Claudia Marcella, a Roman freedwoman, takes the stand to describe something she witnessed decades earlier in Jerusalem: the stoning of Stephen. She remembers Stephen being driven outside the city and killed while a young Saul stood nearby with the garments of those carrying out the execution. Paul does not hide behind the fact that he did not personally throw the stones. He acknowledges openly that he was there and approved Stephen’s death.
Claudia recalls something else that remained with her: Stephen’s extraordinary conduct as he died. He called upon Jesus to receive his spirit and prayed that the sin of those killing him would not be held against them. Yet Claudia refuses to interpret Stephen’s courage as proof that his beliefs were true. People can sincerely suffer and die for false beliefs, she insists. Paul agrees, giving Varro an important weapon: sincerity and conviction cannot establish truth.
Varro then turns Paul’s admission against him. Saul had once been absolutely certain that Stephen and the followers of Jesus were wrong, and a man died while he approved. Why, then, should Rome be reassured by Paul’s certainty now? Paul answers that it should not. His certainty is not the evidence. The court must determine whether what he now claims is actually true. The episode therefore deepens the central problem of the trial: Saul was not merely mistaken before Damascus; he was sincerely, intelligently, and dangerously mistaken.
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