Book of Common Prayer
We have ways of keeping you safe
23 So the tribune summoned two of the centurions.
“Get ready a squad of two hundred,” he said. “They’re going to Caesarea. Also take seventy horsemen and two hundred light-armed guards. They leave at nine o’clock tonight. 24 Get horses ready for Paul to ride, and take him safely to Felix the governor.”
25 He wrote a letter which went like this:
26 “Claudius Lysias, to the most excellent governor Felix, greeting. 27 This man was seized by the Jews, who were going to kill him. When I learned that he was a Roman citizen I went with the guard and rescued him. 28 I wanted to know the charge on which they were accusing him, so I took him into their Sanhedrin. 29 There I discovered that he was being accused in relation to disputes about their law, but that he was not being charged with anything for which he would deserve to die or to be imprisoned. 30 I then received information that there was to be a plot against him. So I am sending him to you at once. I have told his accusers that they must inform you of their charges against him.”
31 So the soldiers did what they were told. They took Paul and brought him by night to Antipatris, 32 and the next day they allowed the horsemen to go on with him while they returned to barracks. 33 The company arrived at Caesarea and handed over the letter to the governor, presenting Paul at the same time. 34 Felix read the letter, and asked which jurisdiction Paul was from. He found out that he was from Cilicia.
35 “I will hear your case,” he said, “when your accusers arrive.”
He ordered that he be kept under guard in Herod’s Praetorium.
On paying taxes to Caesar
13 They sent some Pharisees to Jesus, and some Herodians, to try to trick him into saying the wrong thing.
14 “Teacher,” they said, “we know you are a man of integrity; you don’t regard anybody as special. You don’t bother about the outward show people put up; you teach God’s way truly.
“Well then: is it lawful to give tribute to Caesar or not? Should we pay it, or shouldn’t we?”
15 He knew the game they were playing. “Why are you trying to trap me?” he said. “Bring me a tribute-coin; let me look at it.”
16 They brought one to him.
“This image,” he asked, “whose is it? And whose is this superscription?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
17 “Well then,” said Jesus, “give Caesar back what belongs to Caesar—and give God back what belongs to God!”
They were astonished at him.
Marriage and the resurrection
18 Some Sadducees approached Jesus (Sadducees, by the way, deny the resurrection).
19 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that ‘if a man’s brother dies, and leaves a wife but no child, the brother should take the wife and raise up descendants for his brother.’ 20 Well now: there were once seven brothers. The first married a wife, and died without children. 21 The second married the widow, and died without children. The third did so as well, 22 and so did all seven, still without leaving children. Finally the woman died too. 23 So: when they rise again in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? All seven had her, after all.”
24 “Where you’re going wrong,” replied Jesus, “is that you don’t know the scriptures, or God’s power. 25 When people rise from the dead, they don’t marry, nor do people give them in marriage. They are like angels in heaven.
26 “However, to show that the dead are indeed to be raised, surely you’ve read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, what God says to Moses? ‘I am Abraham’s God, Isaac’s God and Jacob’s God’? 27 He isn’t the God of the dead, but of the living. You are completely mistaken.”
Scripture quotations from The New Testament for Everyone are copyright © Nicholas Thomas Wright 2011, 2018, 2019.