But we must not consider this bridge unimportant in its own right. Without the foundations laid in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria and Antioch, there could not have been a Gentile mission into Asia Minor and Greece. There may have been other work done by other apostles during this period that was equally significant as the of Paul, but we know nothing of it. So from Luke’s vantage point we are to see Paul as the culmination of the Acts 1:8 commission.
The witnesses who testified in ch. 6 that Stephen claimed Jesus would destroy the temple and change the customs of Moses are explicitly called false witnesses (μάρτυρας ψευδεῖς Acts 6:13). Stephen's speech in this chapter is not really a defense against those trumped-up charges, but a presentation of his own understanding of God's dealings with Israel in the OT period and an indictment of those opposing Jesus, showing that those who now oppose Jesus the Messiah are in direct continuity with those who opposed Moses and the prophets who followed him.
Stephen’s speech has been claimed to present a good example of Greco-Roman rhetoric designed for a defense before a hostile audience (Dupont followed by Witherington, Acts 260ff.). According to this view, the speaker begins with a long narration (Latin narratio) intended to establish agreement, sympathy and rapport with his hostile audience (Latin insinuatio), in which none of his principal counter arguments need be prepared for or even mentioned (v. 2-35), followed by his argument (vv. 36-50) and peroration (vv. 51-53). But I find the above divisions of Stephen’s speech unsatisfactory, and feel I can detect much more logic to the movement of the speech, if I assume that neither Stephen nor Luke is using insinuatio. I am also unconvinced that his “argument” is confined to verses 36-50. Rather he is allowing each of the three main characters (Abraham, Joseph and Moses) to address the objections of the Sanhedrin to Jesus’ Messiahship and the apostles’ gospel (represented also by Stephen). Jewish law required two or more witnesses to establish a testimony (Deut 17:6; 19:15). Stephen had three.
Stephen’s opponents wish to preserve the heritage of their past. So his speech is a review of that past.
Luke’s source for the content of the speech was probably Saul/Paul, who was present and who — undoubtedly after his conversion, if not before — realized how critical this speech was for the emergence of the Jesus movement after the Resurrection (Witherington, Acts 265).
It may be of interest therefore to know that some contemporary scholars, such as Martin Hengel, believe the substance, but not the details, of the accusation against Stephen, and furthermore indicate that this was in fact the teaching of Jesus and was then continued by the Christian St. Paul, with Stephen and the Jerusalem “Hellenists” as the link between Jesus and Paul. This view is opposed by Hurtado (Lord Jesus Christ, 208-209 with note 110), who maintains that Paul’s teachings were based upon revelations given to him (Gal 1:11-12; Rom 15:14-21) and did not need to appeal to teachings during the earthly ministry of Jesus. Furthermore, Hurtado maintains that Paul was not critical of the law of Moses per se but only as it was made a prerequisite of salvation for Gentiles by the Judaizers, and that Paul’s view of the Jerusalem temple was likewise completely positive (cf. 1Cor 9:13-14; 2Thes 2:4) and not to be implied as negative by virtue of Paul’s metaphor of Christians as the “temple of God” (1Cor 3:16-17; 6:19; Eph 2:21).
If any theme is discernible in Stephen’s final speech, it is not so much a criticism of temple or law, but the repeated tendency of God’s people Israel to reject His prophets, including Moses himself (cf. Hurtado, p. 238)!
Although it is true that Stephen's speech appears to have been interrupted (v. 54), he had clearly reached his conclusion with his indictment of these rebels against God (vv. 51-53). So we may safely say that he planned his presentation around three key OT figures: Abraham, Joseph and Moses. As we reflect on what he says about these three, ask yourself what objections the audience had to Jesus as the Messiah and what advice each of the three OT characters can give to Stephen's hearers that would overcome their objection and lead them to accept him, whether or not this seems to rebut the false charges against Stephen. Or, if you prefer, ask yourself how these three men might bear witness against Stephen’s opponents.
Example #1: God & Abraham (vv. 2-8).
