The deacon Stephen is arrested for speaking out against the temple and the Law of Moses. While Luke is clear that these are false charges, Stephen may have preached something that could have been taken as “against the temple and the Law.” There is no indication in Acts that anyone “spoke out against the Law” among the apostolic community, they continued to worship in the Temple and most likely keep all of the Works of the Law which were expected of them as Jews. Sometimes, scholars speculate, based on Stephen’s Speech, that he was already starting to give up elements of the Law, as if he were a forerunner of Paul’s theology in Galatians. Nothing here would give that impression except the false witnesses.
To speak out against the Temple was not an offense worthy of death. There were, in fact, many critics of the Temple in the first century, including the Qumran community, which separated itself entirely from Temple worship because the Temple used the wrong calendar and was, therefore, celebrating Passover on the wrong day! If Stephen did speak out against the Temple, he is no different than Jeremiah, who condemned the Temple, the priesthood, and the worshipers for not doing true worship (Jer 7, for example), and Jesus himself, who called the Temple a “den of thieves”! In addition, several Second Temple period books also condemn the priesthood as corrupt.
If the audience could agree with most of Stephen’s sermon, his conclusion angers them so greatly. This generation is just as stiff-necked; therefore, they are under the same judgment! (7:51-53) The conclusion to this sermon draws on themes found throughout the Hebrew Bible.
A key theme in the sermon is that God has appointed leaders and spokesmen in the past, yet the nation has rejected them. Abraham, Joseph, and Moses are the main characters of Stephen’s sermon. Joseph was rejected by his brothers despite being full of wisdom; Israel resisted Moses in the wilderness. So, too, the prophets, who represented the word of God in the Hebrew Bible, were resisted, persecuted, and killed by previous generations of appointed leaders, just as the present generation has done to Jesus. Stephen’s speech, therefore, argues God is faithful and he does keep his promises. There has been a long line of “innocent sufferers” in the history of Israel, people who suffered at the hands of the appointed leaders who did not, in fact do the law which they had been given.
Resistance to the apostolic message represents resisting the Holy Spirit. The people are called stiff-necked. The word appears only here in the New Testament. It appears eight times in the Septuagint, usually in the context of covenant unfaithfulness (Exod 33:3, 34:9 and Deut 9:6). To be “stiff-necked” means to be stubborn, obstinate, or rigid” (HALOT). They are also described as having “uncircumcised hearts.” This phrase is also associated with covenant unfaithfulness (Jer 9:25, Lev 26:41, Jer 6:10, Ezek 44:7, 9). Stephen says that this generation has always resisted the Holy Spirit. “Resistance” is a rare word in both the New Testament and the LXX, appearing only here and in Numbers 27:14, where it describes the rebellion of the people in the Wilderness of Zin.
Stephen accuses the present generation of the same hard-headed resistance to the word of God, which was demonstrated by the worst of Israel’s kings. Those who persecuted the prophets would include Ahab and Jezebel in the northern kingdom, Manasseh in the south (who was reputed to have killed Isaiah and any other true prophet who challenged him), and the temple authorities who persecuted Jeremiah. Jeremiah spoke against the Temple and was nearly killed. Jesus also challenged the Temple, and the Temple aristocracy killed him.
The most stinging part of this critique is that these prophets predicted the coming of the Messiah and were silenced by the appointed authorities of the nation. Most likely, the Sanhedrin would have agreed with Stephen on this point: “The prior generations were corrupt, but we are nothing like them!” This generation has done the same to the Righteous One himself!
What other elements of Stephen’s speech resonate with the prophets of the Hebrew Bible? Stephen alludes extensively to the Hebrew Bible in the speech, but is he intentionally connecting his audience with the “wilderness generation”? What was the point of his constant reference to the wilderness generation?
