Wednesday, August 16, 2017

The Importance of Stephen Lesson 3: Stephen before the Sanhedrin


The Importance of Stephen 
Biblical text: Acts, Chapters 6 and 7 
Primary extra-biblical source: The Book of Acts, F. F. Bruce, Rev. Ed., 1988.

Previous lessons in this series:


10 But they could not withstand the wisdom and the Spirit with which he was speaking. 11 Then they secretly instigated men who said, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” 12 And they stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council, 13 and they set up false witnesses who said, “This man never ceases to speak words against this holy place and the law, 14 for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us.” 15 And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel.(Acts 6:10-14)
Unable to out perform Stephen in a debate, (v. 10) a more insidious line of attack was initiated. Witnesses were coerced into charging Stephen with blasphemy. What they claimed to have heard may in fact have been accurate.

Here we note the evolution of the world blasphemy. Later, in the Mishnah it would be rendered as uttering the name that only the High Priest could speak on the Day of Atonement 1. However, applied at the time of Stephen it could mean a wider range of offenses. The blasphemy indictment of Stephen was twofold. In the first, it was quite similar to the failed charge brought against Jesus-- it was a threat to the temple. Recall the clumsy witness-tampering attempt at the arrest of Jesus: 
“We heard him [Jesus] say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands.’” (Mark 14:58) 
(Of course the Sanhedrin then did an end-around to accomplish their "justice" with Jesus.) Secondly, Stephen appears to have spoken about the abrogation of the Law of Moses--at least the ceremonial law. All this would have incensed not just the powers, but also the common people. As previously mentioned, a threat to the temple and its practices was also a threat to the region's economy. This likely emboldened the officials, who had little reason to fear a popular backlash.

The witnesses, though described as false, probably gave accurate testimony. They are described as false either because they were not giving eyewitness accounts, or as F.F. Bruce put it, "anyone who testifies against a spokesman of God is ipso facto a false witness. 2  These witnesses testified that Stephen had threatened the temple ("holy place") and the customs of Moses. Furthermore,  he invoked the name of Jesus as the instrument for this catastrophic prediction, fueling the prosecutorial fire by identifying Jesus as the Messiah.

Stephen was not giving prophecy--he was just paying closer attention than anyone else to what Jesus himself had said.

As F. F. Bruce wrote 3:
The apostles and many of the rank and file of the Jerusalem church might continue to attend the temple services and to be respected as devout and observant Jews; Stephen held that the gospel meant the end of the sacrificial cultus and all the ceremonial law.
It is as if only Stephen paid close attention to some of Jesus' own words, such as I tell you, something greater than the temple is here. (Matt 12:6). Stephen, uniquely as far as we know--with the sole exception of Saul, discerned that the temple worship and the ceremonial law was irreconcilable with the gospel. Stephen's teaching, paraphrased, was that the followers of Christ were not a sect of Judaism, but something else altogether--in appearances an entirely different religion 4. While the prosecution of Jesus on similar charges of threatening the temple failed, the strategy would succeed with Stephen. No doubt he could see the worldly hopelessness of his situation. Yet he did not face the Sanhedrin with any of the range of dispositions that others might have drawn upon. Not sadness, fear, anger, vengeance, indignity, etc.,--rather he presented what must have been the most disarming of appearances, that of an angel, glowing and (we presume) filled with the spirit, in as close proximity to his God and Savior as any living man could be.

1 "The blasphemer is not guilty until he expressly uttered the Name" (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 7.5) 
2 F. F. Bruce, The Book of Acts, p. 126. 
3 Ibid., 127.
4 We could argue semantics here about whether the term "new religion" is accurate. From an anthropological standpoint, I think it is. As for theological, it depends on the eyes of the beholder. But (in my opinion) both Stephen and Saul, to use a biological analogy, would agree that Christianity and 1st century Judaism, though sharing a common ancestor, were not distant cousins but two different species.

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