Acts 23:2

"The high priest Ananias": The reader should be aware that this is not the Ananias who was with Caiaphas in the gospels, rather this is Ananias, son of Nedebaeus, who received the office from Herod of Chalcis,. brother of Herod Agrippa. in A.D. 47 and retained the office for eleven or twelve years. "He was one of the most disgraceful profaners of the sacred office. Josephus tells how he seized for himself the tithes that ought to have gone to the common priests (Antiquities xx. 9. 2) (Bruce p. 449). "He was. typical Sadducee, wealthy, haughty, unscrupulous, filling his sacred office for purely selfish and political ends. Agrippa II put him out of office in 59 A.D. Years later, when the rebellion broke out which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem, Ananias concealed himself, but was discovered during the siege, and was murdered by the fanatical Jews (in A.D. 67)" (Reese p. xvi).

Acts 23:2 "Commanded those standing beside him to strike him on the mouth": No doubt Ananias considered such. claim, made by one that he considered. heretic to be blasphemy. "To smite him in the mouth for it, was much easier than to disprove it" (McGarvey p. 223). Actually, witnesses could be produced that would verify Paul's sincerity (Acts 22:3).