Acts26chapter 26

This is a hearing, not a trial. The case is already bound for Rome; Festus needs charges to send with the prisoner and hopes an expert audience will supply them. The pomp Luke describes — the procession, the assembled tribunes and civic notables — is the theatre of provincial power.

Agrippa's Jewish credentials are the point. He controlled the temple treasury and appointed high priests, and Paul appeals to him as a man who knows the prophets and the recent history of Judea: none of this was done in a corner.

The saying about kicking against the goads is a Greek proverb, not a Hebrew one. A goad was the sharpened stick used to drive oxen; an animal that kicked back only drove it deeper. Paul is quoting the risen Jesus using a phrase this Greek-educated audience would know instantly.

Festus's outburst that great learning has driven Paul mad reflects a Roman aristocrat's reflex about a bodily resurrection. Greeks could accept the soul surviving; a body coming out of a grave sounded like a scholar who had read himself into nonsense.