The Christological Climax of Paul’s Defense (Ac. 22: 1 - 26:32)

In this book we attempt to discover what Luke wants to say in Ac 26. We claim that this chapter forms the Christological climax of Paul’s defence (Ac 22-26). To prove this we divide our material into eight chapters; the first chapter is nothing but the history of the significant investigations of Ac 26. The second chapter lays down the directions which our investigation must follow. Perhaps, the most difficult aspect of this chapter remains our definition of uChristological. Now Ac 26 contains all of the following data: what happens to Christ happens to Paul, and so we have a comparison between Christ’s appearance before Pilate and Herod Antipas and Paul’s hearing before Festus and Agrippa II; our speech is held together by the resurrection of Christ who dominates the scene; Paul and Christ have the same mission; finally, Paul fulfils the predictions (Lk 12:8-12; 21:12-19) which Christ made and thus becomes a model for Christians. When one seeks an adjective to describe this varied material found in Ac 26, Christological comes to mind because some of the above aspects can only be called Christological while the others can be sufficiently well classified under an extended use of the term. We find a double diptych in 25:13-26:23. First, Ac 25:13-26: 1a fall into two parts each of which contains the same seven points. Secondly, the speech offers a similar structure; after the capitation benevolentiae (26:2-3) we find a diptych (26:4-8,9-23).