But some of those who were of the synagogue called “The Libertines”, and of the Cyrenians, of the Alexandrians, and of those of Cilicia and Asia arose, disputing with Stephen. They weren’t able to withstand the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke. Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” They stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes, and came against him and seized him, then brought him in to the council, and set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us.”
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Stephen, full of faith and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people. But some of those who were of the synagogue called “The Libertines”, and of the Cyrenians, of the Alexandrians, and of those of Cilicia and Asia arose, disputing with Stephen. They weren’t able to withstand the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke. Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.” They stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes, and came against him and seized him, then brought him in to the council, and set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking blasphemous words against this holy place and the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us.” All who sat in the council, fastening their eyes on him, saw his face like it was the face of an angel.
Parallel Translations
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But some of those who were of the synagogue called “The Libertines”, and of the Cyrenians, of the Alexandrians, and of those of Cilicia and Asia arose, disputing with Stephen.
They weren’t able to withstand the wisdom and the Spirit by which he spoke.
Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.”
They stirred up the people, the elders, and the scribes, and came against him and seized him, then brought him in to the council,
and set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking blasphemous words against this holy place and the law.
For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place, and will change the customs which Moses delivered to us.”
-
Then ther arose certayne of the synagoge which are called Lybertines and Syrenites and of Alexandria and of Cilicia and Asia and disputed with Steven.
And they coulde not resist the wysdome and the sprete with which he spake.
Then sent they in men which sayd: we have hearde him speake blasphemous wordes agaynst Moses and agaynst God.
And they moved the people and the elders and the scribes: and came apon him and caught him and brought him to the counsell
and brought forth falce witnesses which sayde. This man ceasith not to speake blasphemous wordes agaynst this holy place and the lawe:
for we hearde him saye: this Iesus of Nazareth shall destroye this place and shall chaunge the ordinaunces which Moses gave vs.
Show all 3 translations
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Then there arose certaine of the Synagogue, which are called Libertines, and Cyrenians, and of Alexandria, and of them of Cilicia, and of Asia, and disputed with Steuen.
But they were not able to resist the wisdome, and the Spirit by the which he spake.
Then they suborned men, which saide, We haue heard him speake blasphemous wordes against Moses, and God.
Thus they mooued the people and the Elders, and the Scribes: and running vpon him, caught him, and brought him to the Councill,
And set forth false witnesses, which sayd, This man ceasseth not to speake blasphemous wordes against this holy place, and the Law.
For we haue heard him say, that this Iesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the ordinances, which Moses gaue vs.
Cross-references (117)
- Luke 21:15 (v10) for I will give you a mouth and wisdom which all your adversaries will not be able to withstand or to contradict.
- Matthew 10:19-20 (v10) But when they deliver you up, don’t be anxious how or what you will say, for it will be given you in that hour what you will say. For it is…
- 1 Corinthians 2:4 (v10) My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power,
- Luke 12:11-12 (v10) When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, don’t be anxious how or what you will answer, or what you will…
- John 7:46 (v10) The officers answered, “No man ever spoke like this man!”
Show all 100 cross-references
- Job 32:8 (v10) But there is a spirit in man, and the Spirit of the Almighty gives them understanding.
- Exodus 4:12 (v10) Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak.”
- Matthew 26:59-60 (v11) Now the chief priests, the elders, and the whole council sought false testimony against Jesus, that they might put him to death; and they…
- Proverbs 15:18 (v12) A wrathful man stirs up contention, but one who is slow to anger appeases strife.
- Daniel 9:26 (v14) After the sixty-two weeks the Anointed One will be cut off, and will have nothing. The people of the prince who come will destroy the city…
- Acts 21:21 (v14) They have been informed about you, that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise…
- Hebrews 12:26-28 (v14) whose voice shook the earth then, but now he has promised, saying, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth, but also the heavens.”…
- Ezekiel 3:27 (v10) But when I speak with you, I will open your mouth, and you shall tell them, ‘This is what the Lord Yahweh says.’ He who hears, let him…
- Luke 1:17 (v10) He will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the…
- Acts 14:2 (v12) But the disbelieving Jews stirred up and embittered the souls of the Gentiles against the brothers.
- Acts 15:1 (v14) Some men came down from Judea and taught the brothers, “Unless you are circumcised after the custom of Moses, you can’t be saved.”
- Job 32:18 (v10) For I am full of words. The spirit within me constrains me.
- Matthew 27:32 (v9) As they came out, they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name, and they compelled him to go with them, that he might carry his cross.
- Luke 21:6 (v14) “As for these things which you see, the days will come, in which there will not be left here one stone on another that will not be thrown…
- John 4:21 (v14) Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour comes, when neither in this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, will you worship the Father.
- Acts 5:39 (v10) But if it is of God, you will not be able to overthrow it, and you would be found even to be fighting against God!”
- Acts 6:11 (v13) Then they secretly induced men to say, “We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God.”
- Acts 7:51 (v10) “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit! As your fathers did, so you do.
- Acts 15:23 (v9) They wrote these things by their hand: “The apostles, the elders, and the brothers, to the brothers who are of the Gentiles in Antioch,…
- Acts 15:41 (v9) He went through Syria and Cilicia, strengthening the assemblies.
- Acts 22:3 (v9) “I am indeed a Jew, born in Tarsus of Cilicia, but brought up in this city at the feet of Gamaliel, instructed according to the strict…
- Acts 23:34 (v9) When the governor had read it, he asked what province he was from. When he understood that he was from Cilicia, he said,
- Acts 28:17 (v14) After three days Paul called together those who were the leaders of the Jews. When they had come together, he said to them, “I, brothers,…
- Galatians 3:19 (v14) Then why is there the law? It was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise has been made. It…
- Galatians 3:23 (v14) But before faith came, we were kept in custody under the law, confined for the faith which should afterwards be revealed.
- Galatians 4:3-5 (v14) So we also, when we were children, were held in bondage under the elemental principles of the world. But when the fullness of the time…
- Hebrews 8:6-13 (v14) But now he has obtained a more excellent ministry, by so much as he is also the mediator of a better covenant, which on better promises has…
- Hebrews 9:9-11 (v14) This is a symbol of the present age, where gifts and sacrifices are offered that are incapable, concerning the conscience, of making the…
- Hebrews 10:1-18 (v14) For the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which…
- Acts 21:27 (vv9, 12) When the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the multitude and laid hands…
- Acts 21:28 (vv11, 13) crying out, “Men of Israel, help! This is the man who teaches all men everywhere against the people, and the law, and this place. Moreover,…
- Acts 25:8 (vv13–14) while he said in his defense, “Neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar, have I sinned at all.”
- 1 Kings 21:10-13 (v11) Set two men, wicked fellows, before him, and let them testify against him, saying, ‘You cursed God and the king!’ Then carry him out, and…
- Isaiah 54:17 (v10) No weapon that is formed against you will prevail; and you will condemn every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the…
- Isaiah 66:1-6 (v14) Yahweh says, “Heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build to me? Where will I rest? For my hand…
- Jeremiah 1:18-19 (v10) For, behold, I have made you today a fortified city, an iron pillar, and bronze walls against the whole land, against the kings of Judah,…
- Jeremiah 7:4-14 (v14) Don’t trust in lying words, saying, ‘Yahweh’s temple, Yahweh’s temple, Yahweh’s temple, are these.’ For if you thoroughly amend your ways…
- Jeremiah 15:20 (v10) I will make you to this people a fortified bronze wall. They will fight against you, but they will not prevail against you; for I am with…
- Micah 3:8 (v10) But as for me, I am full of power by Yahweh’s Spirit, and of judgment, and of might, to declare to Jacob his disobedience, and to Israel…
- Zechariah 14:2 (v14) For I will gather all nations against Jerusalem to battle; and the city will be taken, the houses rifled, and the women ravished. Half of…
- Matthew 10:17 (v9) But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge you.
- Matthew 26:57 (v12) Those who had taken Jesus led him away to Caiaphas the high priest, where the scribes and the elders were gathered together.
- Mark 13:9 (v9) But watch yourselves, for they will deliver you up to councils. You will be beaten in synagogues. You will stand before rulers and kings…
- Luke 13:34-35 (v14) “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children…
- Luke 21:12 (v9) But before all these things, they will lay their hands on you and will persecute you, delivering you up to synagogues and prisons, bringing…
- Luke 21:24 (v14) They will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be led captive into all the nations. Jerusalem will be trampled down by the Gentiles,…
- Acts 2:9-10 (v9) Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and people from Mesopotamia, Judea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, the parts of Libya…
- Acts 16:6 (v9) When they had gone through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, they were forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia.
- Acts 18:24 (v9) Now a certain Jew named Apollos, an Alexandrian by race, an eloquent man, came to Ephesus. He was mighty in the Scriptures.
- Acts 19:10 (v9) This continued for two years, so that all those who lived in Asia heard the word of the Lord Jesus, both Jews and Greeks.
- Acts 26:3 (v14) especially because you are expert in all customs and questions which are among the Jews. Therefore I beg you to hear me patiently.
- Galatians 1:21 (v9) Then I came to the regions of Syria and Cilicia.
- Hebrews 7:11-19 (v14) Now if perfection was through the Levitical priesthood (for under it the people have received the law), what further need was there for…
- Acts 26:11 (vv9, 11) Punishing them often in all the synagogues, I tried to make them blaspheme. Being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even…
- Psalms 27:12 (v13) Don’t deliver me over to the desire of my adversaries, for false witnesses have risen up against me, such as breathe out cruelty.
- Psalms 35:11 (v13) Unrighteous witnesses rise up. They ask me about things that I don’t know about.
- Psalms 56:5 (v13) All day long they twist my words. All their thoughts are against me for evil.
- Isaiah 65:15 (v14) You will leave your name for a curse to my chosen; and the Lord Yahweh will kill you. He will call his servants by another name,
- Isaiah 66:19-21 (v14) “I will set a sign among them, and I will send those who escape of them to the nations, to Tarshish, Pul, and Lud, who draw the bow, to…
- Jeremiah 26:6-9 (v14) then I will make this house like Shiloh, and will make this city a curse to all the nations of the earth.” ’ ” The priests and the prophets…
- Jeremiah 26:12 (v14) Then Jeremiah spoke to all the princes and to all the people, saying, “Yahweh sent me to prophesy against this house and against this city…
- Jeremiah 26:18 (v14) “Micah the Morashtite prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah; and he spoke to all the people of Judah, saying, ‘Yahweh of Armies…
- Hosea 3:4 (v14) For the children of Israel shall live many days without king, and without prince, and without sacrifice, and without sacred stone, and…
- Micah 3:12 (v14) Therefore Zion for your sake will be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem will become heaps of rubble, and the mountain of the temple like…
- Zechariah 11:1 (v14) Open your doors, Lebanon, that the fire may devour your cedars.
- Matthew 5:22 (v12) But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause will be in danger of the judgment. Whoever says to his brother,…
- Matthew 23:34 (v9) Therefore behold, I send to you prophets, wise men, and scribes. Some of them you will kill and crucify; and some of them you will scourge…
- Matthew 24:1-2 (v14) Jesus went out from the temple, and was going on his way. His disciples came to him to show him the buildings of the temple. But he…
- Matthew 24:15 (v13) “When, therefore, you see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (let…
- Matthew 26:61 (v14) and said, “This man said, ‘I am able to destroy the temple of God, and to build it in three days.’ ”
- Matthew 28:12-15 (v11) When they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave a large amount of silver to the soldiers, saying, “Say that his…
- Mark 14:58 (v14) “We heard him say, ‘I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another made without hands.’ ”
- John 1:17 (v11) For the law was given through Moses. Grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ.
- John 5:45-47 (v11) “Don’t think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, even Moses, on whom you have set your hope. For if you…
- John 9:29 (v11) We know that God has spoken to Moses. But as for this man, we don’t know where he comes from.”
- John 16:3 (v11) They will do these things because they have not known the Father, nor me.
- Acts 4:1-3 (v12) As they spoke to the people, the priests and the captain of the temple and the Sadducees came to them, being upset because they taught the…
- Acts 5:18 (v12) and laid hands on the apostles, then put them in public custody.
- Acts 5:27 (v12) When they had brought them, they set them before the council. The high priest questioned them,
- Acts 6:13 (v11) and set up false witnesses who said, “This man never stops speaking blasphemous words against this holy place and the law.
- Acts 7:37-39 (v11) This is that Moses, who said to the children of Israel, ‘The Lord our God will raise up a prophet for you from among your brothers, like…
- Acts 7:58 (v13) They threw him out of the city and stoned him. The witnesses placed their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.
- Acts 11:20 (v9) But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who, when they had come to Antioch, spoke to the Hellenists, preaching the Lord…
- Acts 13:1 (v9) Now in the assembly that was at Antioch there were some prophets and teachers: Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene,…
- Acts 13:45 (v9) But when the Jews saw the multitudes, they were filled with jealousy, and contradicted the things which were spoken by Paul, and blasphemed.
- Acts 13:50 (v12) But the Jews stirred up the devout and prominent women and the chief men of the city, and stirred up a persecution against Paul and…
- Acts 15:21 (v11) For Moses from generations of old has in every city those who preach him, being read in the synagogues every Sabbath.”
- Acts 16:19-21 (v12) But when her masters saw that the hope of their gain was gone, they seized Paul and Silas, and dragged them into the marketplace before the…
- Acts 17:5-6 (v12) But the unpersuaded Jews took along some wicked men from the marketplace, and gathering a crowd, set the city in an uproar. Assaulting the…
- Acts 17:13 (v12) But when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was proclaimed by Paul at Beroea also, they came there likewise,…
- Acts 17:17-18 (v9) So he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons, and in the marketplace every day with those who met him. Some of the…
- Acts 18:6 (v11) When they opposed him and blasphemed, he shook out his clothing and said to them, “Your blood be on your own heads! I am clean. From now…
- Acts 19:26 (v9) You see and hear that not at Ephesus alone, but almost throughout all Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away many people, saying…
- Acts 21:20-22 (v11) They, when they heard it, glorified God. They said to him, “You see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews of those who have…
- Acts 21:39 (v9) But Paul said, “I am a Jew, from Tarsus in Cilicia, a citizen of no insignificant city. I beg you, allow me to speak to the people.”
