Acts 28:21

Acts 28:21. And they said unto him, We neither received letters out of Judæa concerning thee, neither any of the brethren that came showed or spake any harm of thee. This reply of the Roman Jews was more courteous than honest. It was probably the fact that no official communication from the Sanhedrim had as yet been received by the Roman synagogue; for during the two years of the Cæsarean imprisonment there was no need for the council in Jerusalem to write to their fellow-countrymen at Rome respecting the prisoner Paul, and after his appeal to the emperor there had been no time to send information to Rome concerning him. Paul would have arrived at the metropolis before any official tidings from Jerusalem could have reached the Roman Jews. We know he left Cæsarea soon after his appeal; and shortly after his departure, the sea owing to the time of year was closed for navigation. But it was clearly disingenuous for them on their part to deny any knowledge of his evil fame among the rulers of the people. The principal charge brought against a prominent leader of the Christians like Paul must have been well known to the Roman Jews. They must in past years have often heard of the hated Paul of Tarsus, now a leading Nazarene, once known as the brilliant and admired Pharisee Saul.

The result of the earnest and impassioned pleading of the Christian apostle, told so shortly, but so sorrowfully, in the words of Acts 28:24, ‘and some believed not' coupled with the evident mournful disappointment manifested by Paul at his complete failure to convince ‘some' evidently a large number of his Jewish audience, points to the conclusion we have arrived at, that the courteous reply of the Roman Jews to Paul (Acts 28:21) was hollow and false.