the Church's relationship to Judaism and the individual Christian's relationship to Roman authority, among others, are at the forefront of this supposed Lucan community.

However, the very style and substance of Acts does not fit this hypothesis. From the opening dedicatory preface to Theophilus in Luke to the close of Acts where Paul is preaching unhindered in the capital of the empire, the mood of Luke's work is expansive and evangelistic, not introspective and defensive. Luke-Acts was written as much for the non-believer as the believer.

The careful reader of Acts should be confounded by the way St. Paul is portrayed. While every astute commentator acknowledges that Paul plays an exceedingly important role in Acts, attempts to understand the portrayal and how it serves Luke's larger aim are as inconclusive as they are unsatisfying. Some, like J. Jervell, R. Maddox, R. F. O'Toole, are convinced that Luke's foremost intention is to portray Paul as a loyal Jew. While the Paul of Acts does indeed point with pride to his strict Jewish upbringing, he also is very proud of his Roman citizenship and his citizenship of the city of Tarsus. Not enough attention has been paid to this fact.

This lack of regard obscures a historical problem which is: what is the probability that a Jew of strict Pharisaic background would have held, let alone been proud of, these citizenships? This issue is important and requires careful consideration. While W. Ramsay, A. Deissmann, M. Dibelius, W. G. Kümmel, G. Bornkamm, and F. F. Bruce have offered well-known studies, their conclusions do not answer this pressing question.

It has been argued that Luke's intention was to stress Paul's Jewishness in order to highlight early Christianity's continuity with Judaism and to assuage an inner church anxiety.

The ancient Romans have been so domesticated that many modern western men (fewer women, perhaps) have been able to imagine themselves, their rusty Latin refreshed, easily adapting to life in the time of Cicero or the younger Pliny. But language is not the only barrier which separates us from the Romans. Entire vocabularies of gesture differ from one culture to another. For Romans, a particular physical movement could have a meaning quite at variance with one a modern Briton might attribute to it – even indicating a category of behaviour for which we have no close equivalent.

Cicero is supposed to have said of Julius Caesar:

According to Cicero, Caesar used to scratch his head with one finger – for us a movement of little significance. But Cicero represented this as an indication that Caesar was not a man to be frightened of, that he posed no real threat. What was the connection? Scratching one's head with one finger was a sign of mollitia, which may provisionally be translated as ‘softness’ or ‘effeminacy’.

Disapproval of acting and the theatre was a distinguishing Roman characteristic, in the eyes of many ancient authors. The significance Romans attached to the different ways actors were viewed in Greece and in Rome is indicated by Cornelius Nepos, in the preface to his Lives, where he sets out some of the principal contrasts between Greek and Roman culture:

While Greeks admired actors, according to Nepos, to display oneself on stage, to make a spectacle of oneself, was considered by Romans to be shameful. Other writers, too, saw differing attitudes to the theatre as a significant indicator of the contrast between Greek and Roman culture.

Pleasure was a problem for members of the Roman elite – or so moralists felt. In his treatise on the good life, Seneca stresses the insidious threat posed by the attractions of sensual pleasure, while asserting that only the subhuman will want to surrender themselves completely:

Seneca's language presents pleasure as fluid, both engulfing and invading its hapless victims. His insistence on its seductive dangers could be read as betraying a certain fascination with pleasure.

In an attack on luxury, Seneca praises the frugality of the elder Cato:

Romans laid claim to a particular preeminence in the spheres of both fighting and morality. Seneca presents the activities of the guardian of morals as parallel to those of the general; each has made a vital contribution to the res publica. As a Stoic, Seneca was committed to the notion that the ties which bind all human beings to one another transcend those which bind the individual to any particular state, and yet for Romans there was only one res publica, Rome itself. By using the traditional vocabulary of Roman moralists, by taking as examples the figures of Scipio and Cato, Seneca situated his text in a long line of Roman moralising. Seneca wrote his moral and philosophical works over two hundred years after the time of the elder Cato, who lived in the second century bce; Cato's writings in turn referred back to the virtues of still earlier Romans, maiores nostri (‘our ancestors’). The highpoint of Roman moral virtue was always already situated in an idealised past.

In 62 bce, a young and politically ambitious Roman aristocrat, Publius Clodius, is said to have disguised himself as a women in order to infiltrate the rites of the Bona Dea which it was sacrilege for men to observe. His purpose, according to his detractors, was to seduce the wife of Julius Caesar, the Pontifex Maximus, in whose house the ceremony was taking place. A man dressed as a woman, the profanation of religious rites, adultery with the wife of one of the leading men in Rome and the adulterer already notorious for his pernicious and disruptive political dealings – this incident, related or alluded to by numerous Roman authors, summed up the disorder of the final years of the republic. For Roman writers, adultery among the elite was a telling symptom of disease in the body politic.

Another young and politically ambitious, though rather less aristocratic, man effected what was claimed to be the cure, restoring the res publica to health, moral as well as political. Rome's first emperor, Augustus, the new Romulus, promised a revolution – a return to the past. In the early days of Rome, wives were chaste; he initiated legislation making adultery a crime. Augustus boasted, in his Res gestae: Legibus novis me auctore latis multa exempla maiorum exolescentia iam ex nostro saeculo reduxi, ‘Through new laws passed on my proposal, I brought back many of the exemplary practices of our ancestors which were falling into neglect’ (8.5).