100 distinct cross-references across this passage (117 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (22 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv9, 12, 14 9. And there arose certain. This was the beginning…
9. And there arose certain. This was the beginning of persecution, because the wicked, after that they have essayed in vain to set themselves against Christ by disputing, when they saw that that former attempt did take none effect, they fly unto slanders, (caviling,) and tumults, and at length they break out into violence and murder. Therefore, Luke meaneth by the word rise, that those of whom he speaketh did assault the gospel with their tongue, and did not, by and by, bring Stephen before the judgment-seat, but did first set upon him, by disputing against him. Furthermore, he signifieth that they were strangers, which lived in Judea, either that they might exercise merchandise, or else get learning. Therefore he saith that some of them were Cyrenians, some of Alexandria, some of Cilicia, some of Asia. He saith that they were all of the synagogue of the Libertines. It is to be thought that the free men of the citizens of Rome had caused a synagogue to be builded of their own charges, that it might be proper to the Jews which came together out of the provinces.
Therefore, those which were brought thither by the grace of God, and ought to have embraced Christ so much the more willingly, assault him first, and inflame the fury of others, as it were with a trumpet. Also Luke will in many other places afterward declare that the Jews, which were scattered abroad in the provinces, were most deadly enemies to sound doctrine: and most venomous in moving tumults. He reckoneth up many, to the end the victory of the truth may be more famous, whilst that in any, gathered of divers countries, depart, being vanquished by one man; and it is not to be doubted but that they were enforced to hold their peace with shame. Stephen had already won great favor, and gotten great dignity by miracles. He answereth the disputers now in such sort that he getteth the upper hand much. He putteth not that wisdom and spirit which he saith his adversaries could not gainstand, as divers things. Therefore resolve these words thus: They could not resist the wisdom which the Spirit of God gave him. For Luke meant to express that they fought not on both sides as men; but that the enemies of the gospel were therefore discouraged and overcome, because they did strive against the Spirit of God, which spake by the mouth of Stephen. And forasmuch as Christ hath promised the same Spirit to all his servants, let us only defend the truth faithfully, and let us crave a mouth and wisdom of him, and we shall be sufficiently furnished to speak, so that neither the wit, neither yet the babbling of our adversaries, shall be able to make us ashamed. So the Spirit was as effectual in our time in the mouth of the martyrs which were burnt, and it uttereth the like force now daily, that though they were ignorant men, (never trained up in any schools,) yet did they make the chief divines which maintained Popery no less astonished with their voice only, than if it had thundered and lightned.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv9, 10, 12, 13 Schools and Universities were of old time addicted to…
Schools and Universities were of old time addicted to false pastors, and were the instruments of Satan to blow abroad and defend false doctrines.
Of the company and College as it were.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv9–14 9 Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which…
9 Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia and of Asia, disputing with Stephen.
Ver. 9. Certain of the synagogue] There were colleges at Jerusalem, as now at our Universities, whither foreigners came for learning sake. These withstood Stephen; like as in the beginning of the Reformation, Eckius, Roffensis, More, Cajaton, Faber, Cochlaeus, Catharinus, Pighius, all these wrote against Luther (besides the two kings of England and Hungary), summo conatu, acerrimo desiderio, non vulgari doctrina, as one saith, {a} In like sort Rochester, Rastal, More, set at once against John Frith, martyr; whereof the one by the help of the doctors, the other by wresting the Scriptures, and the third by the help of natural philosophy, had conspired against him. But he, as another Hercules, fighting with all three at once, did so overthrow and confound them, that he converted Rastal to his part.
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{a} Pareus in Medal. Hist.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv9–14 Certain of the synagogue; synagogues were as colleges in…
Certain of the synagogue; synagogues were as colleges in our universities, being used for instruction and learning; and were distinguished according to the persons that frequented them.
Libertines; some think these were natives of a certain country in Africa, from whence they were so called; but more probably they were such as were manumitted or made free, (as the word is commonly used for such), and in a middle condition between such as were free born and such as were bond slaves, and might desire to frequent with those of their own rank.
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Cyrenians, &c.; the Jews spake of no less than four hundred and eighty synagogues at Jerusalem; a vast number, and probably increased by them: though several places are called Cyrene, this (from whence they took their name) was in Africa in all likelihood, it being joined with that of the Alexandrians. So God pleased to sever the Hellenists, (or Jews by traduction), for the Gentiles were not yet called, that they might all hear the gospel in the language they understood best.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv9–14 Then there arose certain of the synagogue,.... Being filled…
Then there arose certain of the synagogue,.... Being filled with indignation at the doctrine of Stephen, and with envy at his miracles, they rose up in great wrath, and warmly opposed him: and they be longed to that synagogue
which is called the synagogue of the libertines; or free men: it is a Roman name, and signifies the sons of free men; and these were either the sons of such Jews, who of servants, or slaves, had been made "free men"; or rather such Jews whose parents were born free, or had obtained their freedom at Rome, or in some free city under the Roman government, as Paul at Tarsus; since it is not so easy to account for it, that there should be a peculiar synagogue for the former, whereas there might be for the latter, seeing they could not speak the language of the native Jews. The Arabic version reads, "of the Corinthians", as if they were the Jews from Corinth: and some have thought the word "Libertines" to be the name of a nation or people, as well as the names that follow; and some think it designs the Lybians or Lybistines in Africa; but neither of these is likely:
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and Cyrenians: natives of the city or country of Cyrene, from whence were many Jews; see Act 2:10 such as Simon the Cyrenian, the father of Alexander, and Rufus, who carried the cross of Christ after him, Mar 15:21 these, with those that follow, either belonged to the same synagogue with the Libertines, or rather they severally had distinct synagogues: and this will not seem strange, when it is said (g), that there were in Jerusalem four hundred and eighty synagogues; though it is elsewhere said (h) four hundred and sixty:
and Alexandrians; for that there were a peculiar synagogue of these at Jerusalem is certain; for there is express mention made of it in Jewish writings (i).
"It happened to R. Eleazar bar Tzadok, that he bought "the synagogue of the Alexandrians", which was at Jerusalem, and he did with it whatever he pleased.''
And that they should have a synagogue at Jerusalem need not be wondered at, when there was such an intercourse and correspondence between Jerusalem and Alexandria: it is said (k),
"the house of Garmu were expert in making of the shewbread, and they would not teach it; the wise men sent and fetched workmen from Alexandria in Egypt, and they knew how to bake as well as they.----The house or family of Abtines were expert in the business of the incense, and they would not teach it; the wise men sent and fetched workmen from Alexandria in Egypt, and they knew how to mix the spices as well as they.''
Again it is said (l),
"there was a brass cymbal in the sanctuary, and it was cracked, and the wise men sent and brought workmen from Alexandria in Egypt, and they mended it---and there was a mortar in which they beat spices, and it was cracked, and the wise men sent and fetched workmen from Alexandria, and they mended it.''
Hence many of them doubtless settled here, and had a synagogue of their own:
and of them of Cilicia; the metropolis of which country was Tarsus, Act 21:39. I make no doubt of it, that Saul of Tarsus was among them, or belonged to this synagogue, and was one of the fierce disputants with Stephen; at least violently opposed him, since he afterwards held the clothes of those that stoned him; we read (m) of , which I should be tempted to render, the "synagogue of the Tarsians", the same with the Cilicians here; but that it is elsewhere said (n), that
"it happened to the synagogue of the Tursians, which was at Jerusalem, that they sold it to R. Eliezer, and he did all his business in it.''
Where the gloss explains the word "Tursians" by "brass founders"; and it seems to design the same synagogue with that of the Alexandrians, who may be so called, because many of them wrought in brass, as appears from a citation above. There was a synagogue of these Tarsians at Lud, or Lydda (o): it is added, and of Asia; that is, the less; which joined to Cilicia, and in which were great numbers of Jews; see Act 21:27 this clause is left out in the Alexandrian copy: at Jerusalem, there were synagogues for the Jews of different nations; as here in London, are places of worship for protestants of several countries; as French, Dutch, Germans, Danes, Swedes, &c. Now several persons out of these synagogues, met together in a body,
disputing with Stephen; about the doctrine he preached, and the miracles he wrought, and by what authority he did these things.
(g) T. Hieros, Megilla. fol. 73. 4. Echa Rabbati, fol. 52. 1. (h) T. Hieros, Cetubot. fol. 35. 3. (i) Juchasin, fol. 26. 2. e Talmud. Hieros. Megilla, fol. 73. 4. (k) T. Bab. Yoma, fol. 38. 1. & Hieros. Yoma, fol. 41. 1. (l) T. Bab. Erachin, fol. 10. 2. (m) T. Hieros. Shekalim, fol. 47. 1. (n) T. Bab. Megilla, fol. 26. 1. (o) Vajikra Rabba, sect. 35. fol. 175. 3.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv9, 14 There arose certain of the synagogue which is called…
There arose certain of the synagogue which is called - It was one and the same synagogue which consisted of these several nations. Saul of Cilicia was doubtless a member of it; whence it is not at all improbable, that Gamaliel presided over it. Libertines - So they were styled, whose fathers were once slaves, and afterward made free. This was the ease of many Jews who had been taken captive by the Romans.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv9–13 Verse 9. The synagogue - of the Libertines, c.]…
Verse 9. The synagogue - of the Libertines, c.] That Jews and proselytes from various countries had now come up to Jerusalem to bring offerings, and to attend the feast of pentecost, we have already seen, Ac 2:9-11. The persons mentioned here were foreign Jews, who appear to have had a synagogue peculiar to themselves at Jerusalem, in which they were accustomed to worship when they came to the public festivals.
Various opinions have been entertained concerning the Libertines mentioned here: Bp. Pearce's view of the subject appears to me to be the most correct.
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"It is commonly thought that by this name is meant the sons of such Jews as had been slaves, and obtained their freedom by the favour of their masters but it is to be observed that with these Libertines the Cyrenians and Alexandrians are here joined, as having one and the same synagogue for their public worship. And it being known that the Cyrenians (Ac 2:10) lived in Libya, and the Alexandrians in the neighbourhood of it, it is most natural to look for the Libertines too in that part of the world. Accordingly we find Suidas, in his Lexicon, saying, upon the word λιβερτινοι, that it is ονοματουεθνους, the name of a people. And in Gest. Collationis Carthagine habitae inter Catholicos et Donatistas, published with Optatus's works, Paris, 1679, (No. 201, and p. 57,) we have these words: Victor episcopus Ecclesiae Catholicae LIBERTINENSIS dixit, Unitas est illic, publicam non latet conscientiam. Unity is there: all the world knows it. From these two passages it appears that there was in Libya a town or district called Libertina, whose inhabitants bore the name of λιβερτινοι, Libertines, when Christianity prevailed there. They had an episcopal see among them, and the above-mentioned Victor was their bishop at the council of Carthage, in the reign of the Emperor Honorius. And from hence it seems probable that the town or district, and the people, existed in the time of which Luke is here speaking. They were Jews, (no doubt,) and came up, as the Cyrenian and Alexandrian Jews did, to bring their offerings to Jerusalem, and to worship God in the temple there. Cunaeus, in his Rep. Hebr. ii. 23, says that the Jews who lived in Alexandria and Libya, and all other Jews who lived out of the Holy Land, except those of Babylon and its neighbourhood, were held in great contempt by the Jews who inhabited Jerusalem and Judea; partly on account of their quitting their proper country, and partly on account of their using the Greek language, and being quite ignorant of the other. For these reasons it seems probable that the Libertines, Cyrenians, and Alexendrians, had a separate synagogue; (as perhaps the Cilicians and those of Asia had;) the Jews of Jerusalem not suffering them to be present in their synagogues, or they not choosing to perform their public service in synagogues where a language was used which they did not understand."
It is supposed, also, that these synagogues had theological, if not philosophical, schools attached to them; and that it was the disciples or scholars of these schools who came forward to dispute with Stephen, and were enraged because they were confounded. For it is not an uncommon custom with those who have a bad cause, which can neither stand the test of Scripture nor reason, to endeavour to support it by physical when logical force has failed; and thus: -
"Prove their doctrine orthodox,
By apostolic blows and knocks."
