Acts 28:22

Acts 28:22. But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against. The leading Jews of Rome who accepted the prisoner Paul's invitation to visit him in his confinement, were naturally anxious to hear what such an one, notoriously a leader of the strange sect, and just arrived from the Holy Land under such peculiar circumstances, would have to say on behalf of the faith for which he had endured and suffered so much. They knew, doubtless, at least the outlines of the famous missionary teacher's story; in spite of their alleged ignorance, his antecedents were of course well known to the majority of them. But it would be interesting to hear the Christian story from the lips of a highly-cultured Pharisee like Paul; so they express their desire to hear what he has to say concerning a sect which they carefully assure him was everywhere spoken against. Already men had begun to whisper abroad the dark calumnies which we know were universally circulated through the Roman world concerning the innocent Christians. The jealous and angry Jew joined hands here with the Pagan in fostering untrue and utterly baseless rumours respecting the worship and practice of men whose doctrines were gradually penetrating into all classes and orders of the Empire. For instance, the Roman historian Tacitus, who wrote in the days of the Emperor Nero, speaks of the Christian religion as ‘a detestable superstition' (exitiabilis superstitio), and calls attention to ‘the atrocious and shameful crimes condemned by the hatred of mankind.' Suetonius, writing in the same reign, describes the followers of Jesus of Nazareth as ‘a race of men holding a novel and criminal superstition.'