other · 57–59 · Caesarea Maritima
Claudius Lysias sent him down to Caesarea by night with two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen and two hundred spearmen, and a letter that improved the tribune's own conduct considerably. Five days later Ananias the high priest came down with the elders and a barrister named Tertullus, who opened by flattering the governor and then called Paul a plague, a stirrer of riots among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes. Paul answered that he had come to bring alms to his nation, that they found him purified in the temple with no crowd and no tumult, and that the Asian Jews who started it should have been there to accuse him. Felix, who had a rather accurate knowledge of the Way, adjourned it. He came back some days later with Drusilla his wife, who was Jewish, and sent for Paul to hear him about faith in Christ Jesus; and as Paul reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment, Felix was alarmed and said that when he had an opportunity he would summon him. He sent for him often, hoping money would be given him. Two years passed that way, and then Porcius Festus succeeded him.
To get a prisoner out of Jerusalem alive, past forty men under an oath to eat nothing until they had killed him.
No verdict in two years, and a successor who inherited the case: Felix left Paul in prison to do the Jews a favour.