Acts 24:11

Acts 24:11. Because that thou mayest understand, that there are yet. But twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem for to worship. The ‘twelve days' are best reckoned thus:

1st Day. Arrival at Jerusalem; meeting with James, the Lord's brother, the head of the Christian Church at Jerusalem.

2d Day. Levitical purification, and first visit to the temple as a Nazarite pilgrim.

3d, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th Days. The period of the Nazarite ceremonies and offerings, closed with the attack on Paul by Asian pilgrims, and his subsequent arrest by Claudius Lysias.

8th Day. The apostle is arraigned before the Sanhedrim.

9th Day. In the castle of Antonia; the assassination plot; Paul leaves Jerusalem for Cæsarea, guarded by the military escort.

10th Day. The party arrives at Antipatris.

11th Day. The prisoner is delivered over to Felix in Cæsarea.

12thDay. At Cæsarea; in the judgment hall of Herod.

13thDay. Paul appears before the court of Felix.

This computation would allow for the statement of Acts 24:1: ‘After five days, Ananias the high priest descended with the elders;' and also for Paul's: ‘Twelve days since I went up to Jerusalem for to worship.' A good deal of time has been spent, we might even say wasted, in the calculation of these days, and how they were to be reckoned so as to justify the various notes as to time scattered up and down the narrative. These calculations, it should be remembered, are always rough ones now part of a day is reckoned, now it is omitted. Nothing depends really on the exact harmony of such a recital. Like the other small chronological and geographical alleged discrepancies in these Acts, it is only the cavilling, hostile spirit seeking to find errors where none really exist, which finds difficulties in this noble and faithful record of the laying the foundation stories of Christianity. Paul prefaces his defence by stating his object in coming up to Jerusalem: it was to worship, and yet he was charged with profanity; but with this part of the accusation he proposed to deal later. He touches at first the point more likely to affect a Roman judge, the charge of stirring up sedition.