The first thing we learn about Abraham is that God appeared to him outside the Holy Land, and called him to leave his homeland and relatives and go to a “land that I will show you”. Without knowing any of the details, he left his homeland and traveled to Canaan (v. 4). Once he arrived, God gave him not even a foot's length of land (v. 5) to call his own, even though he promised him that his descendants would possess ("inherit") it. And this promise was made long before he even had a child and when there was little chance of having one. The idea of a place to put his foot in the land is present in God's promise to Abraham in Gen. 13:14-17 (NRSV):
The LORD said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, “Raise your eyes now, and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; 15 for all the land that you see I will give to you and to your offspring forever. 16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth; so that if one can count the dust of the earth, your offspring also can be counted. 17 Rise up, walk through the length and the breadth of the land, for I will give it to you.”Abraham was to walk through a land that he would not be given a single foot of while he was alive! Perhaps Stephen’s point here is that, although obviously the land was important as a promise, it was not so crucial that Abraham could not walk with God in full fellowship and obedience without seeing the fulfillment of the promises.
Abraham pleased God, not by law-keeping or temple worship, but by obeying His call and believing His promises.
6-7 A further test of Abraham's faith was the promise that after his descendants would live as slaves in Egypt for 400 years, far from the land that was promised (vv. 6-7), they would return to worship “in this place”. There is no mention in Gen 15 of the descendants returning to worship in Canaan, but Stephen infers it from the initial demands God made upon the pharaoh in Ex 3:18; (Ex 5:3,8,17; 8:8,25-29; 10:25) and from the events at Sinai involving the building of the Tabernacle. In Stephen's picture the purpose of the return to Canaan was in order to worship God in the land he was going to give them. The impression given, that the Israelites entered the Promised Land in order to worship there is part of Stephen’s theme, for in vv. 45-47, dealing with the post-Joshua period the focus is entirely on the Tabernacle and the Temple.
And finally, the sign of the covenant, circumcision was given to Abraham before he had a son and practiced by him long before there was law or temple (v. 8) of even a covenant people to be set apart by this sign. Stephen’s later calling his audience “uncircumcised in heart" meant they were outside the covenant with Abraham (so Witherington, Acts 266f). But this expression was often used by the OT prophets as well (Jer 9:26; Ezek 44:7,9). Equally significant is what Stephen does not say about Abraham: Paul’s use of “believed the LORD [LXX ‘God’], and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6) to show justification by faith is not yet apparently a part of the the Jerusalem evangelists’ repertoire of proof texts.
4-5 Jaroslav Pelikan (Acts [Brazos] 104) calls attention to an irony here. Just as Abraham lived in the Promised Land with a divine title to it but without present control of it, so also Stephen’s hearers were now living in the same land, still with the divine title to it, but with the Romans in control of it.
These are the things Stephen tells his audience about Abraham. Now how would Abraham (through Stephen’s voice) speak to the objections of the Sanhedrin about Jesus’ Messiahship and the apostles’ gospel?
Clearly Abraham's role in salvation history is as a model of faith, even if at this point Stephen does not make the point Paul does, that he “believed the LORD [LXX 'God'], and he counted it to him as righteousness” (Gen 15:6). Verses 2-8 are full of references to things God promised him which he never saw. Stephen clearly implies here too that the main objection to Jesus—that he was not a typical royal figure, that he gave no hope of a military liberation of Judea from the Romans—was a prime example of an objection that would never have mattered to Abraham. Repeatedly he believed God without visible sign of the truthfulness of the promise. Stephen's hearers were examples of the failure of the faith which justified Abraham.
Example #2: Joseph (vv. 9-16)
The second key figure in Stephen’s survey is Joseph.
Luke (or Stephen before him) uses a literary device to frame this pericope: In v. 9 the brother sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt, thus setting off a series of events that would lead the whole family there and a people into 400 years of slavery, whereas Abraham’s buying a field for burial (v. 16) gave to Jacob and Joseph a way to express their faith in God’s promise to Abraham that after 400 years he would bring them back into the land.
Stephen doesn't mention Joseph's dream, which sparked the “jealousy” of his brothers and led to their selling him into slavery to the Midianites (v. 9), but his hearers could be counted upon to recall that fact. Stephen doesn't magnify Joseph's own efforts in Egypt, but instead credits all that happens after this to God being with Joseph (v. 9-10). God continues to do all the arranging and moving of the chess pieces: with the famine, the moving of the family to Egypt, their deaths there and the return of their bones for burial in the Promised Land.
