Paul's trial before Festus; appeal to Caesar

When Porcius Festus succeeds Felix as governor, he goes up to Jerusalem three days after arriving in the province, and the chief priests raise Paul's case with him immediately.

Two years have passed and they have not dropped it. They ask as a favour that Paul be transferred to Jerusalem, because they are preparing an ambush to kill him along the way, which is the same plan as before and was presumably assembled by some of the same people.

Festus declines, saying Paul is being held at Caesarea and that their leaders can come down and press charges there.

Festus was, by the accounts that survive, a better administrator than either the man before him or the man after him, and he died in office within two years. Josephus credits him with breaking up the bandit groups that Felix had allowed to flourish.

At the hearing the Jews from Jerusalem bring many serious charges against Paul which they cannot prove, and his defence is a single sentence covering three jurisdictions: I have done nothing wrong against the Jewish law or against the temple or against Caesar.

Then Festus, wishing to do the Jews a favour, asks whether he is willing to go to Jerusalem and stand trial there.

That question is the turning point. A governor new to the province, needing the cooperation of the local leadership, is proposing to hand a case back to the men who want the defendant dead.

Paul's answer uses the one instrument a Roman citizen had. I am now standing before Caesar's court, where I ought to be tried. I have not done any wrong to the Jews, as you yourself know very well. If, however, I am guilty of doing anything deserving death, I do not refuse to die. But if the charges brought against me by these Jews are not true, no one has the right to hand me over to them. I appeal to Caesar!

Appeal to the emperor removed a case from a provincial court and transferred it to Rome, and once made it could not be withdrawn.

Festus confers with his council and answers: you have appealed to Caesar. To Caesar you will go.

The emperor at that date was Nero, four or five years before the fire at Rome and the persecution that followed.

Appeal to the emperor was one of the oldest rights of a Roman citizen, going back to the republic, and by this period it functioned as a transfer of jurisdiction rather than a review of a verdict. Once lodged, the governor lost the power to acquit as well as to convict, which is why Agrippa remarks afterwards that Paul could have been released.

Whether Paul used it to save his life or to get to Rome at public expense is a fair question, and he had written to the Romans three years earlier that he had long wanted to visit them.

Festus died in office and the gap before his successor arrived is when James, the brother of Jesus, was executed at the instigation of the high priest, according to Josephus.