Acts 22 – Was Paul Really a Roman Citizen?
Extract from above link- There are a few scholars that deny the historicity of Paul’s citizenship. He does not mention it in his letters, the only source is the Book of Acts. Several questions have been raised. First, would a “tent-maker” be able to obtain citizenship? This question implies a link between social standing and citizenship which may not have existed. Since citizenship could be granted for a number of reasons, there were many “socially undesirable” people who were citizens. A citizen was not equivalent to the “social elite” of Rome. Paul generally visits provincial capitols, places where citizenship would have been more common especially among freed slaves and ex-soldiers. It is possible that Paul targeted this group of “fresh citizens” with the gospel (E. A. Judge, New Documents 2:106-107).
A second objection centers on Paul’s mistreatment as described in 2 Cor. 11:24ff. This type of abuse would not be possible if Paul were a Roman citizen. This argument compares the unlawful arrest in Acts 16 (in Philippi) to the list of abuse Paul suffered prior to writing 2 Cor. It is impossible, it is argued, for a Roman citizen to have been so abused as Paul claims. Stegmenn notes that Paul is either the worst case of torture of a Roman citizen in history, or a masochist.
James Tabor makes this point explicitly: Paul’s letters contain no claim to Roman citizenship, whereas Acts repeatedly emphasizes it; he also notes that Paul’s claim to have been beaten with Roman rods in 2 Corinthians 11:25 creates a problem for taking his citizenship literally, since Roman citizens were legally protected against such treatment. From https://ehrmanblog.org/the-quest-for-the-historical-paul-sorting-through-our-sources-part-2-by-dr-james-tabor/
