Paul begins his defense

Acts chapter 22 divides into two main parts – 1-21 Paul’s defense (1-11; 12-16; 17-21) and 22-30 the call for his execution.

1-21 Paul’s defense

According to Charles Talbert, this speech of Paul is “arranged in a chiastic pattern.”

A—Paul comes from the Gentile world to Jerusalem (v. 3)

B—Paul persecuted the Way (vv. 4-5a)

C—Paul’s journey from Jerusalem to Damascus (v. 5b)

D—Paul’s vision on the road to Damascus (vv. 6-11)

E—Ananias restores Paul’s sight (vv. 12-13)

F—Ananias tells Paul of his mission

E’—Ananias urges Paul to receive baptism (v. 16)

D’—Paul’s vision in Jerusalem (vv. 17-18a)

C’—Paul is commanded to leave Jerusalem (v. 18b)

B’—Paul speaks of his days as a persecutor (vv. 19-20)

A’—Paul is sent from Jerusalem to the Gentiles (v. 21)

Verses 14-15: “The chiastic pattern’s center indicates the speech’s main point: Paul’s mission to be Jesus’ witness before all people of what Paul has seen and heard (v. 15).”[1]

Verse 1: Paul uses captatio benevolentiae (Latin, ‘winning of goodwill’) – a rhetorical technique aimed to capture the goodwill of the audience at the beginning of an address (cf. 24:10; 26:2-3), perhaps, or especially, his speaking in their native language.

Verse 2: Though the crowd had already quietened to hear Paul (21:40), now the fact of his speaking in the Hebrew tongue brought an awed hushed silence greater than had been previously obtained. This definitely got their attention.

Verses 3-4: Paul reviews his past as a Pharisee and persecutor of the church. He stresses his ancestry (a Jew), his nativity (born in Tarsus of Cilicia), his training (by Gamaliel in Jerusalem), his orthodoxy (believed the law and its traditions), and his religious zeal, which extended to persecuting believers of “this way,” that is, the Christian way of Jesus Christ the Messiah.

Verse 5: As he prepares to relate his experience, Paul establishes the particular time and incident. It happened when he traveled to Damascus with letters of authority to arrest Christians, bind them, and bring them to Jerusalem to be punished.

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[1] Reading Acts: A Literary and Theological Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles, Charles H. Talbert. New York, NY: The Crossroad Publishing Company, 1997, p. 197. A chiasm (also called a chiasma or chiasmus) is a literary device in which a sequence of ideas is first presented in one order and then repeated in reverse order. This creates a “mirror effect” by reflecting the ideas back in a passage. “The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath” is a simple example of chiasm.