In the reign of Queen Mary, when popery prevailed in this country, and the simplest women who had read the Bible were an overmatch for the greatest of the popish doctors; as they had neither Scripture nor reason to allege, they burned them alive, and thus terminated a controversy which they were unable to maintain. The same cause will ever produce the same effect: the Libertines, Cilicians, Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, pursued this course: Stephen confounded them by Scripture and reason, and they beat his brains out with stones! This was the most effectual way to silence a disputant whose wisdom they could not resist. In the same way were the Protestants treated, when by Scripture and reason they had shown the absurdity and wickedness of that anti-christian system which the fire and the sword were brought forth to establish. These persecutors professed great concern at first for the souls of those whom they variously tortured, and at last burned; but their tender mercies were cruel, and when they gave up the body to the flames, they most heartily consigned the soul to Satan. Scires sanguine natos: their conduct proclaimed their genealogy.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On v11 Act 6:11-14. Then they suborned men — As they…
Act 6:11-14. Then they suborned men — As they found they were incapable of defending themselves by fair argument, they had recourse to a most mean and dishonest fraud; they suborned men to bear false witness against him, and depose that they had heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses — Their great and divinely-commissioned lawgiver; and against God — The great author of that law which Moses delivered by command from him. They were right in supposing that they who blasphemed Moses, if they meant the writings of Moses, which were given by inspiration of God, blasphemed God himself. They that speak reproachfully of the Scriptures, and ridicule them, reflect upon God himself, and do despite to him. But did Stephen blaspheme Moses? By no means; he was far from it. Christ and the preachers of his gospel never said any thing that looked like blaspheming Moses; they always quoted his writings with respect; appealed to them, and said no other things but what Moses foretold should come. Very unjustly, therefore, is Stephen indicted for blaspheming Moses. “On such terms,” says Baxter, “we dispute with malignant men: when they cannot resist the truth, they suborn men to swear to false accusations. And it is next to a miracle of Providence, that no greater number of religious persons have been murdered in the world, by the way of perjury and pretence of law, when so many thousands hate them, who make no conscience of false oaths.” And they stirred up the people and the elders — They incensed both the government and the mob against him, that if they could not prevail by the one, they might by the other; that if the sanhedrim should still think fit, according to Gamaliel’s advice, to let him alone, yet they might prevail against him by popular rage and tumult; or, if the people should countenance and protect him, they might effect his destruction by the authority of the elders and scribes. And came upon him, and caught him — Greek, επισταντες συνηρπασαν, rushing on him, they seized him, and brought him to the council; which, it seems, was then sitting; and there, in the presence of their highest court of judicature, they set up false witnesses — Witnesses that they themselves knew to be false; who said, This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words — These suborned witnesses, being brought together, imboldened one another in bearing a false testimony. Against this holy place — Meaning the temple, where they then were; and the law — The divinely- inspired law, as one that has no reverence at all for its authority. For we have heard him say, that Jesus shall destroy this place — Perhaps they had, but that did not prove that he had been guilty of blasphemy. Thus Christ was condemned as a blasphemer, for words which were thought to reflect upon the temple, for the honour of which they seemed to be greatly concerned, at the very time when by their wickedness they were profaning it; making it not only a house of merchandise, but a den of thieves. And shall change the customs which Moses delivered us — It is not probable that Stephen knew the mystery of the abolition of the Mosaic law, which even the apostles do not seem to have had now any idea of. And it is much less probable that he openly taught what Paul himself, many years after, only insinuated, and that with very great caution. Compare Gal 2:2. This therefore seems to have been merely an inference drawn by them from what he taught concerning the destruction coming on the Jews, if they continued in their unbelief: but it was a very precarious inference, as the city and temple had been destroyed before, without any repeal of the law, and therefore they were false witnesses. And they were still more so in affirming that in saying these things he had spoken blasphemous words against that holy place, and against the law — What blasphemy was it against that holy place, which they at once profaned and idolized, to say that it should not be perpetual, any more than Shiloh was? And that the just and holy God would not continue the privileges of his sanctuary to those that abused them? Had not the prophets given the same warning to their fathers, of the destruction of that holy place by the Chaldeans? Nay, when the temple was first built, did not God himself give the same warning? This house, which is high, shall be an astonishment, 2Ch 7:21. And with respect to the law, which they charged him with blaspheming, that law of which they made their boast, and in which they put their trust, even then, when, through breaking it, they dishonoured God, (Rom 2:23,) how was Stephen’s saying, (if he really did say,) that Jesus would change the customs which Moses had delivered to them, blaspheming it or its glorious Author? Was it not foretold by the prophets, and therefore to be expected, that in the days of the Messiah, the old customs should be changed, and that the shadows should give place when the substance was come? This, however, was no essential change of the law, but the perfecting of it: for Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it; and if he changed some customs that Moses delivered, it was to introduce and establish those that were much better.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv9–14 Then there arose - That is, they stood up…
Then there arose - That is, they stood up against him, or they opposed him.
Of the synagogue - See the notes on Mat 4:23. The Jews were scattered in all parts of the world. In every place they would have synagogues. But it is also probable that there would be enough foreign Jews residing at Jerusalem from each of those places to maintain the worship of the synagogue; and at the great feasts, those synagogues adapted to Jewish people of different nations would be attended by those who came up to attend the great feasts. It is certain that there was a large number of synagogues in Jerusalem. The common estimate is, that there were four hundred and eighty in the city (Lightfoot; Vitringa).
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Of the Libertines - There has been very great difference of opinion about the meaning of this word. The chief opinions may be reduced to three:
1. The word is Latin, and means properly a “freedman,” a man who had been a slave and was set at liberty. Many have supposed that these persons were manumitted slaves of Roman origin, but who had become proselyted to the Jewish religion, and who had a synagogue in Jerusalem. This opinion is not very probable; though it is certain, from Tacitus (Ann., lib. 2:c. 85), that there were many persons of this description at Rome. He says that 4,000 Jewish proselytes of Roman slaves made free were sent at one time to Sardinia.
2. A second opinion is, that these persons were Jews by birth, and had been taken captives by the Romans, and then set at liberty, and were thus called “freedmen” or “liberties.” That there were many Jews of this description there can be no doubt. Pompey the Great, when he subjugated Judea, sent large numbers of the Jews to Rome (Philo, In Legat. a.d. Caium). These Jews were set at liberty at Rome, and assigned a place beyond the Tiber for a residence. See Introduction to the Epistle to the Romans. These persons are by Philo called “libertines,” or “freedmen” (Kuinoel, in loco). Many Jews were also conveyed as captives by Ptolemy I. to Egypt, and obtained a residence in that country and the vicinity.
3. Another opinion is, that they took their name from some “place” which they occupied. This opinion is more probable from the fact that all the “other” persons mentioned here are named from the countries which they occupied. Suidas says that this is the name of a place. And in one of the fathers this passage occurs: “Victor, Bishop of the Catholic Church at Libertina, says, unity is there, etc.” from this passage it is plain that there was a place called “Libertina.” That place was in Africa, not far from ancient Carthage. See Dr. Pearce’s Commentary on this place.
Cyrenians - Jews who dwelt at “Cyrene” in Africa. See the notes on Mat 27:32.
Alexandrians - Inhabitants of Alexandria in Egypt. That city was founded by Alexander the Great, 332 b.c., and was populated by colonies of Greeks and Jews. It was much celebrated, and contained not less than 300,000 free citizens, and as many slaves. The city was the residence of many Jews. Josephus says that Alexander himself assigned to them a particular quarter of the city, and allowed them equal privileges with the Greeks (Antiq., Rom 14:7, Rom 14:2; Against Apion, Rom 2:4). Philo affirms that of five parts of the city, the Jews inhabited two. According to his statement, there dwelt in his time at Alexandria and the other Egyptian cities not less than “ten hundred thousand Jews.” Amron, the general of Omar, when he took the city, said that it contained 40,000 tributary Jews. At this place the famous version of the Old Testament called the “Septuagint,” or the Alexandrian version, was made. See Robinson’s Calmet.
Cilicia - This was a province of Asia Minor, on the seacoast, at the north of Cyprus. The capital of this province was Tarsus, the native place of Paul, Act 9:11. As Paul was of this place, and belonged doubtless to this synagogue, it is probable that he was one who was engaged in this dispute with Stephen. Compare Act 7:58.
Of Asia - See the notes on Act 2:9.
Disputing with Stephen - Doubtless on the question whether Jesus was the Messiah. This word does not denote “angry disputing,” but is commonly used to denote “fair and impartial inquiry”; and it is probable that the discussion began in this way, and when they were overcome by “argument,” they resorted, as disputants are apt to do, to angry criminations and violence.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv9, 11, 13 Called of the Libertines.[2] That is, of the synagogue…
Called of the Libertines.[2] That is, of the synagogue of those, whose fathers had been made slaves under Pompey, and the Romans, but who had again been restored to their liberty, and had been made free. There were other synagogues for the Jews of Cyrene, of Alexandria, &c. No doubt but St. Stephen had converted many of them; and the chiefs of the synagogues, not being able to dispute with him, or to answer the spirit of wisdom, which directed him, they suborned witnesses. (Witham)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Libertinorum, Greek: Libertinon, which Greek word is taken from the Latin. St. John Chrysostom, hom. xv. says, Greek: apeleutheroi outo kalountai, &c.
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George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv9–11 synagogue of the Libertines--Jewish freedmen; manumitted Roman captives, or…
synagogue of the Libertines--Jewish freedmen; manumitted Roman captives, or the children of such, expelled from Rome (as appears from JOSEPHUS and TACITUS), and now residing at Jerusalem.
Cyrenians--Jews of Cyrene, in Libya, on the coast of Africa.
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them of Cilicia--amongst whom may have been Saul of Tarsus (Act 7:58; Act 21:39).
and of Asia--(See on Act 16:6).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv9, 10, 12, 13 VII. PENTECOSTAL CHURCH IN ITS LAST STRUGGLE AND DISPERSION,…
VII. PENTECOSTAL CHURCH IN ITS LAST STRUGGLE AND DISPERSION, Act_6:8 to Act_8:4.
2. Zeal and Arraignment of Stephen, Act_6:9-15.
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As the name of Peter stands at the head of the catalogue of apostles to indicate that he was preeminent in character, though possessed of no official authority over the rest, so the name of Stephen (whose name signifies crown) crowns the list of deacons. It was thereby his mission to disturb the delusive repose into which the Pentecostal Church was forgetfully declining by bringing out into uncompromising prominence the doctrine of our Lord’s discourse (Matthew 25,) that the ritual was to disappear and merge into the Universal Church.
9. Certain of the synagogue—The five synagogues here mentioned, out of the four hundred and eighty synagogues in Jerusalem, were all held by Hellenists or foreign Jews, and so glad, perhaps, to signalize their zeal for Judaism against their brother Hellenist, Stephen.
Libertines—That is, freedmen, emancipates from slavery. They probably belonged to the Roman Jews, who were mostly of this class. (See section on the Roman Church in our Introduction to Romans.) About seventeen years before this period Tiberius had ordered the Jews to depart from Rome, and we may thence infer that some of them immigrated to Jerusalem and built their synagogues. Libertines here would therefore be equivalent to Roman Jews.
The structure of the verse implies a twofold classification into Roman and African Jews, and Asiatic Jews.
Cyrenians—See Mar_15:21. About one fourth of the African city of Cyrene were Jews. This city had representatives at the Pentecost, (Act_2:10,) and probably from among them it was that certain came and preached at Antioch, (Act_11:20,) and Lucius of Cyrene was one of the eminent men who commissioned Barnabas and Paul from Antioch, (Act_13:1.)
The more fully we investigate the subject the more strongly we incline to the belief that Luke is identical with “Lucius of Cyrene” in Act_13:1, (where see our note,) and so was himself a Cyrenian and an attendant at this synagogue. Supposing, according to our note on Luk_24:13, that he was one of the two from Emmaus, he arrived in Jerusalem (from Cyrene by way of Alexandria perhaps) at the Passover of the crucifixion, and was some way connected with the Christian disciples. He was a physician, and both Cyrene and Alexandria were medically celebrated. He was, thence, at the Pentecost, as his full narrative of the preparations and of the Pentecost, as well as his full report of the speeches of Peter, show. He was part of the Pentecostal Church through the whole six or seven years of its history. Then upon the Stephanic dispersion he was one of the “men of Cyrene,” who went first to Cyprus (Act_11:19-20) and thence to Antioch, where he is the “Lucius of Cyrene,” of Act_13:1, where see note.
Alexandrians—Alexandria, the chief maritime city, and for a long time the metropolis, of lower Egypt, received its name from its founder, Alexander the Great. Its advantageous commercial position raised it among the most eminent cities of its period, and well attested the wisdom of its founder in its selection. Alexander was a favourer of the Jewish race, and gave them such advantages in this new metropolis that they became numerous, wealthy, educated, and influential. The Jews never had a man of greater erudition than Philo, who adorned this city with his genius, and left works extant and valued at the present day. Here the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into the Greek, forming the celebrated Septuagint. (Vol. II, p. 10.)
Cilicia—Paul’s native province. It was the long, narrow strip of territory lining the northern shore of the eastern part of the Mediterranean. It was bounded, or rather walled in from the rest of Asia Minor, by the almost impassable line of Taurus mountains. Yet, though thus isolated, it formed the marching route of armies between Europe and Asia. At the eastern extremity, where the Taurus range nearly touches the great northeast corner of the sea, was the narrow pass into Syria and Asia, generally called the Cilician Gates, (Issus,) where more than one memorable battle was fought for the right of way. The inhabitants were Asiatic Greeks mixed with Syrians. The aboriginal population, as well as the name, is probably Phenician. Antiochus the Great introduced two thousand Jews into Asia Minor, and the Jewish population appears from this verse to have been numerous enough to need a synagogue in Jerusalem.
Asia—The Asia of the New Testament never includes, as in modern times, the eastern great quarter of the globe, (called by a late Roman writer, Justin, Asia Major.) Nor was the term Asia Minor used until the fourth century. Asia under Roman dominion, “proconsular Asia,” usually included the provinces of Phrygia, Mysia, Caria, and Lydia, of which the capital was Ephesus, and this was the Asia of Acts and the Epistles.
Disputing with Stephen—It is probable that some of the synagogues of large cities consisted of two apartments, one for public worship, the other for theological education and discussion.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv9, 11, 12, 13, 14 9. Then there arose certain] It is better to…
9. Then there arose certain] It is better to render the connecting particle But, it is no note of time.
of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines] Lit. of them that were of the synagogue called, &c. The number of synagogues in Jerusalem was very great. The Libertines were most likely the children of some Jews who had been carried captive to Rome by Pompey (b.c. 63), and had been made freedmen (libertini) by their captors, and after their return to Jerusalem had formed one congregation and used one synagogue specially. There is an interesting illustration of this severance of congregations among the Jews from a like cause in the description of the modern Jewish communities in Malabar and Cochin. It is in a MS. in the Cambridge University Library (Oo. 1. 47) which was written in 1781. “At this time are found in their dwelling-places about forty white householders, and in all the other places are black Jews found, and their forefathers were the slaves of the white Jews, and now the black Jews as found in all the places are about five hundred householders, and they have ten synagogues while the white Jews have only one. And the white Jews dwell all together and their ritual is distinct from that of the black Jews, and they will not count them [the black Jews] among the ten [necessary for forming a congregation] except a few families of them; but if any of the white Jews go to their [the black Jews’] synagogues, they will admit him as one of the ten.”
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and Cyrenians] Read, and of the Cyrenians. On the Jews in Cyrene see Act_2:10 note.
and Alexandrians] Read, and of the Alexandrians. There were in Christ’s time, and had been long before, as we learn from the account of the Septuagint translation, Jews resident in Alexandria. In the Talmud we are told that they were very numerous. Thus T. B. Succah 51 b it is said, “Rabbi Jehudah said: He that hath not seen the amphitheatre at Alexandria (apparently used for the Jewish worship) in Egypt has not seen the glory of Israel. They say it was like a great Basilica with gallery above gallery. Sometimes there were in it double the number of those who went out from Egypt, and there were in it seventy-one seats of gold corresponding to the seventy-one members of the great Sanhedrin, each one of them worth not less than twenty-one myriads of talents of gold, and there was a platform of wood in the midst thereof, and the minister of the synagogue stood upon it with flags in his hand, and when the time [in the service] came that they should answer Amen, then he waved with the flag and all the people answered Amen.” In spite of the exaggeration of the numbers in this story we may be certain from it that there was a very large Jewish population in Alexandria, and that they were likely to have a separate synagogue in Jerusalem. For another portion of this story see note on Act_18:3.
and of them of Cilicia] Cilicia was at the S.E. corner of Asia Minor. One of its principal towns was Tarsus, the birthplace of St Paul, and there were no doubt many other Jews there, descendants of those Jews whom Antiochus the Great introduced into Asia Minor (Joseph. Antiq. xii. 3. 4), two thousand families of whom he placed there as well disposed guardians of the country.
and of Asia] See note on Act_2:9.
disputing with Stephen] The original word is used frequently of the captious questionings of the Pharisees (Mar_8:11), and the scribes (Mar_9:14), with Jesus and His disciples.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv9, 10, 11, 13, 14 (9) Certain of the synagogue, which is called the…
(9) Certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines.—The structure of the sentence makes it probable that the Libertines, the Cyrenians, and the Alexandrians attended one synagogue, those of Cilicia and Asia another. Each of the names has a special interest of its own. (1) The Libertini. These were freed-men, emancipated Roman Jews, with probably some proselytes, descendants of those whom Pompeius had led captive, and who were settled in the trans-Tiberine district of Rome in large numbers, with oratories and synagogues of their own. When Tacitus (Ann. ii. 85) describes the expulsion of the Jews under Claudius, he speaks of “four thousand of the freed-men, or Libertine class,” as banished to Sardinia. From this class, we have seen reason to believe, Stephen himself had sprung. Andronicus and Junias were probably members of this synagogue. (See Note on Rom_16:7.)
