Charles Ellicott Commentary Acts 28:22

"But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, it is known to us that everywhere it is spoken against." — Acts 28:22 (ASV)

We desire . . . as concerning this sect . . .—Better, we request of you. The term is that which had been used by Tertullus when he spoke of the “sect of the Nazarenes” (Acts 24:5). The speakers had clearly heard enough of the prisoner to identify him with that sect, but they treat him personally with respect, probably due in part to the favour which the authorities had shown him, and wish for an authoritative exposition of his views.

The Christians of Rome had obviously, even if they were Jews, withdrawn from the Jewish quarter, and the residents in that quarter knew of them only by reports.

What was the nature of those reports we can only conjecture. They were, as the speakers say, “everywhere spoken against.” The darker calumnies which were propagated afterwards—stories of Thyestean (i.e., cannibal) banquets and licentious orgies—may possibly have been even then whispered from ear to ear.

In any case, the Christians of the empire would be known as abandoning circumcision and other Jewish ordinances, leading a separate life, holding meetings which were more or less secret, and worshipping One who had been crucified as a criminal.

They were already, as Tacitus describes them when speaking of their sufferings under Nero, known as holding an exitiabilis superstitio (“a detestable superstition”), guilty of atrocia et pudenda, odio humani generis convicti (“atrocious and shameful crimes, convicted by the hatred of mankind”) (Annals 15.44), or as Suetonius writes (Nero, chapter 16), as a genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae (“a race of men holding a new and criminal superstition”).

It is conceivable, considering the early date at which such rumours were current, that even then there may have been caricatures like that which was found among the graffiti of the Palace of the Caesars (now in the Collegio Romano), representing Alexamenos, a Christian convert, worshipping his god, in the form of a crucified human figure with an ass’s head.

Tertullian (A.D. 160-240) mentions such caricatures as current in his time (Apology, chapter 16), and the story that the Jews worshipped an ass’s head, which we know to have been accepted at this very time (Josephus, Against Apion 2.7; Tacitus, Histories 5.4), would naturally be transferred to the Christians, who were regarded as a sect of Jews.

In Tertullian’s time, Asinarii (“ass-worshippers”) was a common term of abuse for them.