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6. ὅς καὶ τὸ ἱερὸν ἐπείρασεν βεβηλῶσαι, who moreover assayed to profane the Temple. The orator puts as a fact now, what had at first been only an opinion of the Asiatic Jews, that Paul had brought Trophimus into the Temple (Act 21:29). The mob made it as a charge in their excitement, but Tertullus speaks in cold blood.
ὃν καὶ ἐπρατήσαμεν, whom we also took, i.e. laid hold of by main force. The verb implies that force was needed for Paul’s arrest.
Here the words, which are rendered in the A.V. ‘and would have judged according to our Law. But the chief captain Lysias came upon us, and with great violence took him away out of our hands, commanding his accusers to come unto thee,’ are omitted in nearly all the oldest MSS., while the Greek text in those MSS. in which the passage is found exhibits many variations. Yet in spite of this it is hard to see how the advocate could have avoided some allusion to the circumstances mentioned in these words. Of course he puts the matter in a light most favourable to the Jews. ‘We would have judged him according to our Law’ is very different language from that in which (Act 23:27) Lysias describes Paul as in danger to be killed by the Jews. The action of Lysias too is described by Tertullus as one of great violence. Probably the Roman soldiers would not handle the mob tenderly. But Tertullus is trying to cast blame upon the chief captain and to represent his party as doing all things according to law.
If the words be an interpolation, it is one which differs very greatly from those which are common in the Acts. In other places of the book such insertions have merely been made to bring the whole of a narrative under view at once, and there has been no variation of an account previously given elsewhere. But here we have a passage not representing the facts as stated before, but giving such a version of them as might make Lysias appear to have been in the wrong, and to have exercised his power in Jerusalem most arbitrarily against men who were only anxious to preserve the purity of their sacred temple. As both the Syriac and the Vulgate represent the passage it is not quite satisfactory to reject it.