Cyrenians.—At Cyrene, also, on the north coast of Africa, lying between Egypt and Carthage, there was a large Jewish population. Strabo, quoted by Josephus, describes them as a fourth of the whole (Jos. Ant. xiv. 7, § 2). They were conspicuous for the offerings they sent to the Temple, and had appealed to Augustus for protection against the irregular taxes by which the provincial governors sought to intercept their gifts (Jos. Ant. xvi. 6, § 5). In Simon of Cyrene we have had a conspicuous member, probably a conspicuous convert, of this community. (See Note on Mat_27:32.) Later on, clearly as the result of Stephen’s teaching, they are prominent in preaching the gospel to the Gentiles of Antioch. We may think of Simon himself, and his two sons Alexander and Rufus (Mar_15:21), as probably members of this society.
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Alexandrians.—Next to Jerusalem and Rome, there was, perhaps, no city in which the Jewish population was so numerous and influential as at Alexandria. Here, too, they had their own quarter, assigned to them by Ptolemy Philadelphus, and were governed, as if they were a free republic, by an ethnarch of their own (Jos. Ant. xiv. 7, § 2). They were recognised as citizens by their Roman rulers (Ibid. xiv. 10, § 1). From Alexandria had come the Greek version of the Old Testament, known from the legend of the seventy translators who had all been led to a supernatural agreement, as that of the Septuagint, or LXX., which was then in use among all the Hellenistic Jews throughout the empire, and largely read even in Palestine itself. There, at this time, living in fame and honour, was the great teacher Philo, the probable master of Apollos, training him, all unconsciously, to be the preacher of a wisdom higher than his own. The knowledge, or want of knowledge, with which Apollos appears on the scene, knowing only the baptism of John, forbids the assumption that he had been at Jerusalem after the Day of Pentecost (Act_18:25), but echoes of the teaching of Stephen are found in that of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and it is not improbable that thoughts had been carried back to Alexandria by those who had thus been brought under his influence.
Of them of Cilicia.—Here we feel at once the interest of the name. The young Jew of Tarsus, the disciple of Gamaliel, could not fail to be among the leading members of this section of the second synagogue, exercising, in the fiery energy of his zeal, a dominant influence even over the others.
And of Asia.—The word is taken, as throughout the New Testament, in its later and more restricted sense, as denoting the pro-consular province so called, including the old Lydia and Ionia, and having Ephesus as its capital. Later on in the history, we find Jews of Asia prominent in their zeal for the sacredness of the Temple (Act_21:27).
Disputing with Stephen.—The nature of the dispute is not far to seek. The tendency of distance from sacred places which are connected with men’s religion, is either to make men sit loose to their associations, and so rise to higher and wider thoughts, or to intensify their reverence. Where pilgrimages are customary, the latter is almost invariably the result. Men measure the sacredness of what they have come to see by the labour and cost which they have borne to see it, and they resent anything that suggests that they have wasted their labour, as tending to sacrilege and impiety. The teaching of Stephen, representing as it did the former alternative, guided and perfected by the teaching of the Spirit, was probably accepted by a few in each community. The others, moved by their pilgrim zeal were more intolerant of it than the dwellers in Jerusalem, to whom the ritual of the Temple was a part of their every-day life. Those who were most familiar with it, the priests who ministered in its courts, were, as we have seen (Act_6:7), among the first to welcome the new and wider teaching.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv9–14 But for then, A.V.; certain of them that were…
But for then, A.V.; certain of them that were for certain, A.V.; of the Cyrenians and of the Alexandrians for Cyrenians and Alexandrians, A.V.; Asia for of Asia, A.V. Of the synagogue, etc. There were said to have been four hundred and eighty synagogues in Jerusalem alone in the time of our Savior. (Olshausen, on Mat_4:23) But this is probably a fanciful number; only it may be taken as an indication of the great number of such places of Jewish worship. Tiberias is said to have had twelve synagogues. Ten grown-up people was the minimum congregation of a synagogue. It seems by the enumeration of synagogues in our text that the foreign Jews had each their own synagogue at Jerusalem, as Chrysostom supposes, where men of the same nation attended when they came to Jerusalem; for the construction of the sentence is to supply before Kurhnaiwn and again before jAlexandrewn the same words as precede Libertinwn, viz. kainhv, SO as to mean "and certain of them that were of the synagogue called of the Cyrenians," and so on. The very numerous Jews of Cyrene and of Alexandria would doubtless require each a synagogue for themselves. The Libertines were, as Chrysostom explains it, "freedmen of the Romans." They are thought to consist chiefly of the descendants of the Jews who were taken prisoners by Pompey, and deported to Rome, who were afterwards emancipated and returned to Judaea, though some (Meyer, 1:1) settled in Rome. Tacitus, under the year A.D. 19, speaks of four thousand Libertini, infected with Jewish or Egyptian superstitions, as banished to Sardinia ("Annal.," 2. 85.). Many of these must have been Jews. Josephus, who tells the same story as Tacitus, though somewhat differently, says they were all Jews. ("Ant. Jud:," 18, 3:5) The Cyrenians. Cyrene was the chief city in North Africa, and a great Jewish colony. Numbers of Jews were settled there in the time of Ptolemy Lagus ("Cont. Apion.," 2:4), and are said by Josephus (quoting Strabo) to have been a fourth part of the inhabitants of the city. ("Ant. Jud:," 14:7:2) Josephus also quotes edicts of Augustus and of M. Agrippa, confirming to the Jews of Cyrene the right to live according to their own laws, and specially to send money for the temple at Jerusalem (16. 6:5). Jews from "the parts of Libya about Cyrene" are mentioned in Act_2:10; Simon, who bore our Savior"s cross, was "a man of Cyreue;" there were "men of Cyrene" at Jerusalem at the time of the persecution that arose about Stephen; (Act_11:19) and "Lucius of Cyrene" is mentioned in Act_13:1. It was natural, therefore, that the Cyrenians should have a synagogue of their own at Jerusalem. Of the Alexandrians. Alexandria had a Jewish population of 100, 000 at this time, equal to two-fifths of the whole city. The famous Philo, who was in middle age at this time, was an Alexandrian, and the Alexandrian Jews were the most learned of their race. The Jews settled in Alexandria in the time of Alexander the Great and Ptolemy Lagus. The LXX Version of the Scriptures was made at Alexandria primarily for their use. We may be sure, therefore, that they had a synagogue at Jerusalem. And of them of Cilicia. The transition from the African Jews to those of Asia is marked by changing the form of phrase into kai twn ajpoav. There were many Jews in Cilicia, and this doubtless influenced St. Paul in preaching there, as well as the fact of its being his own native province (see Act_15:23, Act_15:41; Gal_1:21) Josephus makes frequent mention of the Jews in the wars between the Ptolemies and Antiochus the Great, with whom the Jews sided, and in consequence were much favored by him. And it is thought that many who had been driven out from their homes by the wars, and others who were brought by him from Babylonia, settled in his time in Cilicia, as well as other parts of his Asiatic dominions. Seleucus also encouraged the Jews to settle in the towns of Asia in his kingdom, by giving them the freedom of the cities and putting them on an equal footing (ijsotimouv) with Macedonians and Greeks. ("Ant. Jud:," 12:3:1, 3) Asia; meaning the same district as in Act_2:9. (where see note) Evidence of the abundance of Jews in Asia crops up throughout the Acts. (Act_8:16, Act_8:24; Act_14:19; Act_16:13; Act_18:26, Act_18:28; Act_19:17; Act_20:21) That the Jews of Asia were very bigoted we learn from Act_21:27. (see also 1Pe_1:1)
Vers. 9-15. Fanaticism.
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Fanaticism has one respectable feature, that it is sincere. The fanatic believes what he asserts to be true, and he is earnest and zealous in the maintenance and propagation of his belief. But when we have said thus much we have said all that can be said in his favor. In fanaticism there is a culpable neglect of the reason which God has given to man to be his guide. The fanatic shuts his eyes and closes his ears, and rushes on his way with no more reflection or discrimination than a wild bull in its fury. Fanaticism, too, has a fatal tendency to deaden all moral considerations and to blunt a man"s perceptions of right and wrong. It is in vain to look for justice, or fairness, or truth, or mercy, from a fanatic. There is no violence of which he is not capable if he thinks his faith is in danger, no wiles and baseness to which he will not stoop if he thinks it necessary for the defense of his cause. Murder, perjury, bribery, subornation of witnesses, and defamation of opponents by lies and slander, have constantly been the weapons by which fanaticism of various kinds has ever defended itself. The end justified the means. It is, however, a curious feature in the history of fanaticism that it is often so closely allied with self-interest. And this is a feature which derogates considerably from its only merit, that of sincerity. In a pure love of truth there is no thought of self-interest. Truth, is a holy, Divine thing, loved for its own sake. But the fanatic"s creed is not pure truth; and so it seems it cannot be loved with the same pure, disinterested love with which truth is loved. Hence it has often been the parent of crime; and hence it is, as we have just said, often allied with self-interest. It is so with Mohammedan fanaticism; it has been so and still is with Romish and specially Jesuitical fanaticism; it was so with Puritan and fifth-monarchy fanaticism; it is so with other existing forms of fanatical and unreasonable zeal. In the case before us in this chapter we need not doubt that these Hellenistic Jews had a very strong and ardent attachment to the Law of Moses, and that their dread and dislike of Stephen"s teaching arose from their apprehension that Christian doctrine was in its nature destructive of their own tenets. But if their attachment to the Law of Moses had been intelligent and pure, they would have welcomed the gospel of Christ as being the fulfillment of the Law. If they had been actuated by a holy love of God"s truth, they would not have sought to uphold the Mosaic institutions By violence, by injustice, and by fraud. Nor can we doubt that, as in the case of the chief priests and scribes and elders, who conspired to take away the life of Jesus Christ, so in the case of these heated partisans, the fear of losing their own places of influence and power, and having to yield the place of honor to the Galilaean teachers whom they hated and despised, had much to do with the unrighteous zeal of the members of the Hellenistic synagogues. The Christian should strive to have a zeal for Christ and Ms glory quite as ardent as that of any fanatic, but at the same time to keep the eyes and ears of his reason always open for the correction of any error into which he may inadvertently have fallen, and for the addition of any truth which he may not hitherto have known. Above all, he will never seek to bear down reason by violence, or to defend truth with the carnal weapons of unrighteousness, whether violence or fraud.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On v11 Then they suborned men.
Act_6:11-15
Then they suborned men.
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The accusation of Stephen
I. Its authors (Act_6:9). Observe here--
1. That moral perversity is common to men of every race. All these men, Libertines, etc., differing widely in many respects, agreed in their antagonism to the true and Divine.
2. That theological controversy often irritates rather than convinces.
II. Its spirit (Act_6:10)--hostility to a truth which they felt an utter incapacity to deny. An unpalatable truth was forced upon them, despite of all their learning and logic, by the overwhehning arguments of one man.
1. This mortified their pride. Nothing makes the soul so furious as to wound its pride.
2. This struck at their most cherished prejudices.
III. Its subject (Act_6:11; Act_6:13-14). The charge here preferred would be considered by the Sanhedrin as the most heinous of crimes, sufficient to wake the vengeance of the nation. Blasphemous words against Moses, God, the holy place, and the law, a threat to destroy Jerusalem and change the customs of the Jewish nation!
IV. Its weakness.
1. The mode of procuring witnesses (Act_6:11). Also that there should be men who prefer pelf to principle. Facts require no such support.
2. The appearance of the accused (Act_6:15).
(1) The face is the mirror of the soul.
(2) Christianity makes the soul angelic. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The arraignment and transfiguration of St. Stephen
It is necessary that the Bible should be brief. A book so important must be made portable by the hand and the memory. Accordingly, out of a vast mass of materials the sacred writers have been directed to the choice of a very few. The thirty-three miracles of our Lord are specimens; why should others yielding no fresh lessons be detailed? Tautology only weakens effect. St. Stephen supplied the inspired specimen of martyrdom, although there were many others. Conformity to Christs sufferings according to that Word, Ye shall indeed drink of the cup, etc. You have it here. Brave protest for Christ in the face of those who have power to kill the body--it is here. Joy in the hope set before the martyr--it radiates from Stephens face. Love to persecutors mingled with stern faithfulness--it exhales like a precious perfume from Stephens prayer. Studied imitation of Christ in the act of dying--nowhere is this more remarkably exhibited than in the death of Stephen. This providential conformity to the image of Christ, however (as distinct from the studied imitation of Him), is the first thing which strikes us. What befell the disciple is what befell the Master over again.
