112 John C. Poirier There are other indications that Paul addressed the crowd in an unex- pected language. After Paul requests it, the tribune grants him permission to address the crowd.10 But when the crowd responds in an uproar (22,22- 23), the tribune seeks to find out what Paul said to incite the crowd, ordering him “to be examined by flogging, to find out the reason for this outcry against him” (22,24). (V. 25 suggests that Paul kept the content of his address from the tribune, although it is not clear what Paul said that was so dangerous.)11 This strongly suggests that Paul addressed the crowd in a language that neither the tribune nor his coterie could understand, which in turn suggests that he spoke Hebrew: Aramaic would have been known to most (if not all) of the Romans present, and Paul’s use of Ara- maic would have given little reason for the Romans to beat a confession out of him.12 (See Josephus’ claim that Roman soldiers from Syria could understand the table talk of Jews in Gamala [Bell. 4.37-38].) The narrative seems to suggest that the tribune himself spoke to the crowd in a non- Greek language, which could scarcely be anything other than Aramaic: in making a connection between Paul’s ability to speak Greek and his identity as “the Egyptian”,13 the tribune implies that the ability to speak Greek was fairly rare among the crowd in 21,33-34, yet he personally questions the crowd about Paul’s offense.14 The obvious implication is that the tribune could converse with the crowd in its native tongue (as one might expect of a high-ranking frontier post, if not most frontier posts altogether). Yet he could not understand Paul’s subsequent address “in the Hebrew dialect”. This alone suggests that “the Hebrew dialect” F. Veltman, “The Defense Speeches of Paul in Acts”, in Charles H. Talbert [ed.], Per- 10 spectives on Luke-Acts (Danville 1978) 243-56, esp. 252, lists “Defendant ordered or permit- ted to speak” among the variant details recurring in defense speech forms in Greco-Roman texts, but indicates that this detail occurs in less than half of the examples he surveys. The content of Paul’s speech is puzzling in other ways as well. As S.E. Porter, The Paul 11 of Acts: Essays in Literary Criticism, Rhetoric, and Theology (Tübingen 1999) 153, notes, “Paul does not actually say what it is that he is defending. Is it his recent behavior, or is it his entire career?” Without v. 25, it is of course possible to suppose that the tribune’s lack of access to 12 Paul’s address was only an unintended byproduct of Paul’s use of Hebrew. But v. 25 gives pause to this objection: Why was Paul so elliptical with the tribune? See Josephus, Bell. 2.261-63; Ant. 20.169-71; R.A. Horsley and J.S. Hanson, Bandits, 13 Prophets, and Messiahs: Popular Movements at the Time of Jesus (Minneapolis 1985) 167-70. Of course, the Asian Jews who accused Paul (Acts 21,27) presumably could have 14 spoken Greek. Haenchen’s account, The Acts of the Apostles, 621, is thoroughly confused at this point, not least in supposing that the tribune “gives up” (rather than lights upon) the idea that Paul is “the Egyptian” when he hears him speak Greek. This is grammatically possible, but Haenchen’s complaints against the historicity of this reading of Luke’s account also weigh against this rendering.