known to the ancient world as the diatribe, and to expound, for a rabbi was not only part preacher but also part lawyer, ready to prosecute or defend those accused of breaking the sacred Law. Paul outstripped his contemporaries. He had a powerful mind, which could have led to a seat on the Sanhedrin in the Hall of Polished Stones and made him a “ruler of the Jews.” The state was a theocracy, in which religious and national leaders were identical, so that the seventy-one members of the Sanhedrin were