This man was arrested in accordance with God’s predetermined plan and foreknowledge; and, through the agency of persons not bound by the Torah, you nailed him up on a stake and killed him!

The next day, the people’s rulers, elders and Torah-teachers assembled in Yerushalayim,

But one of the members of the Sanhedrin rose to his feet, a Parush named Gamli’el, a teacher of the Torah highly respected by all the people. He ordered the men put outside for a little while

They stirred up the people, as well as the elders and the Torah-teachers; so they came and arrested him and led him before the Sanhedrin.

There they set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking against this holy place and against the Torah;

you! — who receive the Torah as having been delivered by angels — but do not keep it!”

After the reading from the Torah and from the Prophets, the synagogue leaders sent them a message, “Brothers, if any of you has a word of exhortation for the people, speak!”

That is, God clears everyone who puts his trust in this man, even in regard to all the things concerning which you could not be cleared by the Torah of Moshe.

But some of those who had come to trust were from the party of the P’rushim; and they stood up and said, “It is necessary to circumcise them and direct them to observe the Torah of Moshe.”

saying, “This man is trying to persuade people to worship God in ways that violate the Torah.”

On hearing it, they praised God; but they also said to him, “You see, brother, how many tens of thousands of believers there are among the Judeans, and they are all zealots for the Torah.

Take them with you, be purified with them, and pay the expenses connected with having their heads shaved. Then everyone will know that there is nothing to these rumors which they have heard about you; but that, on the contrary, you yourself stay in line and keep the Torah.

“Men of Isra’el, help!” they shouted. “This is the man who goes everywhere teaching everyone things against the people, against the Torah and against this place! And now he has even brought some Goyim into the Temple and defiled this holy place!”

“I am a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city and trained at the feet of Gamli’el in every detail of the Torah of our forefathers. I was a zealot for God, as all of you are today.

“A man named Hananyah, an observant follower of the Torah who was highly regarded by the entire Jewish community there,

Then Sha’ul said to him, “God will strike you, you whitewashed wall! Will you sit there judging me according to the Torah, yet in violation of the Torah order me to be struck?”

Sha’ul said, “I didn’t know, brothers, that he was the cohen hagadol; for it says in the Torah, ‘You are not to speak disparagingly of a ruler of your people.’”

So there was a great uproar, with some of the Torah-teachers who were on the side of the P’rushim standing up and joining in — “We don’t find anything wrong with this man; and if a spirit or an angel spoke to him, what of it?”

I found that he was charged in connection with questions of their “Torah” but that there was no charge deserving death or prison.

“But this I do admit to you: I worship the God of our fathers in accordance with the Way (which they call a sect). I continue to believe everything that accords with the Torah and everything written in the Prophets.

In reply, Sha’ul said, “I have committed no offense — not against the Torah to which the Jews hold, not against the Temple, and not against the Emperor.”

So they arranged a day with him and came to his quarters in large numbers. From morning until evening he explained the matter to them, giving a thorough witness about the Kingdom of God and making use of both the Torah of Moshe and the Prophets to persuade them about Yeshua.