Acts 22:30

Acts 22:30. On the morrow, when he would have known the certainty whereof he was accused of the Jews, he loosed him from his bonds. In spite of his being convinced that Paul was a Roman, the captain of the thousand garrisoning Jerusalem was uneasy respecting his prisoner; he could not but believe him guilty of some very grave offence, seeing that so many persons, and among them not a few responsible men, seemed to consider him deserving of death. Treason and rebellion against the Empire filled the very air then of Judæa; who then was this malefactor?

Commanded the chief priests and all their council to appear, and brought Paul down, and set him before them. The procurator or governor was evidently not in the city. (The procuratorship was the office once held by Pontius Pilate.) In his absence the chief authority in Jerusalem was held by the commanding officer in Antonia. Claudius Lysias thus had the power in extraordinary instances of summoning the Sanhedrim together. This power, after the preceding day's tumult, he thought fit to exercise. Hence the meeting of the supreme Jewish council. Now Jewish tradition tells us that some twenty-six years before this time, the Sanhedrim had ceased to hold their meetings in their hall called Gazith which was in the temple. Probably they declined to sit in the temple when the power over life and death was taken from them by the Roman government. After ceasing to sit in ‘Gazith,' they adopted as their council chamber a room in the city, near the bridge leading across the ravine from the western cloister of the temple. It is not unlikely that this removal from the temple to the city was originally owing to an ‘authoritative' suggestion of the Roman power; for within that part of the temple area where the hall ‘Gazith' was situated, the Romans as Gentiles had no access. As on the present occasion, when Lysias brought in Paul, the representatives of Rome no doubt were often in the habit of insisting on being present at the deliberations of the supreme Jewish council.