“For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of insurrections among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes, who moreover attempted to profane the temple. On whom also we laid hold.”
He then paints the blackest possible picture of Paul. He is the worst kind of man, a deliberate troublemaker, a scourge of the Empire, an international insurgent, whose aim is to destabilise the world, and he is the ringleader of the strange sect called the Nazarenes, whom everyone knows are themselves simply troublemakers. And what is more in the course of all this he has also sought to profane the Jewish Temple. He is thus worthy of death three times over! Nevertheless, let the procurator note, fierce fellow that he was, they had managed to lay hold of him.