In vv. 12-13 Stephen emphasizes the distinct phases in which Joseph progressively reveals himself to his brothers: “the first time” (v. 12), and “the second time” (v. 13). It is a theme that recurs with Moses, who was rejected the first time, but accepted on his return. This may be his way of hinting that, although his Jewish countrymen listening failed to recognize Jesus the Messiah the first time, they can still allow him now to reveal himself to them. And all of this happens outside of the Holy Land and without either law or temple. It is merely God’s sovereign and inscrutable plan and the steadfast faith of the character who by God’s plan goes through suffering in order to bring blessing.
Stephen's lesson from Abraham was that his opponents lacked that man's God-pleasing ability to believe promises for which he never in his lifetime saw tangible evidence. What lesson did Stephen want them to draw from Joseph? His brothers and even his father and mother were offended by the promise of God to Joseph in his dream that he would become their ruler. And in rejecting him in this role they risked losing him as their Savior from the famine. Similarly, Stephen's opponents refuse to believe that Jesus is God's Messiah and Son, and instead killed him, saying, “we will not have this man to rule over us!”
Joseph is important for several reasons: (1) he was rejected by his brothers, next Moses would be, then the OT prophets, and finally as Jesus would eventually be, (2) God was with Joseph even in his sufferings (e.g., in the mistreatment by Potiphar and in prison) and rescued him and elevated him in Egypt through the wisdom that God gave him. The Genesis account also stresses Joseph’s self-control and moral rectitude, but Stephen is more interested in emphasizing his grace (‘favor’) and wisdom (v. 10), which of course is also expressed in Genesis in his ability to interpret the dreams of his fellow prisoners and of the pharaoh, and in the plan to save Egypt from the effects of the coming famine. Noticeable is the fact that Joseph and Moses did not try to make themselves rulers over God’s people, as those who rejected them thought they were, but were responding to a Divine call. There may even be a hint in Acts 7:4 (cf. Gen 11:32; 12:4) that Abraham’s father refused to let Abraham answer God’s call, so that only after he died could Abraham leave Haran for Canaan.
In sum, Joseph may well have said to the Sanhedrin what he said to his wicked brothers: “ You meant it for evil (e.g., killing Jesus and now his servant Stephen). But God meant it for good: so save many people” (Gen 50:20). Through the crucifixion of Jesus a world of lost sinners will be saved, and through Stephen’s death the seeds have been planted for the conversion of Paul.
Example #3: Moses (vv. 17-43)
The section on Moses is introduced appropriately by the statement that the promise to Abraham was about to be fulfilled. What promise was this? God promised him (1) that his descendants would become more numerous than the stars (Gen 15:5), and he promised him (2) that they would spend 400 years in Egypt and then return (Gen 15:13). The first is recorded as fulfilled in v. 18 (cf. Exod 1:7 for Stephen's source), and the second will be fulfilled through Moses.
18-19 The historical identity of this “new king” (מֶלֶךְ־חָדָשׁ Exod 1:8) of Egypt who “did not know Joseph” may be of great interest to historians trying to date the exodus (if they believe it to be historical), but to both Moses who wrote Exodus 1:8, and to Stephen who quotes it here (in the Greek version: βασιλεὺς ἕτερος "another king"), his identity is unimportant. What is significant is that he had no commitment to Joseph as his predecessors did and that he consequently subjected the Israelites to slavery and “dealt treacherously” with them (κατασοφισάμενος v. 19 NIV). What Stephen seems to imply is that his hearers also do not truly “know Joseph”. Like the “new king” they might be reading the same Scriptures as their ancestors in the days of Moses, Joshua, Samuel, David, and Elijah, but they do not understand them the way an earlier generation of OT saints did. Nor do they live in the spirit and faith of a Joseph. They know about Joseph, but they do not know Joseph. Just as the pharaoh of the exodus was incapable of seeing God's hand in a Moses, so they are incapable of seeing their deliverer in Jesus.
20-22 record the birth and first 40 years of Moses' life. The introductory description of Moses in vv. 20-22 certainly does not look like the words of a man accused of blaspheming Moses and his law! Stephen says that at his birth Moses was “beautiful to God” (ἀστεῖος τῷ θεῷ, taken from the Greek version of Exod 2:2, whose Hebrew כִּי־טוֹב הוּא simply means he was a healthy baby). This is doubtless Stephen's way of saying that God had a special mission for this baby, so that God spared him from the fate of the other Jewish boys mentioned in v. 19. Through his adoption by the "daughter of the pharaoh" God placed the child Moses in the household of the king and gave him education, so that he was “powerful in speech and action”.
