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Strange Details in Stephen's Defense:
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The defense offered by Steven in Acts 7 has confused interpreters as much as any passage in the book of Acts. In his excellent commentary on Acts, Howard Marshal says,
. . . the purpose of this speech is still much disputed. In form it is a lengthy recital of Old Testament history, discussing in detail what appear to be insignificant points and culminating in a bitter attack on the speaker's hearers. What is the speaker trying to do?" 1
later he complains,
. . .it is not clear what the theological point of the details is." 2
These are striking statements, coming, as they do, from one who demonstrates keen insight throughout the text of Acts. Yet, they are hardly unusual. Dibelius is much stronger,The irrelevance of this speech has for long been the real problem of exegesis. It is, indeed, impossible to find a connection between the account of the history of Israel to the time of Moses (7:2-19) and the accusations against Stephen. . .The major part of the speech shows no purpose whatever. . .
and finally,
The most striking feature of this speech is the irrelevance of its main section.3
Gealy asks, ". . . How are we to explain the fact that Steven does not really speak to the charges brought against him?"4 In fact, Gealy thinks that the whole text is so unrelated to the flow of the Steven narrative that 7:1-53 must be one of three conflated traditions, namely "an anti-Jewish polemic which Luke fashioned into a speech for his purposes."5 He thinks that the only point made in the speech is that the history of Israel is "a history of continual disobedience to God".6
Unfortunately, Gealy has missed the point of this brilliant speech. The speech is certainly not anti-semitic,7 and the fact that Israel was disobedient to the law, though mentioned, plays a subordinate role in the thought development. It is only certain kinds of disobedience that Stephen focuses on. In fact, this speech is the lynch-pin in the transition between Christianity as a localized ethnic religion, and a universal body.8 Stephen the Hellenist was able to see the implications of the Gospel to an extraordinary degree. 9
While there are confusing sections in the speech, there are also sections that are well understood by modern interpreters. Commonly accepted motifs are:
The key to understanding the inclusion of seemingly irrelevant detail in Stephen's speech is to realize that they deal with geography. The speech is overly concerned with geography, and with the people's and God's relationship to it.
It is the argument of this paper that a mistake is being made by interpreters when the second purpose of Stephen's speech is limited to answering charges regarding the temple. The nucleus of the thinking here is not only a response to the temple, but to the broader and more foundational concept of sacred space or sacred land.11 Stephen will argue that the notion of sacred land, used by God in the past for communication purposes, was not, and should not be viewed as a limitation upon Him. "God can work just fine without the use of any sacred space," is Stephen's argument.
Only this broader understanding will account for all of the material in the speech, as well as explaining the strategy Stephen follows in refuting the charges made against him. One of the charges brought against Stephen was that he speaks against, "this place," (6:13).12 Marshal thinks that the accusation that Stephen blasphemed "this holy place" (tou hagiou topou toutou vs.14) is a reference to the temple. This may be correct, even though the examples he cites do not use the word topos, but naos.13
Whether the phrase refers exclusively to the temple, or to the sacred area around it (Jerusalem, Mt. Zion or even Israel) it seems clear that the greater question of sacred space in the sense of sacred land had come up in the debate earlier.14It would be hard to exaggerate the centrality of the sacred land of Israel in the understanding of the covenantal blessings at the heart of Judaism at this time.15 At the heart of ethnic-religious world views are the twin values of "Race and Space," or to put it differently, "Blood and Soil."
These values are hardly unique to first century Judaism. The same terms have been used to understand thought systems such as Naziism. Unfortunately, they would adequately summarize the ethos of much of modern western Christianity. These values can be dangerous substitutes for real spirituality, and may stand as barriers to a truly universal, loving, outreaching, and caring form of Christianity. Most of the book of Acts is concerned with God's efforts to overcome the inertia that emanates from the unbalanced application of these two values in the name of religion.
By speaking to the issue of sacred space, including the sacred city and sacred land of Israel, Stephen's speech lays a firm ideological foundation for the subsequent movement of the focus of God's work away from both in the following chapters. Immediately, we find Philip putting into action the lateral movement that Stephen's analysis of Scripture so beautifully justified.
Having asserted this theme, we can now briefly note how it is developed in the text of Stephen's speech.
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