The Arrest and the Charges

Defeated in argument, Stephen’s opponents secretly instigate men to accuse him of blasphemy “against Moses and God,” stir up the people and the Sanhedrin, seize him, and bring him before the council, where false witnesses charge that he never ceases to speak “against this holy place and the law” and that Jesus “will destroy this place and will change the customs that Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:11–14). All who sat in the council, gazing at him, saw that “his face was like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15). This file follows the arrest and the precise terms of the accusation.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Protomartyr)

The Suborned Witnesses

The move from debate to destruction is deliberate and corrupt. Having failed to withstand Stephen’s wisdom (Acts 6:10), his opponents “secretly instigated (hypebalon) men who said, ‘We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses and God’” (Acts 6:11). The verb means to suborn, to put men up to it — Luke marks the accusation as manufactured from the start. The instigators then “stirred up the people and the elders and the scribes, and they came upon him and seized him and brought him before the council” (Acts 6:12). The sequence — the suborning of witnesses, the inflaming of the crowd, the seizure, the arraignment before the Sanhedrin on a charge of blasphemy — reproduces with unmistakable closeness the passion of Jesus, where likewise “the chief priests and the whole council sought false testimony against Jesus that they might put him to death” and “many false witnesses came forward” (Matt 26:59–60; Mark 14:55–59). Luke, who narrates Stephen’s death as the Church’s first martyrdom, frames it from the arrest onward as a death conformed to the Lord’s (Barrett, Acts, ICC, 1994, 1:326–328; and see The Protomartyr).

The Charge: Temple and Law

Before the council the false witnesses lay the formal charge: “This man never ceases to speak 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 that Moses delivered to us” (Acts 6:13–14). The accusation has two heads — the Temple (“this holy place”) and the Law (“the customs that Moses delivered”) — and they are the two pillars of the religion of Israel. To speak against the Temple and the Law was, to the council, to attack the foundations of the covenant people; hence “blasphemy” (Acts 6:11). The specific saying attributed to Stephen — that “Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place” — echoes the charge brought against Jesus himself at his trial, that he had said, “I will destroy this temple that is made with hands, and in three days I will build another, not made with hands” (Mark 14:58; cf. John 2:19) — a saying the gospels likewise place in the mouths of false witnesses while hinting that it distorted something the Lord truly said. The parallel is exact and intended: Stephen is charged with the very words for which his Master was condemned (Barrett, Acts, ICC, 1:327–330; Fitzmyer, Acts, AB 31, 1998, 359–361).

The narrative calls the witnesses “false” (Acts 6:13), and the precise sense of that is important. [Disputed: in what sense the witnesses against Stephen are "false." Some commentators (e.g., Haenchen, *Acts*, 1971, 271–273) note that Stephen's speech does in fact contain a sharp critique of the Temple "made with hands" (Acts 7:48–50), so that the charge is not wholly fabricated but a hostile and distorting report of a real Hellenist position; on this reading the falsity lies in the malicious framing, not in pure invention. Others hold the charge a genuine fabrication that the speech then refutes by showing Stephen's reverence for the history of Israel. The text's own judgment — "false witnesses" (6:13) — stands, but the relation between the charge and the actual content of Acts 7 is debated]. The two readings are not far apart in effect: whether the witnesses invented the saying or twisted a real one, the council heard in Stephen a threat to Temple and Law, and the speech that follows engages exactly those two themes (see The Temple and the Law).

The Stakes

The charge of speaking against the Temple and the Law is not incidental; it is the doctrinal core of the whole episode and the reason Stephen, not the apostles, becomes the first martyr. The Twelve in these chapters worship daily in the Temple and keep the Law (Acts 2:46; 3:1), and the persecution against them is survivable. Stephen — or the Hellenist circle he represents — is heard to relativize the Temple and to make the customs of Moses provisional in the light of Christ, and this is what proves intolerable (Acts 6:13–14). The conflict Stephen ignites is the first appearance of the question that will dominate the apostolic age: how the people of the risen Christ stand to the Temple, the Law, and the boundaries of Israel — the question that will run through the mission to the Samaritans and the Gentiles, the council of Jerusalem (Acts 15), and the letters of Paul (Simon, St. Stephen and the Hellenists, 1958; and see The Historical Questions). Stephen stands at the head of that whole development, and he stands there as its first casualty.

“The Face of an Angel”

The arraignment-scene closes with a wonder of a quieter kind. “And gazing at him, all who sat in the council saw that his face was like the face of an angel” (Acts 6:15). The image recalls Moses, whose face shone when he came down from speaking with God on Sinai (Exod 34:29–35) — a pointed touch, since Stephen is accused of speaking against Moses, yet bears the very glory that marked Moses’ nearness to God. The fathers read the shining face as the visible sign of the Spirit who fills him and of the heaven toward which he is already turned (Chrysostom, Homilies on Acts 15; NPNF I/11; Gregory of Nyssa, On Saint Stephen I; GNO X/1). It is reported, per METHODOLOGY §3.5, as Luke’s own testimony to what the council saw — the radiance of the man about to be condemned, transfigured before his judges. With the charges laid and the prisoner’s face shining, the high priest puts the question — “Are these things so?” (Acts 7:1) — and Stephen answers with the longest speech in the Acts of the Apostles.

See Also

References

  • The Holy Bible — Exod 34:29–35; Matt 26:59–61; Mark 14:55–59; John 2:19; Acts 2:46; 3:1; 6:10–15; 7:1, 48–50. Cited by book chapter:verse.
  • John Chrysostom. Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles 15. Trans. in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series I, Vol. 11. (The face like an angel’s.)
  • Haenchen, Ernst. The Acts of the Apostles: A Commentary. Oxford: Blackwell, 1971. (The charge and the Temple-critique.)
  • Barrett, C. K. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Acts of the Apostles. Vol. 1. ICC. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994. (Acts 6:11–15.)
  • Fitzmyer, Joseph A. The Acts of the Apostles. Anchor Bible 31. New York: Doubleday, 1998. (The charges against Stephen.)
  • Simon, Marcel. St. Stephen and the Hellenists in the Primitive Church. London: Longmans, Green, 1958.