21 The adoption of a worthy and faithful slave by his master was a theme in Greco-Roman culture:
“In ancient Rome, adoption of boys was a fairly common procedure, particularly in the upper senatorial class. The need for a male heir and the expense of raising children were strong incentives to have at least one son, but not too many children. … As Rome was ruled by a selected number of powerful families, every senator's duty was to produce sons to inherit the estate, family name and political tradition. But a large family was an expensive luxury. Daughters had to be provided with a suitable dowry and sons had to be pushed through the political offices of the cursus honorum. The higher the political status of a family, the higher was the cost. Due to this, Roman families restricted the number of children, avoiding more than three. … Sometimes, not having enough children proved to be a wrong choice. Infants could die and the lack of male births was always a risk. For families cursed with too many sons and the ones with no boys at all, adoption was the only solution.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adoption_in_ancient_Rome).So Theophilus and other Gentile readers would relate to Stephen’s description of this beautiful slave child’s adoption by a member of the Egyptian royal family. In an ancient Hittite legend from the time of Moses the infant sons of a queen, abandoned to the river, were rescued and reared by the gods themselves (see Hoffner, Hittite Myths [Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998], 81 §1).
23-29 Despite his position of privilege in the royal household, Moses' true loyalties were not with the Egyptians who had raised him, but with the people of God, the enslaved Israelites. Stephen says (v. 23) that when Moses became 40, he decided to “visit” his people. The Greek verb translated “visit” (ἐπισκέψασθαι) means to “look after the wellbeing of someone” or “come to the aid of someone”. It is often used in the Greek translation of the OT of God rescuing His people from harm. Most significantly, it is used in the mouth of the dying Joseph, predicting the exodus under Moses:
Gen. 50:24 (NRSV) Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die; but God will surely come to (LXX ἐπισκέψεται = MT יִפְקֹד אֶתְכֶם) you, and bring you up out of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” 25 So Joseph made the Israelites swear, saying, “When God comes to you, you shall carry up my bones from here.”Moses is portrayed in the dual role of savior-defender (λυτρωτής) and ruler-judge (ἄρχων) (see v. 35) — the Hebrew original was שַׂר וְשֹׁפֵט (Exod 2:14). As savior-defender (vv. 24-25) he is seen killing the Egyptian slave driver, an adumbration of the future deliverance from the oppressive pharaoh in the exodus. As judge he mediates to stop violence in a legal dispute between members of his own people (v. 26). This foreshadows his future role of transmitting God's laws at Sinai and administering them during the desert wanderings. Stephen uses these two roles to describe Jesus' twofold ministry: (1) saving us from sin's penalty through his death and resurrection, and (2) setting the example for how the OT scriptures, especially the ethical norms, are to be understood through his discourses in the Sermon on the Mount.
But Moses' people refused to recognize him (v. 25) as God's chosen deliverer and rejected his early attempts, scaring him into flight to the land of Midian (v. 27-29). Although the Book of Exodus does not say this, Stephen claims (v. 25) that Moses “thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them”, but they did not. Like Joseph before him (Gen 50:20) and Jesus (Luke 23:34) and Stephen (Acts 7:60) after him, Moses forgave his brothers, because of their ignorance of God's plan (Acts 7:25).
Rejected by his own people, Moses found acceptance and a family in Midian (29), where he spent 40 more years. Like Abraham, Moses received his divine call in a foreign land, yet a place that God called “holy ground” (γῆ ἁγία v. 33, taken from the Greek LXX of Exod 3:5, where the Hebrew is אַדְמַת־קֹדֶשׁ). It was to be the place of the future giving of the law of God, Mt. Sinai.
30-36 God's prophet, rejected and sent away by God's people, is called by God to go again and deliver them. The one they rejected in ignorance becomes in fact their Savior and Ruler (v.35). Through Moses God does miracles to deliver them from Egypt and for 40 years in the desert. Of course, Stephen intends his hearers to think of the many miracles performed by Jesus, as well as the explosion of healings in Jerusalem following the resurrection (Acts 1-5).