I. The conduct of Stephens opponents. Infuriated by defeat in argument, they resorted to calumny and violence. Agents were employed to set about a story of blasphemy. With precipitate violence--the word used is the one applied to the seizure of the demoniac by the legion of devils, and to the seizure of St. Pauls vessel by the fury of the wind--they laid hands on him and hurried him away to the Sanhedrin. The paid agents of the Hellenist synagogues pronounced the formal accusation, This man ceases not to speak, etc. Now the actual deposition is to be made, and the witnesses feel that their words may be called in question, we hear no more of the big terms of Act_6:11. God is exchanged for the holy place, and Moses for the law. Full well they knew that Stephen had said nothing derogatory of Moses, much less of God. No doubt he had said much to this effect. Christ had predicted that not one stone of the temple should be left upon another, and Stephen echoed the prediction. Stephen too had probably seen further into the mystery of the admission of the Gentiles, and very possibly may have preached that Jewish rites were non-essential to salvation. But if Stephen had foretold all this, why are the witnesses stigmatised as false? Because they took his words out of the context which interpreted them, and gave them a totally different colour. Doubtless, like his Master, Stephen had the profoundest veneration for the temple and the law. But he had an intelligent apprehension of the place which each held in the system of true religion. He saw that both were elements of a preparatory discipline, and that now faith is come the schoolmaster was unnecessary. A man who says that a school book may be parted with when education is finished, by no means implies that school books are unnecessary while education is in progress. And if the words School books are valueless were separated from his explanation of the circumstances, the witness would be false. By telling half the truth we may convey quite as wrong an impression as by a contradiction of the truth. Nothing is easier and commoner than to make sweeping charges against these who maintain suspected propositions, while wilfully ignoring their explanation of what they hold. I have no right to say that a man denies inspiration because he denies verbal inspiration; nor that he impugns the atonement because he dissents from certain popular views of it.
II. Stephens demeanour.
1. He heard the calumnious charge. It is not hard to see what course natural feeling would take. In the first place there would be indignation; and then would come perplexity as soon as it became apparent that the charge was so worded that it could not be met with simple flat denial. With these feelings fear would mingle, and altogether painful discomposure and hesitation of mind would be produced which would communicate itself to the feelings of the accused. But in that exciting moment Stephen retained the most perfect serenity of spirit. When the accusation was advanced, every member of the court turned to see how the servant of Christ thus brought to bay would look. Greatly were they surprised, and for the moment disconcerted. This was no wan and haggard culprit; those features spoke of nothing but communion with the invisible God, of the love, joy, and peace which are the result of such communion (Act_6:15)--a lower grade of transfiguration. The Sanhedrin are momentarily cowed, as the devils agents are so often by the majesty of holy innocence. Possibly the radiance of Stephens countenance reminded them of the similar radiance on Moses face, the result of similar communion with God.
2. Could there have been any nearer approach than this to our Lords circumstances? He, too, had been apprehended with sudden violence; in His case false witnesses were suborned; His words, too, were twisted from their meaning, and finally His demeanour made His enemies quail. It may have been that this conformity to his Masters image was the secret of the supernatural joy that radiated from Stephens countenance.
Application:
1. Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you: do not consider it foreign to Christian experience. If the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffering, let not His soldiers claim exemption. Therefore, when the cross is placed upon us, let us rejoice in the resemblance between us and our Master, and in the prospect of perfect conformity which that resemblance guarantees.
2. Let the supernatural radiance of Stephens features, caught from the contemplation of his Master, remind us of the spiritual transfiguration which should be daily proceeding in ourselves. Be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed, etc., and the secret of this is disclosed in We all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed, etc. (Dean Goulburn.)
Stephen before his accusers
I. The character of Stephen (Act_6:8).
1. He was full of grace and power. That was his spiritual condition. Not all power, so as to be stern, tyrannous, overwhelming, but power characterised by love, geniality, sympathy, gentleness. Not all grace, lest he should be mistaken as a mere sentimentalist, who contented himself with exquisite expressions, without seeking their realisation in the sterner qualities of character. Stephen was by so much a complete man.
2. He did great wonders and miracles among the people. That was his outer life. Mark the beautiful correspondence between the spiritual and the active. The one accounts for the other. With less of a spiritual quality there would have been less of social demonstration and influence. The wonder was not a trick of the hand; it was an expression of the deep spiritual history of the souls life. The miracle was not painted on a board; it flamed forth from an inner and sacred fire. This description of Stephen should be the description of the Christian man and the Christian Church. Not a line can be added to this picture. We do no wonders and miracles. Why? Because we have so little grace and power. We have looked at the wrong end of this business. We have been wanting more wonders and more miracles instead of looking into the inner condition of the heart. Make the tree good, and the fruit will be good.
II. His accusers.
1. They were controversial, they disputed with Stephen. Controversy is not Christianity. It is most difficult for any man to be both a debater and a Christian. So long as the Church was in the era of suffering, she had no time for debate. Her controversies were then fights for life. The Christian life is always a controversy; but we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, etc. Let us all beware of the spirit of controversy, which delights in the rearrangement of words and forgets that Christianity is a sacrifice, a life of obedience.
2. Being controversial, they were as necessarily unjust. They suborned men to tell lies. The aim of debate is not to secure truth, but to secure some petty triumph, or to carry out to its melancholy end some rooted prejudice, or some discreditable antipathy. This is my fear of some collateral institutions which are formed in Christian churches. There are limits within which debate may be conducted to high intellectual advantage; but whoever enters upon a course of debate merely as such, without having as a supreme view to knowing, loving, accepting, and obeying the truth, puts his spiritual life to a severe strain. You will always find behind intellectual hostility to Christianity an explanatory moral condition. A man who does not love the light will use any excuse for getting out of it.
Learn from this narrative--
1. The danger which often accrues to truth from its supposed friends. We have heard Stephen speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God. This is one of the earliest instances of heresy-hunting. Once for all, let us lay it down as an impossibility that bad men are judges of truth and falsehood. Men who had accepted a bribe came up to defend orthodoxy! No blind man is appointed as a judge of pictures, and no deaf man of music. But a bad man goes to church, and ventures upon an opinion as to the orthodoxy or heterodoxy of the preacher, and says, with intolerable impertinence, that he himself may not be what he ought to be, but he knows the truth when he hears it! What is your life? What is your spirit? What are your wonders and miracles? And what is the interior condition of heart which explains them? These are the questions that ought to be answered. Search into narrow, envenomed, and ignoble criticism in every age, and you will find that the men who speak most against blasphemy in doctrine are often the men who could not live otherwise than by telling lies.
2. The manner in which slander should be met. What was Stephens condition at the time? Hearing these lies, he will surely spring from his seat and indignantly deny the impeachment! Some men say they cannot sit still and hear false statements about themselves. If they were greater men they would learn the art of patience. Great bodies are calm. Stephen sat still, but his face gleamed like an angel. Could you have seen the other faces--with the significant leer, the harsh mouths--you would have known, without hearing the defence, who was right and who was wrong. Would that we could look more and say less!
3. The transfiguring power of Christianity. The face of Stephen shone like the face of an angel. This is typical of character. Whenever character is under the influence of Christian inspiration it shines. Ye are the light of the world. It is typical also of the resurrection, the last grand miracle that shall be performed upon these common bodies. The face once dull shall be lighted up with an inward light that shall transfigure it into nobility and gracious expressiveness. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. Christianity never takes hold of any man without making him a new creature, and without investing him with new beauty, nobility, and occasionally even splendour of expression. But whether this can take place in the body or not, it always takes place in the character, and the character determines the man.
4. We can all be full of faith or grace, and we can all do miracles and wonders. We have been too content to sit down under the impression that miracles have ceased. But what a wonder it would be, for example, if some of us ever helped a fellow-creature under any circumstances whatsoever! That wonder is possible to you. What a wonder it would be for some of us could we ever be met in a good humour! Wonders, miracles, signs! Why, the difficulty is to escape them! What a wonder it would be if some of us could be patient under suffering! You thought the age of wonders was passed, because the merely introductory signs have disappeared! The blossom is gone that the fruit may come. And we of these latter times are called to exhibit the wonder of a disciplined character, the marvel of a sanctified temper, the glittering phenomenon of a truly obedient sonship. (J. Parker, D. D.)
We have heard him speak blasphemous words.--
A false accusation with a semblance of truth
We get in these words, in this false accusation, even through its falsehood, a glimpse into the character of St. Stephens preaching. A false accusation need not be necessarily altogether false. In order to be effective for mischief, a twisted, distorted charge, with some basis of truth, is the best for the accusers purpose, and the most difficult for the defendant to answer. St. Stephen was ripening for heaven more rapidly than the apostles themselves. He was learning more rapidly than St. Peter himself the true spiritual meaning of the Christian scheme. He had taught, in no ambiguous language, the universal character of the gospel and the Catholic mission of the Church. And the narrow-minded Grecian Jews, anxious to vindicate their orthodoxy, which was doubted by their Hebrew brethren, distorted Stephens wider and grander conception into a charge of blasphemy against the holy man. What a picture of the future of Christs best and truest witnesses, especially when insisting on some nobler and wider or forgotten aspect of truth. Their teaching has been ever suspected, distorted, accused as blasphemous; and so it must ever be. And yet Gods servants, when they find themselves thus misrepresented, can realise to themselves that they are but following the course which the saints of every age have run, that they are being made like unto the image of Stephen, the first martyr, and of Jesus Christ Himself, the King of Saints, who suffered under a similar accusation. St, Pauls teaching was accused of tending to licentiousness; the earliest Christians were accused of vilest practices; St. Athanasius, in his struggles for truth, was accused of rebellion and murder; the Reformers were accused of lawlessness; John Wesley of Romanism and disloyalty; William Wilberforce of being an enemy to British trade; John Howard of being an encourager of crime and immorality. Let us be content, then, if our lot be with the saints, and our portion be that of the servants of the Most High. Again, we learn from this place how religious zeal can overthrow religion and work out the purposes of evil. Men cannot, indeed, now suborn men and bring fatal charges against them in matters of religion, and yet they can fall into exactly the same crime. Party religion and party zeal lead men into precisely the same causes as they did in the days of St. Stephen. Partisanship causes them to violate all the laws of honour, of honesty, of Christian charity, imagining that they are thereby advancing the cause of Christ, forgetting that they are acting on the rule which the Scriptures repudiate, doing evil that good may come, and striving to further Christs kingdom by a violation of His fundamental precepts. Oh, for more of the spirit of true charity, which will lead men to support their own views in a spirit of Christian love! Oh, for more of that true grasp of Christianity which will teach that a breach of Christian charity is far worse than any amount of speculative error! (G. T. Stokes, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v12 Chapter 15
Chapter 15
ST. STEPHENS DEFENCE AND THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION.
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Act_6:12-14; Act_7:1-2
ST. STEPHEN and St. Philip are the two prominent names among the primitive deacons. Stephen, however, much surpasses Philip. Devout expositors of Scripture have recognised in his name a prophecy of his greatness. Stephen is Stephanos, a garland or crown, in the Greek language. Garlands or crowns were given by the ancient Greeks to those who rendered good services to their cities, or brought fame to them by winning triumphs in the great national games. And Stephen had his name divinely chosen for him by that Divine Providence which ordereth all things, because he was to win in the fulness of time an imperishable garland, and to gain a crown of righteousness, and to render highest services to the Church of God by his teaching and by his testimony even unto death. St. Stephen had a Greek name, and must have belonged to the Hellenistic division of the Jewish nation. He evidently directed his special energies to their conversion, for while the previous persecutions had been raised by the Sadducees, as the persons whose prejudices had been assailed, the attack on Stephen was made by the Grecian Jews of the synagogues belonging to the Libertines or freedmen, in union with those from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia, and Asia. The Libertines had been slaves, Jewish captives, taken in the various wars waged by the Romans. They had been dispersed among the Romans at Rome and elsewhere. There in their captivity they had learned the Greek language and become acquainted with Greek culture; and now, when they had recovered their freedom through that suppleness and power of adaptation which the Jewish race has ever displayed, they returned to Jerusalem in such numbers that a synagogue of the Libertines was formed. Their captivity and servitude had, however, only intensified their religious feelings, and made them more jealous of any attempts to extend to the Gentiles who had held them captives the spiritual possessions they alone enjoyed. There is, indeed, an extremely interesting parallel to the case of the Libertines in early English history, as told by Bede. The Saxons came to England in the fifth century and conquered the Christian Celts, whom they drove into Wales. The Celts, however, avenged themselves upon their conquerors, for they refused to impart to the Pagan Saxons the glad tidings of salvation which the Celts possessed. But the Libertines were not the only assailants of St. Stephen. With them were joined members of synagogues connected with various other important Jewish centres. Jerusalem was then somewhat like Rome at the present time. It was the one city whither a race scattered all over the world and speaking every language tended. Each language was represented by a synagogue, just as there are English Colleges and Irish Colleges and Spanish Colleges at Rome, where Roman Catholics of those nationalities find themselves specially at home. Among these Hellenistic antagonists of St. Stephen we have mention made of the men of Cilicia. Here, doubtless, was found a certain Saul of Tarsus, enthusiastic in defence of the ancient faith, and urgent with all his might to bring to trial the apostate who had dared to speak words which he considered derogatory of the city and temple of the great king.
Saul, indeed, may have been the great agent in Stephens arrest. It is a nature and an intellect like his that can discern the logical results of teaching like St. Stephens, and then found an accusation upon the deductions he makes rather than upon the actual words spoken. Saul may have placed the Church under another obligation on this occasion. To him may be due the report of the speech made by Stephen before the Sanhedrin. Indeed, it is to St. Paul in his unconverted state we feel inclined to attribute the knowledge which St. Luke possessed of the earlier proceedings of the council in the matter of the Christians. After St. Pauls conversion we get no such details concerning the deliberations of the Sanhedrin as we do in the earlier chapters of the Acts, simply because Saul of Tarsus, the rising champion and hope of the Pharisees, was present at the earlier meetings and had access to their inmost secrets, while at the later meetings he never appeared save to stand his trial as an accused person. The question, How was Stephens speech preserved? has been asked by some critics who wished to decry the historic truth of this narrative, and to represent the whole thing as a fancy sketch or romance, worked up on historic lines indeed, but still only a romance, written many years after the events had happened. Critics who ask this forget what modern research has shown in another department. The "Acts" of the martyrs are sometimes very large documents, containing reports of charges, examinations, and speeches of considerable length. These have often been considered mere fancy history, the work of mediaeval monks wishing to celebrate the glory of these early witnesses for truth, and sceptical writers have often put them aside without bestowing even a passing notice upon them.
