Tertullus

The orator retained by the high priest and elders to open the case against Paul before the procurator Felix. His speech is quoted, and it is the earliest surviving formal indictment of a Christian.

He begins with flattery so thick that Luke seems to record it deliberately — the province enjoys **“great quietness”** by Felix’s providence, accepted “always, and in all places, most noble Felix, with all thankfulness” — addressed to a governor whose administration Tacitus and Josephus both describe as violent and corrupt.

Then four charges, in ascending order: that Paul is **“a pestilent fellow”**, a mover of sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, **“a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes”**, and one who went about to profane the Temple.

**That third charge is the reason he is in this archive.** αἱρεσις τῶν Ναζωραίων — the sect of the Nazarenes — is the earliest recorded name given to the Christian movement by an outsider speaking against it, in a court, on the record. Everything the archive later holds about how Rome described and prosecuted Christians begins in that phrase.

Nothing else about him is known: not his origin, nor whether he was a Roman advocate or a Jerusalem advocate, nor what became of him.