High Priest Ananias, older men of the Jews, and Tertullus formally charged Paul before Felix of being ‘a pest who stirred up seditions among the Jews.’ They claimed that he was a ringleader of “the sect of the Nazarenes” and that he tried to profane the temple.​—Acts 24:1-6.

High Priest Ananias, older men of the Jews, and Tertullus formally charged Paul before Felix of being ‘a pest who stirred up seditions among the Jews.’ They claimed that he was a ringleader of “the sect of the Nazarenes” and that he tried to profane the temple.​—Acts 24:1-6.

The Jews reasoned that what Paul taught was not Judaism, or lawful religion (religio licita). It ought, rather, to be considered illegal, even subversive.

They also claimed that Paul was “stirring up seditions among all the Jews throughout the inhabited earth.” (Acts 24:5) Emperor Claudius had recently denounced Alexandrian Jews for “stirring up a universal plague throughout the world.” The similarity is striking. “The charge was precisely the one to bring against a Jew during the Principate of Claudius or the early years of Nero,” says historian A. N. Sherwin-White. “The Jews were trying to induce the governor to construe the preaching of Paul as tantamount to causing civil disturbances throughout the Jewish population of the Empire. They knew that the governors were unwilling to convict on purely religious charges and therefore tried to give a political twist to the religious charge.”