Modern investigation has taken these documents, critically investigated them, compared them with the Roman criminal law, and has come to the conclusion that they are genuine, affording some of the most interesting and important examples of ancient methods of legal procedure anywhere to be found. How did the Christians get these records? it may be asked. Various hints, given here and there, enable us to see. Bribery of the officials was sometimes used. The notaries, shorthand writers, and clerks attendant upon a Roman court were numerous, and were always accessible to the gifts of the richer Christians when they wished to obtain a correct narrative of a martyrs last trial. Secret Christians among the officials also effected something, and there were numerous other methods by which the Roman judicial records became the property of the Church, to be in time transmitted to the present age. Now just the same may have been the case with the trials of the primitive Christians, and specially of St. Stephen. But we know that St. Paul was there. Memory among the Jews was sharpened to an extraordinary degree. We have now no idea to what an extent human memory was then developed. The immense volumes which are filled with the Jewish commentaries on Scripture were in those times transmitted from generation to generatior, simply by means of this power. It was considered, indeed, a great innovation when those commentaries were committed to writing instead of being intrusted to tradition. It is no wonder then that St. Paul could afford his disciple, St. Luke, a report of what Stephen said on this occasion, even if he had not preserved any notes whatsoever of the process of the trial. Let us, however, turn to the consideration of St. Stephens speech, omitting any further notice of objections based on our own ignorance of the practices and methods of distant ages.
I. The defence of St. Stephen was a speech delivered by a Jew, and addressed to a Jewish audience. This is our first remark, and it is an important one. We are apt to judge the Scriptures, their speeches, arguments, and discussions, by a Western standard, forgetting that Orientals argued then and argue still not according to the rules of logic taught by Aristotle, nor by the methods of eloquence derived from the traditions of Cicero and Quinctilian, but by methods and rules essentially different. What would satisfy Westerns would have seemed to them utterly worthless, just as an argument which now seems pointless and weak appeared to them absolutely conclusive. Parallels, analogies, parables, mystical interpretations were then favourite methods of argument, and if we wish to understand writers like the authors of the scriptural books we must strive to place ourselves at their point of view, or else we shall miss their true interpretation. Let us apply this idea to St. Stephens defence, which has been often depreciated because treated as if it were an oration addressed to a Western court or audience. Erasmus, for instance, was an exceedingly learned man, who lived at the period of the Reformation. He was well skilled in Latin and Greek learning, but knew nothing of Jewish. ideas. He hesitates not, therefore, to say in his Annotations on this passage that there are many things in Stephens speech which have no-bearing on the question at issue; while Michaelis, another German writer of great repute in the: earlier days of this century, remarks that there are many things in this oration of which we cannot perceive the tendency, as regards the accusation brought against the martyr. Let us examine and see if the case be not otherwise, remembering that promise of the Master, given not to supersede human exertion or to indulge human laziness, but given to support and sustain and safeguard His persecuted servants under circumstances like those amid which Stephen found himself. "But when they deliver you up, be not anxious how or what ye shall speak; for it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you." What, then, was the charge brought against Stephen? He was accused of "speaking blasphemous words against Moses, and against God," or, to put it in the formal language used by the witnesses, "We have heard him say that Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered unto us." Now Stephen, if merely a man of common sense, must have intended to reply, to this indictment. Some critics, as we have just noted, think that he failed effectually to do so. We are indeed often in great danger of paying too much attention and lending too great weight to objections of this kind urged by persons who assume to themselves the office of critics; and to counteract this tendency perhaps it is as well to note that a leading German writer of a rationalistic type, named Zeller, who has written a work to decry the historical character of the Acts, finds in St. Stephens words an oration "not only characteristic, but also better suited to the case and to the accusation raised against him than is usually supposed."
Disregarding, then, all cavils of critics whose views are mutually destructive, let us see if we cannot discern in this narrative the marks of a sound and powerful mind, guided, aided, and directed by the Spirit of God which dwelt so abundantly in him. St. Stephen was accused of irreverence towards Moses and hostility towards the temple, and towards all the Jewish institutions. How did he meet this? He begins his address to the Sanhedrin at the earliest period of their national history, and shows how the chosen people had passed through many changes and developments without interfering with their essential identity amid these changes. His opponents now made idols of their local institutions and of the buildings of the temple, but Gods choice and Gods promise had originally nothing local about them at all. Abraham, their great father, was first called by God in Ur of the Chaldees, far away across the desert in distant Mesopotamia. Thence he removed to Charran, and then, only after the lapse of years, became a wanderer up and down in Canaan, where he never possessed so much of the land as he could set his foot upon. The promises of God and the covenant of grace were personal things, made to Gods chosen children, not connected with lands or buildings or national customs. He next takes up the case of Moses. He had been accused of blasphemy and irreverence towards the great national law-giver. His words prove that he entertained no such feelings; he respected and revered Moses just as much as his opponents and accusers did. But Moses had nothing to say or do with Canaan, or Jerusalem, or the temple. Nay, rather, his work for the chosen people was alone in Egypt and in Midian and on the side of Horeb, where the presence and name of Jehovah were manifested not in the temple or tabernacle, but in the bush burning yet not consumed.
The Grecian Jews accused Stephen of irreverence towards Moses. But how had their forefathers treated that Moses whom he recognised as a divinely-sent messenger? "They thrust him from them, and in their hearts turned back again into Egypt." Moses, however, led them onward and upward. His motto was hope. His rod and his voice ever pointed forward. He warned them that his own ministry was not the final one; that it was only an intermediate and temporary institution, till the prophet should come unto whom the people should hearken. There was a chosen people before the customs introduced by Moses. There may therefore be a chosen people still when these customs cease, having fulfilled their purpose. The argument of St. Stephen in this passage is the same as that of St. Paul in the fourth-chapter of Galatians, where he sets forth the temporary and intermediate character of the Levitical law and of the covenant of circumcision. So teaches St. Stephen in his speech. His argument is simply this:-I have been accused of speaking blasphemous words against Moses because I proclaimed that a greater Prophet than he had come, and yet this was only what Moses himself had foretold. It is not I who have blasphemed and opposed Moses: it is my accusers rather. But then he remembers that the accusation dealt not merely with Moses. It went farther, and accused him of speaking blasphemous words against the national sanctuary, "saying that Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place."
This leads him to speak of the temple. His argument now takes a different turn, and runs thus. This building is now the centre of Jewish thoughts and affections. But it is a mere modern thing, as compared with the original choice and promise of God. There was no chosen dwelling-place of the Almighty in the earliest days of all; His presence was then manifested wherever His chosen servants dwelt. Then Moses made a tent or tabernacle, which abode in no certain spot, but moved hither and thither. Last of all, long after Abraham, and long after Moses, and even after David, Solomon built God a house. Even when it was built, and in all its original glory, even then the temporary character of the temple was clearly recognised by the prophet Isaiah, who had long ago, in his sixty-sixth chapter, proclaimed the truth which had been brought forward as an accusation against himself: "Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool; what house will ye build Me, saith the Lord, or what is the place of My rest? Hath not My hand made all these things?"-a great spiritual truth which had been anticipated long before Isaiah by King Solomon, in his famous dedication prayer at the opening of the temple: "But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee; how much less this house that I have builded." {1Ki_8:27} After St. Stephen had set forth this undeniable truth confirmed by the words of Isaiah, which to the Pharisaic portion of his audience, at least, must have seemed conclusive, there occurs a break in the address.
One would have thought that he would then have proceeded to describe the broader and more spiritual life which had shone forth for mankind in Christ, and to expound the freedom from all local restrictions which should henceforth belong to acceptable worship of the Most High. Most certainly, if the speech had been invented for him and placed in his mouth, a forger would naturally have designed a fuller and more balanced discourse, setting forth the doctrine of Christ as well as the past history of the Jews. We cannot tell whether he actually entered more fully into the subject or not. Possibly the Sadducean portion of his audience had got quite enough. Their countenances and gestures bespoke their horror of St. Stephens doctrine. Isaiahs opinion carried no weight with them as contrasted with the institutions of Moses, which were their pride and glory; and so, borne along by the force of his oratory, St. Stephen finished with that vigorous denunciation which led to his death: "Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye." This exposition of St. Stephens speech will show the drift and argument of it as it appears to us. But it must have seemed to them much more powerful, plain-spoken, and aggressive. He vindicated himself to any right-thinking and fair mind from the accusation of irreverence towards God, towards Moses, or towards the Divine institutions. But the minds of his hearers were not fair. He had trampled upon their prejudices, he had suggested the vanity of their dearest ideas, and they could not estimate his reasons or follow his arguments, but they could resort to the remedy which every failing, though for the present popular, cause possesses-they could destroy him. And thus they treated the modern as their ancestors had treated the ancient prophets. What a lesson Stephens speech has for the Church of every age! How wide and manifold the applications of it! The Jewish error is one that is often committed, their mistake often repeated. The Jews identified Gods honour and glory with an old order that was fast passing away, and had no eyes to behold a new and more glorious order that was opening upon them. We may blame them then for their murder of St. Stephen, but we must blame them gently, feeling that they acted as human nature has ever acted under similar circumstances, and that good motives were mingled with those feelings of rage and bigotry and narrowness that urged them to their deed of blood. Let us see how this was. Stephen proclaimed a new order and a new development, embracing for his hearers a vast political as well as a vast religious change. His forecast of the future swept away at once all the privileges and profits connected with the religious position of Jerusalem, and thus destroyed the political prospects of the Jewish people. It is no wonder the Sanhedrin could not appreciate his oration. Men do not ever listen patiently when their pockets are being touched, their profits swept away, their dearest hopes utterly annihilated. Has not human experience often repeated the scene acted out that day in Jerusalem? On the political stage men have often seen it, -we ourselves have seen it. The advocates of liberty, civil and religious, have had to struggle against the same spirit and the same prejudices as St. Stephen. Take the political world alone. We now look back and view with horror the deeds wrought in the name of authority and in opposition to the principles of change and innovation. We read the stories of Alva and the massacres in the Netherlands, the bloody deeds of the seventeenth century in England and all over Europe, the miseries and the bloodshed of the American war of independence, the fierce opposition with which the spirit of liberty has been resisted throughout this century; and our sympathies are altogether ranged on the side of the sufferers, -the losers and defeated, it may have been, for the time, but the triumphant in the long run.
The true student, however, of history or of human nature will not content himself with any one-sided view, and he will have some sympathy to spare for those who adopted the stern measures. He will not judge them too harshly. They reverenced the past as the Jews of Jerusalem did, and reverence is a feeling that is right and blessed. It is no good sign for this age of ours that it possesses so little reverence for the past, thinks so lightly of the institutions, the wisdom, the ideas of antiquity, and is ready to change them at a moments notice. The men who now are held up to the execration of posterity, the high priest and the Sanhedrin who murdered Stephen, the tyrants and despots and their agents who strove to crush the supporters of liberty, the writers who cried them down and applauded or urged on the violent measures which were adopted and sometimes triumphed for the time, -we should strive to put ourselves in their position, and see what they had to say for themselves, and thus seek to judge them here below as the Eternal King will judge them at the great final tribunal. They knew the good which the old political institutions had worked. They had lived and flourished under them as their ancestors had lived and flourished before them. The future they knew not. All they knew was that changes were proposed which threatened everything with which their dearest memories were bound up, and the innovators seemed dangerous creatures, obnoxious to God and man, and they dealt with them accordingly.
So it has been and still is in politics. The opponents of political change are sometimes denounced in the fiercest language, as if they were morally wicked. The late Dr. Arnold seems a grievous offender in this respect. No one can read his charming biography by Dean Stanley without recognising how intolerant he was towards his political opponents; how blind he was to those good motives which inspire the timorous, the ignorant, and the aged, when brought face to face with changes which appear to them thickly charged with the most dangerous results. Charity towards opponents is sadly needed in the political as well as in the religious world. And as it has been in politics so has it been in religion. Men reverence the past, and that reverence easily glides into an idolatry blind to its defects and hostile to any improvement. It is in religion too as in politics; a thousand other interests-money, office, expectations, memories of the loved and lost - are bound up with old religious forms, and then when the prophet arises with his Divine message, as Stephen arose before the Sanhedrin, the ancient proverb is fulfilled, the corruption of the best becomes the worst, the good motives mingle with the evil, and are used by the poor human heart to justify the harshest, most unchristian deeds done in defence of what men believe to he the cause of truth and righteousness. Let us be just and fair to the aggressors as well as to the aggrieved, to the persecutors as well as to the persecuted. But let us all the same take good heed to learn for ourselves the lessons this narrative presents. Reverence is a good thing, and a blessed thing; and without reverence no true progress, either in political or spiritual things, can be made. But reverence easily degenerates into blind superstitious idolatry. It was so with the Sanhedrin, it was so at the Reformation, it has ever been so with the opponents of true religious progress. Let us evermore strive to keep minds free, open, unbiassed, respecting the past, yet ready to listen to the voice and fresh revelations of Gods will and purposes made to us by the messengers whom He chooses as He pleases. Perhaps there was never an age which needed this lesson of Stephens speech and its reception more than our own. The attitude of religious men towards science and its numerous and wondrous advances needs guidance such as this incident affords. The Sanhedrin had their own theory and interpretation of Gods dealings in the past. They clung to it passionately, and refused the teaching of Stephen, who would have widened their views, and shown them that a grand and noble development was quite in accordance with all the facts in the case, and indeed a necessary result of the sacred history when truly expounded! What a parable and picture of the future we here find! What a warning as to the attitude religious men should take up with respect to the progress of science! Patience, intellectual and religious patience, is taught us. The Sanhedrin were impatient of St. Stephens views, which they could not understand, and their impatience made them lose a blessing and commit a sin. Now has it not been at times much the same with ourselves? Fifty or sixty years ago men were frightened at the revelations of geology, -they had their own interpretations of the past and of the Scriptures, -just as three centuries ago men were frightened at the revelations and teaching of modern astronomy. Prejudiced and narrow men then strove to hound down the teachers of the new science, and would, if they could, have destroyed them in the name of God. Patience, here, however, has done its work and has had its reward. The new revelations have been taken up and absorbed by the Church of Christ. Men have learned to distinguish between their own interpretations of religion and of religious documents on the one hand and the religion itself on the other. The old, human, narrow, prejudiced interpretations have been modified. That which could be shaken and was untrue has passed away, while that which cannot be shaken has remained.