38 records the giving of the law at Mt. Sinai. Moses the lawgiver once rejected by his people (v. 38) promised a prophet like himself (Deut. 18:15), who was Jesus. Through the Prophet-Messiah Jesus the “living words” of the law were authoritatively interpreted (Sermon on the Mount).
But the law which Stephen's opponents so zealously sought to “protect” was not obeyed by the people. The rebellion of the people of Israel against Moses in the Wilderness was both against Moses as lawgiver, and against the temple/tabernacle, because it involved idolatry with the gold calf (v. 41-43). And it is with reference to this rebellion of the people against Moses even to the point of wanting to kill him (Ex 17:4; Num 14:10), that his promise of a “prophet like me” becomes extremely important in Stephen's address. For the Prophet par excellence fulfilled in Jesus was like Moses above all in his being rejected by his people! Here Stephen puts Jesus in the great tradition of the OT prophets who both defended the temple, opposed idolatry, and interpreted and applied the ethical teachings of the law to the people. That Stephen casts Jesus in the role of prophet in no way indicates a diminished Christology: for Stephen and the other earliest Jewish Christians there was no contradiction between the Suffering Servant, the Prophet and the exalted Messiah. Jesus was all of these.
Stephen's lesson from Abraham was that his opponents were unwilling to believe Jesus' claims without seeing an immediate realization of them. From v. 39-40 Stephen alludes to the key to the people's rebellion against Moses and God: they were unwilling to move out of bondage into a freedom with new and unfamiliar demands. This was in fact a major reason for resisting Jesus' claims.
From Moses to Solomon (44-50)
Stephen spends much less time on the period between Moses and Solomon, just skimming the surface of the history. In fact this part of the speech focuses not on a notable person, but on the Tabernacle as the movable “home” of God. It was in the desert with Moses (v. 44), brought into the land with Joshua (v. 45) and remained there until David asked to be able to build a temple home for God (v. 46). But it was Solomon whom God permitted to build it (v. 47). Yet the prophet Amos, whom Stephen quotes, reminded the people what Solomon himself admitted in his dedicatory prayer (1 Kings 8:27): that no earthly temple can contain the God whose throne is heaven and whose footstool is earth.
The real indictment comes in vv. 51-53, where Stephen accuses his hearers of being like the rebels against Moses and the prophets, all of whom predicted the coming of the Righteous One What they did to the prophets who predicted, they did also to the one whose coming was predicted. The Messiah was at the heart of the issue: Stephen's hearers in their heart of hearts knew it as well as he did. And the Messiah is here called “the Righteous One” (δίκαιος = צַדִּיק), i.e., the one vindicated (i.e., shown to be right) as Jesus was by his resurrection and ascension. In the wilderness wanderings God was continually vindicating the authority of Moses and Aaron against rebels from the ranks of Israel. Now he had vindicated his Son and Messiah by the resurrection. And if Jesus was the vindicated Messiah (i.e., "the Righteous One"), then he had the “Spirit of wisdom and understanding” predicted of the Messiah in Isaiah 11:2-4, and used it to give the definitive interpretation to the Law (cf. the Sermon on the Mount) and to purify the Temple (cf. the driving out of the money changers). Ironically, it was these two acts which opponents saw as threatening the law and the temple, and led to his crucifixion, as it was now being used as a pretext to murder Stephen!
57-58 The covering of the ears has a double meaning in Luke’s description: (1) the ones doing it did so to avoid hearing further blasphemy from the mouth of the dying man, but (2) believers are to see it as a dramatic depiction of the closed mind that will from now on in Acts generally characterize the Jewish hearers of the Gospel. This may be part of Luke’s portrayal of Stephen’s martyrdom as a turning point in the advancement of the Gospel among the Jewish people.
