Acts 9:1 - Coke's Commentary on the Holy Bible

And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings, &c.— This is a very emphatical expression, and shews the implacable hatred which Saul bore to the Christian profession; and it must have increased his rage to hear, that those whom he had been instrumental in driving from Jerusalem, were so successful in spreading that religion which he was so eager to root out. The person now in the office of high priest, seems to have been Caiaphas, the inveterate enemy of Christ: he would therefore gladly employ so active and bigotted a zealot as Saul; and it is well known, that the Sanhedrim, however its capital power might have been abridged by the Romans, was the supreme Jewish Court, and had great influence and authority among their synagogues abroad. There are several disputes concerning the time of this transaction. Spanheim advances several arguments to prove, that it happened six or seven years after Christ's death, about the fourth year of Caligula, in the year 40. Benson and others, agreeably to Pearson's Chronology, think it was sooner; but the exact time cannot be fixed by any circumstances transmitted to us.