The lesson taught us by these instances of astronomy and geology, ought not to be thrown away. Patience is again necessary for the Christian and for the scientist alike. New facts are every day coming to light, but it requires much time and thought to bring new facts and old truths into their due correlation, to look round and about them. The human mind is at best very small and weak. It is blind, and cannot see afar off, and it is only by degrees it can grasp truth in its fulness. A new fact, for instance, discovered by science may appear at first plainly contradictory to some old truth revealed in Scripture. But even so, we should not lose our patience or our hope taught us by this chapter. What new fact of science can possibly seem more contradictory to any old truth of the Creeds than St. Stephens teaching about the universal character of Gods promise and the freeness of acceptable worship must have seemed when compared with the Divine choice of the temple at Jerusalem? They appeared to the Sanhedrins ideas mutually destructive, though now we see them to have been quite consistent one with another. Let this historic retrospect support us when our faith is tried. Let us welcome every new fact and new revelation brought by science, and then, if they seem opposed to something we know to be true in religion, let us wait in confidence, begotten of past experience, that God in His own good time will clear up for His faithful people that which now seems difficult of comprehension. Patience and confidence, then, are two lessons much needed in this age, which St. Stephens speech and its reception bring home to our hearts.
II. We have now spoken of the general aspect of the discourse, and the broad counsels we may gather from it. There are some other points, however, points of detail as distinguished from wider views, upon which we would fix our attention. They too will be found full of guidance and full of instruction. Let us take them in the order in which they appear in St. Stephens address. The mistakes and variations which undoubtedly occur in it are well worthy of careful attention, and have much teaching necessary for these times. There are three points in which Stephen varies from the language of the Old Testament. In the fourteenth verse of the seventh chapter Stephen speaks thus: "Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls"; while, if we turn to the Pentateuch, we shall find that the number of the original Hebrew immigrants is placed three times over at seventy, or threescore and ten, that is in Gen_46:2; Gen_46:7, Exo_1:5, and Deu_10:22. This, however, is only a comparatively minor point. The Septuagintor Greek version of the Pentateuch reads seventy-five in the first of these passages, making the sons of Joseph born in Egypt to have been nine persons, and thus completing the number seventy-five, at which it fixes the roll of the males who came with Jacob. The next two verses, the fifteenth and sixteenth, contain a much more serious mistake. They run thus:-"So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers, and were caried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Em-mot the father of Sychem." Now here there occur several grave errors. Jacob was not carried over and buried at Sychem at all, but at the cave of Machpelah, as is plainly stated in Gen_50:13. Again, a plot of ground at Sychem was certainly bought, not by Abraham, however, but by Jacob. Abraham bought the field and cave of Machpelah from Ephron the Hittite. Jacob bought his plot at Sychem from the sons of Emmor. There are in these verses, then, two serious historical mistakes; first as to the true burial-place of Jacob, and then as to the purchaser of the plot of ground at Sychem. Yet, again, there is a third mistake in the forty-third verse, where, when quoting a denunciation of Jewish idolatry from Amo_5:25-26, he quotes the prophet as threatening, "I will carry you away beyond Babylon," whereas the prophet did say, "Therefore I will cause you to go into captivity beyond Damascus." St. Stephen substituted Babylon for Damascus, two cities between which several hundred miles intervened. I have stated the difficulty thus as strongly as possible, because I think that, instead of constituting a difficulty, they are a real source of living help and comfort, as well as a great practical confirmation of the story. Let us take this last point first. I say that these mistakes, admitted mistakes which I make no vain attempt to explain away, constitute a confirmation of the story as given in the Acts against modern rationalistic opponents. It is a favourite theme of many of these writers that the Acts of the Apostles is a mere piece of fancy history, a historical romance composed in the second century for the purpose of reconciling the adherents of St. Paul, or the Gentile Christians, with the followers of St. Peter, or the Jewish Christians.; The persons who uphold this view fix the date of the Acts in the earlier half of the second century, and teach that the speeches and addresses were composed by the author of the book and put into the mouths of the reputed speakers. Now, in the mistake made by St. Stephen, we have a refutation of this theory. Surely any man composing a speech to put into the mouth of one of his favourite heroes and champions would not have represented him as making such grave errors when addressing the supreme Jewish senate. A man might easily make any of these slips which I have noticed in the heat of an oration, and they might have even passed unnoticed, as every speaker who has much practice in addressing the public still makes precisely the same kind of mistake. But a romancer, sitting down to forge speeches suitable to the time and place, would never have put in the mouth of his lay figures grave errors about the most elementary facts of Jewish history. We conclude, then, that the inaccuracies reported as made by St. Stephen are evidences of the genuine character of the oration attributed to him. Then again we see in these mistakes a guarantee of the honesty and accuracy of the reports of the speech. The other day I read the objections of a critic to our Gospels. He wished to know, for instance, how the addresses of our Lord could have been preserved in an age when there was no shorthand. The answer is, however, simple enough, and conclusive: there was shorthand in that age. Shorthand was then carried to such perfection that an epigram of Martial (14:208), a contemporary poet, celebrating its triumphs may be thus translated:-
"Swift though the words, the pen still swifter sped; The hand has finished ere the tongue has said."
While even if the Jews knew nothing of shorthand, the human memory, as we have already noted, was then developed to a degree of which we have no conception. Now, whether transmitted by memory or by notes, this address of St. Stephen bears proofs of the truthfulness of the reporter in the mistakes it contains. A man anxious for the reputation of his hero would have corrected them, as parliamentary reporters are accustomed to make the worst speeches readable, correcting evident blunders, and improving the grammar. The reporter of St. Stephens words, on the contrary, gave them to us just as they were spoken. But then, I may be asked, how do you account for St. Stephens mistake? What explanation can you offer? My answer is simple and plain enough. I have no other explanation to offer except that they are mistakes such as a speaker, filled with his subject, and speaking to an excited and hostile audience, might naturally make; mistakes such as truthful speakers every day make in their ordinary efforts. Every man who speaks an extemporaneous discourse such as Stephens was, full of references to past history, is liable to such errors. Even when the memory retains the facts most accurately, the tongue is apt to make such lapses. Let a number of names be mingled up together in a speech or sermon where frequent mention has to be made of one now and of another again, how easily in that case a speaker substitutes one for another. But it may be objected that it is declared of Stephen that he was "full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom," that "he was full of faith and power," and that his adversaries "were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spake." But surely this might be said of able, devoted, and holy men at the present day, and yet no one would say that they were miraculously kept from the most trivial mistakes, and that their memories and tongues were so supernaturally aided that they were preserved from the smallest verbal inaccuracies. We are always inclined to reverse the true scientific method of inquiry, and to form notions as to what inspiration must mean, instead of asking what, as a matter of fact, inspiration did mean and involve in the case of the Bible heroes. People when they feel offended by these mistakes of St. Stephen prove that they really think that Christianity was quite a different thing in the apostolic days from what it is now, and that the words "full of the Holy Ghost" and the presence of the Divine Spirit meant quite a different gift and blessing then from what they imply at the present time. I look upon the mistakes in this speech in quite a different light. St. Luke, in recording them exactly as they took place, proves, not merely his honesty as a narrator, but he also has handed down to us a most important lesson. He teaches us to moderate our notions and to hasten our a priori expectations. He shows us we must come and study the Scriptures to learn what they mean by the gift and power of the Holy Spirit. St. Luke expressly tells us that Stephen was full of the Holy Ghost, and then proceeds to narrate certain verbal inaccuracies and certain slips of memory to prove to us that the presence of the Holy Ghost does not annihilate human nature, or supersede the exercise of the human faculties. Just as in other places we find Apostles like St. Peter or St. Paul spoken of as equally inspired, and yet the inspiration enjoyed by them did not destroy their human weakness and infirmities, and, full of the Holy Ghost as they were, St. Paul could wax wroth and engage in bitter dissension with Barnabas, his fellow-labourer; and St. Peter could fall into hypocrisy against which his brother Apostle had publicly to protest. It is wonderful how liable the mind is, m matters of religion, to embrace exactly the same errors age after age, manifesting themselves in different shapes. Men are ever inclined to form their theories beforehand, and then to test Gods actions and the course of His Providence by those theories, instead of reversing the order, and testing their theories by facts as God reveals them. This error about the true theory of inspiration and the gifts of the Holy Ghost which Protestants have fallen into is exactly the same as two celebrated mistakes, one in ancient, the other in modern times. The Eutychian heresy was very celebrated in the fifth century. It split the Eastern Church into two parts, and prepared the way for the triumph of Mahometanism. It fell, too, into this same error. It formed a a priori theory of God and His nature. It determined that it was impossible for the nature of Deity to be united to a nature which could feel hunger and thirst and weakness, because that God cannot be affected by any human weakness or wants. It denied, therefore, the real humanity of the Lord Jesus Christ and the reality of His human life and actions; teaching that His human body was not real, but merely a phenomenal or apparent one, and then explaining away all the statements and facts of Gospel history which seemed to them to conflict with their own private theory. In the West we have had ourselves experience of the same erroneous method of argument. The adherents of the Church of Rome argue for the infallibility of the Pope in the same way. They dilate on the awful importance of religious truth, and the fearful consequences of a mistake in such matters. Hence they conclude that it is only natural and fitting that a living, speaking, teaching, infallible guide should be appointed by God to direct the Church, and thence they conclude the infallibility of the Pope; a method of argument which has been amply exposed by Dr. Salmon in his work on the Infallibility of the Church. The Roman Catholics form their theory first, and when they come to facts which conflict with their theory, they deny them or explain them away in the most extraordinary manner.
Protestants themselves, however, are subject to the same erroneous methods. They form a theory about the Holy Ghost and His operations. They conclude, as is true, that He is Himself right and just and true in all His doings, and then they conclude that all the men whom He chose in the earliest age of the Church, and who are mentioned in Scripture as endued with His grace, must have been as free from every form of error as the Holy Spirit Himself. They thus fashion for themselves a mere a priori theory like the Eutychian and the Romanist, and then, when they apply their theory to passages like St. Stephens speech, they feel compelled to deny facts and offer forced explanations, and to reject Gods teaching as it is embodied in the divinely taught lessons of history. Let us be honest, fearless students of the Scriptures. St. Stephen was full of the Holy Ghost, and as such his great, broad, spiritual lessons were taught by the Spirit, and commend themselves as Divine teaching to every Christian heart. But these lessons were given through human lips, and had to be conveyed through human faculties, and as such are not free from the imperfections which attach themselves to everything human here below. Surely it is just the same still. God the Holy Ghost dwells with His people as of old. There are men, even in this age, of whom it still may be said, that in a special sense "they are full of the Holy Ghost," a blessing granted in answer to faithful prayer and devout communion and a life lived closely with God. The Holy Spirit speaks through them and in them. Their sermons, even on the simplest topics, speak with power, they teem with spiritual unction, they come home with conviction to the human conscience. Yet surely no one would dream of saying that these men are free from slips of speech and lapses of memory in their extemporaneous addresses, or in their private instructions, or in their written letters, because the Holy Ghost thus proves His presence and His power in His people as of old. The human heart and conscience easily and at once distinguish between that which is due to human weakness and what to Divine grace, according to that most pregnant saying of an Apostle himself gifted above all others, "We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us." This view may be startling to some persons who have been accustomed to look to the Bible as some persons look to the Pope, as an oracle which will give them infallible guidance on every topic without the exercise of any thought or intelligence on their own part. Yet it is no original or novel notion of my own, but one that has been luminously set forth by a devout expositor of Scripture, dealing with this very passage many years ago. Dr. Vaughan, in his lectures on the Acts, preaching at Doncaster when vicar of that place, thus states his conclusions on this point:-"Now I will address one earnest word to persons who may have noticed with anxiety in this chapter, or who may have heard it noticed by others in a tone of cavil or disbelief, that in one or two minor points the account here given of Jewish history seems to vary from that contained in the narrative of the Old Testament. For example, the history of the book of Genesis tells us that the burying-place bought by Abraham was in Mamre or Hebron, not at Sychem; and that it was bought by him of Ephron the Hittite, Jacob (not Abraham) being the purchaser of the ground at Shechem of the sons of Hamor, Shechems father. My friends, can you really suppose that a difference of this nature has anything to do, this way or that, with the substantial truth of the gospel revelation? I declare to you that I would not waste the time in endeavouring (if I was able) to reconcile such a variance. It is to be regretted that Christian persons, in their zeal for the literal accuracy of our Holy Book, have spoken and written as if they thought that anything could possibly depend upon such a question. We all know how easy it is to get two witnesses in a court of justice to give their stories of an occurrence in the same words. We know also how instant is the suspicion of falsehood which that formal coincidence of statement brings upon them. Holy Scripture shows what I may indeed call a noble superiority to all such uniformity. Each book of our Bible is an independent witness; shown to be so, not least, by verbal or even actual differences on some trifling points of detail. And they who drink most deeply at the fountain head of Divine truth learn to estimate these things in the same manner; to feel what we might describe as a lordly disdain for all infidel objections drawn from this sort of petty, paltry, cavilling, carping, creeping criticism. Let our faith at last, God helping us, be strong enough and decided enough to override a few or a multitude of such objections. We will hear them unmoved; we will fearlessly examine them; if we cannot resolve them, then, in the power of a more majestic principle, we will calmly turn from them and pass them by. What we know not now, we may know hereafter; and if we never know we will believe still." These are wise words, very wholesome, very practical, and very helpful in this present age.