Stephen’s death is very much like that of Jesus. It was occasioned by trumped-up charges made by false witnesses, the decision of the court to “execute” was triggered by the accused’s own words in response to the false testimony and especially by his statement about the exalted Messiah Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and was accompanied by the dying man’s words of forgiveness and his committing his spirit to God. But Pelikan (Acts [Brazos] 107) makes the interesting observation that in Stephen’s prayer “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” he attributes to Jesus a function which in Jewish monotheism could only be performed by God, as witness even Jesus’ own prayer on the cross:
“Jesus called out with a loud voice, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.” (Luke 23:46 NIV)When Jesus uttered these words, it was 3 PM, when the temple trumpets blared through the streets of Jerusalem the signal for the evening prayer. Jesus also prayed the evening prayer in this way, perhaps as Joseph or Mary had taught him as a child, the Jewish prayer anticipating "sleep", including the final "sleep" of death (E. Stauffer, Jesus: Gestalt und Geschichte 107f., 162 [n. 93]). Now Stephen too uses the Jewish prayer formula—committal of the spirit into the hands of God (in this case Jesus as God)—before he too "falls asleep". It was his "Now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to keep." With this he turns what could have been a very ugly scene into one of exquisite beauty.
Appendix:
On the historical, political and legal
background of Stephen's trial and the “lynching”
On the historical, political and legal
background of Stephen's trial and the “lynching”
Christopher Bryan (Render to Caesar, pp. 73f. [ch. 4, Appendix C]) writes:
“With regard to the death of Stephen, the evidence is, on any view, confusing. Luke tells the story in such a way that we are reminded (and are clearly meant to be reminded) of the arraignment and death of Jesus (Acts 7.56 cf. Luke 22.69; Acts 7.59 cf. Luke 23.46; Acts 7.60 cf. Luke 23.34). At the same time, Luke does not hide some obvious differences between the two processes. In Stephen's trial, we do not gain the impression of a formally completed procedure—in marked contrast to the gospel's account of what happened to Jesus. The description begins with a solemn gathering of people, elders, and scribes, but then, as Bond says, “the proceedings descend into chaos: there is no verdict, no sentence; Stephen's death resembles a mob lynching rather than an official execution.” One might be forgiven, therefore, for suggesting that the death of Stephen is useless as evidence for what was actually legal, one way or another. It was simply an example of lynch law. Marta Sordi, however, offers a quite different view: the proceedings against Stephen “did have something of a legitimate trial about them. They began with the Sanhedrin hearing the charges brought against him by witnesses, went on with the accused … [being invited by] the Chief Priest to speak in his own defence (Acts 6:11f) and ended with the Sanhedrin's unanimous verdict in favour of the death sentence (Acts 7:57), which was then carried out by the witnesses themselves, in accordance with the ancient Hebrew law against blasphemers.” So was this a formal trial or not? It is impossible, on the evidence we have, to be certain: both Bond's and Sordi's interpretations of the text are possible, for the text itself does not provide enough information to exclude one or the other.
“Whatever it was, just how did it happen? Was it, as Bond and Sordi both suggest, after Pilate had left office, during a power vacuum such as the one that occurred between the death of Porcius Festus and the arrival of Albinus? Or was Pilate (who lasted through most of 36, probably leaving in December) still in office, as Jeremias asserts? If the latter case, did Pilate connive at Stephen's death? And was that connivance a factor in Pilate's departure? It is, again, in the state of our knowledge, impossible to answer any of these questions.
“According to Josephus, L. Vitellius, the legate of Syria, on a generally placatory visit to Jerusalem in AD 36 or 37, in the course of which a number of benefits were bestowed upon the city, removed the high priest Caiaphas from his office (Ant. 18.90–95). But Josephus does not say why. Was it that Caiaphas had become unpopular? Or was it, as Bond suggests, that Caiaphas had taken “advantage of the power vacuum in Judaea [following Pilate's departure],” grown “too assertive,” and become “too powerful for his own good”? If the latter, then in what way had this over-assertiveness manifested itself? … Was it, then, that Caiaphas (with or without Pilate's connivance) had exceeded his authority in the execution of Stephen, exactly as Ananias was to do in 62? Incidental confirmation of that might be implied by Luke, who notes that following the meeting of Peter and Paul, perhaps in the same year as the deposition of Caiaphas, “the church throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria had peace” (Acts 9.31). And Judea, Galilee, and Samaria were precisely the areas under Roman control (direct or indirect) at that time, as opposed to Damascus, under the control of Aretas the enemy of Rome, where Christians were being persecuted (Acts 9.19–25, 2Cor 11.32). But, again, though such a scenario is possible, there is no way that we can arrive at even reasonable certainty about it.”
No comments:
Post a Comment