Roman Citizenship
The idea that Paul is a Roman citizen derives from the Book of Acts in which Luke records Paul claiming his Roman citizenship on two separate occasions, both in relation to punishment under Roman law. In Acts 22:28, he is recorded as stating that, in contrast to those who paid a large sum of money to acquire citizenship, he was a Roman by birth. In the letters of Paul, such a claim is never made. Marcus J. Borg and John Dominic Crossan wrote "Luke insists that Paul was a Roman citizen, but Paul himself does not mention the claim, he in fact seems to negate it." Paul appears to negate such a claim by stating that he had suffered three beatings by the rod, which was a punishment forbidden upon Roman citizens. However, the fact that he is able to appeal to Caesar, recorded in Acts 25:11, for his final sentencing leads many scholars to believe that he was indeed a Roman citizen. Without Roman citizenship, Paul would not have had this right.
Read more about this topic: Paul The Apostle
Famous quotes containing the words roman and/or citizenship:
“The Roman rule was, to teach a boy nothing that he could not learn standing. The old English rule was, “All summer in the field, and all winter in the study.” And it seems as if a man should learn to plant, or to fish, or to hunt, that he might secure his subsistence at all events, and not be painful to his friends and fellow men.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I would wish that the women of our country could embrace ... [the responsibilities] of citizenship as peculiarly their own. If they could apply their higher sense of service and responsibility, their freshness of enthusiasm, their capacity for organization to this problem, it would become, as it should become, an issue of profound patriotism. The whole plane of political life would be lifted.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)