III. Let us briefly gather yet another lesson from this passage. The declaration of the Churchs catholicity and the universal nature of Christian worship contained in verses 47-50 {Act_7:47-50} deserve our attention. What did St. Stephen say?-"But Solomon built Him a house. Howbeit the Most High dwelleth not in houses made with hands; as saith the prophet, The heaven is My throne, and the earth the footstool of My feet; what manner of house will ye build Me? saith the Lord; or what is the place of My rest? Did not My hand make all these things?" These words must have sounded as very extraordinary and very revolutionary in Jewish ears, because they most certainly struck at the root of the exclusive privilege claimed for Jerusalem, that it was the one place upon earth where acceptable worship could be offered, and where the Divine presence could be manifested. It seems no wonder that they should have aroused the Sanhedrin to the pitch of fury which ended in the orators judicial murder. But these words have been at times pressed farther than Stephen intended. He merely wished to teach that Gods special and covenanted presence was not for the future to be limited to Jerusalem. In the new dispensation of the Messiah whom he preached, that special covenanted presence would be found everywhere. Where two or three should be gathered in Christs name there would Gods presence be found. These words of Stephen have sometimes been quoted as if they sounded the death-knell of special places dedicated to the honour and glory of God, such as churches are. It is evident, however, that they have no such application. They sounded the death-knell of the exclusive privilege of one place, the temple, but they proclaimed the freedom which the Church has ever since claimed, and the Jewish Church of the dispersion, by the institution of synagogues, had led the way in claiming; teaching that wherever true hearts and true worshippers are found, there God reveals Himself. But we must bear in mind a distinction. Stephen and the Apostles rejected the exclusive right of the Temple as the one place of worship for the world. They asserted the right to establish special places of worship throughout the world. They rejected the exclusive claims of Jerusalem. But they did not reject the right and the duty of Gods people to assemble themselves as a collective body for public worship, and to realise Christs covenanted presence. This is an important limitation of St. Stephens statement. The absolute duty of public collective worship of the Almighty cannot be too strongly insisted upon. Men neglect it, and they support themselves by an appeal to St. Stephens words, which have nothing to do with public worship more than with private worship. The Jews imagined that both public and private worship offered in the Temple had some special blessing attached, because a special presence of God was there granted. St. Stephen attacked this prejudice. His words must, however, be limited to the exact point he was then dealing with, and must not be pressed farther. Private prayer was binding on all Gods people in the new and freer dispensation, and so, too, public worship has a special covenant blessing attached to it, and the blessing cannot be obtained if people neglect the duty. Public worship has been by Protestants looked at too much, as if it were only a means of their own edification, and thus, when they have thought that such edification could be as well or better attained at home, by reading a better sermon than they might chance to hear in the public congregation, they have excused their absence to their own conscience. But public worship is much more than a means of edification. It is the payment of a debt of worship, praise, and adoration due by the creature to the Creator. In that duty personal edification finds a place, but a mere accidental and subsidiary place. The great end of public worship is worship, not hearing, not edification even, though edification follows as a necessary result of such public worship when sincerely offered. The teaching of St. Stephen did not then apply to the erection of churches and buildings set apart for Gods service, or to the claim made for public worship as an exercise with a peculiar Divine promise annexed. It simply protests against any attempt to localise the Divine presence to one special spot on earth, making it and it alone the centre of all religious interest. St. Stephens words are indeed but a necessary result of the ascension of Christ as we have already expounded its expediency. Had Christ remained on earth, His personal presence would have rendered the Church a mere local and not a universal institution; just as the doctrine of Roman Catholics about the Pope as Christs Vicar, and Rome as his appointed seat, has so far invested Rome with somewhat of the characteristics of Jerusalem and the Temple. But our Lord ascended up on high that the hearts and minds of His people might likewise ascend to that region where, above time and sense and change, their Master evermore dwells, as the loadstone which secretly draws their hearts, and guides their tempest tossed spirits across the stormy waters of this world to the haven of everlasting rest.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv9–13 9. There arose certain of the synagogue. This was…
9. There arose certain of the synagogue. This was the ordinary place of worship where Jews met on the Sabbath. The Rabbins say (Talmud) that there were 480 synagogues in Jerusalem. Of the Libertines. “The Freedmen.” Thousands of Jews had been carried away captives and sold into slavery by Pompey in 63 b.c. These, or their children, were mostly freed at a later period. Those of them who returned to Jerusalem had a synagogue of their own. The Cyrenians. A synagogue of. See Revision. See note on Acts 2:10. The Cyrenian Jews who returned to the city of their fathers, like those of other countries, had their own synagogue. Alexandrians. Jews from the great city of Alexandria in Egypt, where they were said to be almost one-third of the population. Of Cilicia. Of this synagogue the brilliant disciple of Gamaliel, born at Tarsus of Cilicia, was no doubt a member, and one of the most active opposers of Stephen. See 7:58. Of Asia. The Roman province in Asia Minor of which Ephesus was capital. Disputing with Stephen. These synagogues were all composed of “Grecians,” foreign Jews. Stephen's name is also Grecian, and he probably preached especially to his own class.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v10 10. “And they were not able to resist the…
10. “And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spoke.” Oh! what a contrast we here have between the wisdom, intellect, learning and resources of the world and the wisdom of God! Here, with the greatest intellectualist and scholar the world could produce, surrounded by a platoon of preachers, one humble, uncultured layman proves more than a match for them all; as the Holy Ghost says they were “unable to resist the wisdom and spirit with which Stephen spoke.” See the whole crowd with their mighty leader, Saul of Tarsus, put in total eclipse and literally snowed under by a solitary layman. Therefore, to their ineffaceable shame, they resort to bribery, raising up false witnesses that they may bring an accusation against him. Stephen preached the perfect sufficiency of Jesus, His vicarious atonement and cleansing blood, received and appropriated by the Holy Ghost, of course relegating the types and shadows of the Mosaic dispensation to bygone years, no longer significant because superseded and verified by the great Antitype. This they construed as inveighing against the law of Moses. This notable history has a thousand parallels at the present day. We can not preach the perfect sufficiency of Jesus only and the omnipotence of the present Holy Ghost in full salvation and the perfect sufficiency of God’s Word, doctrinally, institutionally, legally and every other way, without at least indirectly reflecting on the human institutions and bogus legislation of fallen ecclesiasticisms. Then they cry out that we are inveighing against the church, whereas we are defending the church of God with all our might, precisely as Stephen did, when they charged him with disloyalty to the church and killed him for it. He was the first martyr, leading the way and showing the people how to die for the truth. Two hundred millions have followed in his bloody track, like Stephen, dying under charges of disloyalty to what carnal preachers call the church, as they did in case of Stephen. If they had the co-operation of the secular arm these defenders of what they call the church would kill us this day, as they did Stephen and the mighty host of his successors. Beware of the clamor of church loyalty! That is the very shibboleth that piled the rocks on Stephen, fed the martyrs to the lions and burnt them at the stake. It is impossible to be loyal to God and disloyal to His church. When they talk to you about loyalty to God, open your Bible and shout Amen! When they talk to you about loyalty to the church, look out! that is the old hackneyed cry of persecution, from Stephen down to the present day.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv9–14 9, 10. The activity of Stephen, though probably not…
9, 10. The activity of Stephen, though probably not greater than that of the apostles during the same period, naturally attracted to him more especial attention, because he was a new actor in the scene, and one who had hitherto occupied a subordinate position. The opponents of the gospel were aroused into renewed activity. The first persecution occurred upon the surprising success of Peter and John in Solomon's Portico; the second, upon the triumphs which followed the death of Ananias and Sapphira; and the third now springs up upon the appearance of new advocates of the faith. (9) " Then there arose certain persons from the synagogue called the synagogue of the Freedmen and Cyrenians, and those from Cilicia and Asia, disputing with Stephen; (10) and they were not able to withstand the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke. "
The policy of the opposition is now changed. Having been deterred, by fear of the people, and by division of sentiment in their own ranks, from resorting to extreme violence, and finding that threats and scourging were unavailing, they now resort to discussion, expecting, by superior learning, to confound men who could not be forced into silence. The parties who entered the lists of debate were all foreign-born Jews. The Freedmen were Jews who had been set free from Roman slavery; the Cyrenians and Alexandrians were from the north of Africa; the Asians and Cilicians from the peninsula of Asia, the last-named being from the native country of Saul of Tarsus.
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The fact that Saul was a leader in the contest now begun identifies the attacking party as Pharisees; for he was a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee, and "brought up in this city, at the feet of Gamaliel." The violent proceedings of the Sadducees having been checked, in part, by the counsel of Gamaliel-the great teacher of the Pharisees-the apostles had gone on in their ministry, not merely proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus, but prosecuting the second part of their commission, "teaching them to observe and do all whatsoever Christ had commanded." This somewhat relieved the Sadducees from the brunt of attack, and turned it upon the Pharisees, whose traditions were directly assailed by the maxims of true piety and morality. The consequence was, a rallying of this party to an activity not manifested before since the death of Christ. Having nearly all the learning and talent of their nation in their ranks, and especially the literary culture and wealth of the foreign Jews, they resorted with great confidence to disputation. The seven deacons, who were also foreigners, were naturally brought into more direct contact with these foreign-born disputants; and Stephen, who was the most gifted of the seven, soon found himself engaged, single-handed, in a conflict with them all.
This is the first time the disciples measured the strength of their cause in open discussion. Hitherto the young converts had enjoyed no opportunity to compare the arguments by which they had been convinced with those which learning and ingenuity might frame against them. But now they were to hear both sides of the great question presented, with the odds of number, learning, and social position all on the side of their opponents. It was an interesting crisis, and it needs no very vivid imagination to realize the palpitating anxiety with which the disciples resorted to the place of discussion. Their fondest hopes were realized; for it soon became evident that Stephen had all the facts and the statements of Scripture in his favor, so that "they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spoke." By the "spirit by which he spoke," I suppose Luke refers to the Holy Spirit, who supplied him with whatever knowledge and wisdom he may have lacked.
In entering freely into this discussion, Stephen acted in accordance with the example of his master, and that of all the apostles. Their example makes it the duty of all disciples to whom God has given the necessary wisdom, to defend in discussion, against all opposition, the truth as it is in Jesus. Whoever does so, in the fear of God, and with a devout zeal for the salvation of men, will find his enemies unable to resist him.
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v9 The Testimony of Stephen. Act 6:9-15
The Testimony of Stephen. Act 6:9-15
v. 9. Then there arose certain of the synagogue, which is called the synagogue of the Libertines, and Cyrenians, and Alexandrians, and of them of Cilicia, and of Asia, disputing with Stephen.
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v. 10. And they were not able to resist the wisdom and the spirit by which he spake.
v. 11. Then they suborned men, which said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.
v. 12. And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and caught him, and brought him to the Council,
v. 13. and set up false witnesses, which said, This man ceaseth not to speak blasphemous words against this holy place and the Law;
v. 14. for we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.
v. 15. And all that sat in the Council, looking steadfastly on him, saw his face as it had been the face of an angel.
The activity which Stephen displayed in the interest of his Lord was not confined to the congregation. The zeal of every true Christian will show itself in true missionary effort, in the attempt by testimony and by apology to gain believers for Christ. Stephen soon attracted the attention and excited the jealousy and enmity of the unbelieving Jews. Among the great number of synagogues in Jerusalem (rabbinic writers state that there were there were also such as were formed by Jews from certain countries in the Diaspora, since they would naturally be attracted to one another by language and customs. There was one whose membership consisted of Roman freedmen, former captive Jews that were brought to Rome by Pompey; another was made up of Jews hailing from Cyrene in Africa, a third of such as had lived in Alexandria; a fourth had members exclusively from Cilicia, a fifth such as hailed from the province of Asia on the Aegean Sea. All these synagogues sent representatives, probably to the Temple, where the public meetings of the congregation were held, to debate with Stephen in disputatious questioning. It is more than likely that among these men there was also Saul of Tarsus in Cilicia, a Pharisee of the Pharisees in orthodoxy and zeal. But whatever methods of argumentation these able debaters used, they were of no avail in this case; they were unable to withstand the wisdom and the spirit with which Stephen spoke. For it was the Holy Spirit Himself who was present and spoke in and through this disciple, Luk 21:15. The proofs which Stephen adduced in this battle of intellects were of such a nature that they could not be questioned by the opponents. They were routed all along the line and were obliged to retire in confusion.
This defeat in a field in which they had supposed themselves undisputed masters rankled in the minds of these enemies of Christ. And, open warfare having failed, they resorted to slander and violence. They deliberately suborned men, hired them to repeat certain statements under oath which were directed against Stephen. The latter had probably stated that the true believers are no longer under the Law and warned the unbelieving Jews of the judgment which was to strike the Holy City and the Temple. These words could easily be made to represent a blasphemy against the teaching of Moses in the sense of the Jews and against God. With this construction placed upon the statements of Stephen, it was an easy matter to stir up, to excite and move deeply, the fanatical Jews, the common people as well as the elders and the scribes. It was a part of the cunning design to gain the people first, since the Sanhedrin would more readily take action if they felt that the people were on their side in this matter, and no longer favored the apostles and their followers. Having thus prepared the way, they came upon Stephen suddenly, surprised him while he was still unaware of any hostile intention on their part, took him by force, and brought him before the Sanhedrin for trial. Whether the Council was in regular session or had convened in anticipation of this arrest, is immaterial. No sooner was Stephen arraigned than they brought forth their lying witnesses, who had been carefully drilled in the part they were to play. And the perjurers followed orders very strictly, testifying that they had heard the prisoner say that Jesus of Nazareth would utterly destroy this place, and would completely change the customs that had been transmitted to them by Moses. Note: The enemies of Jesus had evidently learned something from the trial of Christ and from subsequent experience. The Pharisees had definite charges framed against Stephen, and they produced witnesses that had been carefully drilled in their role. It was an intensely dramatic, impressive moment when the charges had been fully presented and all the testimony of the witnesses had been heard. The eyes of all the members of the Council were firmly fixed upon Stephen, expecting, of course, that he would answer upon the charges in one way or the other. And here God gave visible evidence that He supported His servant and would be with him to the end. Fur the judges saw Stephen’s face as though it had been the face of an angel. This is not a description of extraordinary physical beauty, but of a supernatural brightness, like that on the face of Moses after he had spoken with God. Such a heavenly brilliance was fitting on the face of one to whom the glory of the Lord had been revealed. Note: Like Stephen, every Christian preacher that testifies fearlessly concerning Christ and His Word, may easily become involved in debate with the enemies of Christ. And when the unbelievers have been conquered by facts from the Word of God, they try to take revenge by threatening and blaspheming, and, if possible, they try to suppress the truth with violence. Many a witness for Christ has thus been branded as a blasphemer, a traitor, and a rebel in both spiritual and temporal courts.
Summary.To remedy an urgent need, the congregation at Jerusalem, at the suggestion of the apostles, elects seven deacons to minister to the poor and the widows, one of whom, Stephen, testifies for Christ and is arraigned before the Sanhedrin.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv10, 12 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
The background information that began in Acts 6:8 continues through verse 10.
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General Information:
Here the word "We" refers only to the men they persuaded to lie. (See: Exclusive and Inclusive "We")
General Information:
The word "they" refers back to the people from the synagogue of the freemen in Acts 6:9.
not able to stand against
This phrase means they could not prove false what he said. AT: "could not argue against" (See: Idiom)
Spirit
this refers to the Holy Spirit
some men to say
They were given money to give false testimony. AT: "some men to lie and say" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
blasphemous words against
"bad things about"
translationWords
wise
Holy Spirit
Stephen
blasphemy
Moses
God
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.