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Question: How Did Paul Desecrate the Temple?
Greetings Ricky, and thank you for submitting a question to 7times.org and for allowing us to serve you.
QUESTION:
In ACTS Chap.24 Verse 6, how was Paul supposed to have desecrated the temple? Was it just because he brought Greeks to the temple? If so, why were the Greeks so bad?
ANSWER:
You need to realize that there was a tremedous battle of wits going on between those Jews who thought God was not working with Gentiles, and Paul (as well as those elders at Jerusalem who had declared that Paul would put none other thing on the Gentile converts than these four things.... keeping themselves from things offered to idols, from blood, from anything strangled, and from fornication. ACTS 15)
If you read the account beginning in ACTS 21 you will see that the Jews had ASSUMED that Paul had brought a Greek into the temple, when in fact he had only been seen with a man from Ephesus named Trophimus before he went into the temple to purify himself.
Since they were looking for ANYTHING with which to accuse Paul, they grabbed onto this and accused Paul of polluting the temple by bringing an unclean (means unbeliever) person into the temple. This battle had been going on because most of the Jews hated what the Apostles were preaching about salvation and Jesus the Christ and were trying with all their might to stamp out this cult.
However, this had all been prophesied by a prophet called Agabus earlier when he told Paul what was going to happen to him if he went to Jerusalem. Paul would have to witness for God and Jesus at Rome before the emperor Ceasar.
Acts 26 was then just an assumption, based upon what the Jews wanted to believe, that Paul had corrupted the temple by bringing an unclean person into it, when he had done nothing of the sort, but had been in the process of purification.
Yes, according to Jewish belief, anyone bringing an unclean person (in this instance a Greek) into the temple would have (in their minds) desecrated the temple.
The Greeks weren't so bad, except that they were considered to be ceremonially unclean because they were unbelievers.
I hope this has helped you to get the situation which Paul was facing into a more understandable order.
Again we thank you for sending your question to 7times.org.
If you have further questions about this subject, you may mail them to me at my address below my signature. Any new questions should be posted at BibleStudy.org in their question forms.
Your friend,
Ken Browder, Editor - The SevenTImes Newsletter - "A Newsletter of Biblical Understanding"