vY^LIE«¥lMir^ISSflW"

DIVINITY SCHOOL
TROWBRIDGE LIBRARY

STEPHEN'S SPEECH:
ITS ARGUMENT AND DOCTRINAL
RELATIONSHIP
BENJAMIN WISNER BACON, LITT.D., D.D.
Buckingham Professor of New Testament Criticism and
Interpretation

FM5" "BV2.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH:
ITS ARGUMENT AND DOCTRINAL RELATIONSHIP

RELATION OF THE SPEECH TO ITS NARRATIVE
SETTING
Every careful reader is impressed with the fact that
Stephen's speech (Acts 7 : 1-56) is but imperfectly adapted
to the situation the author of Acts makes it fill.1 We expect
the accused to make more than a latent and indirect reply to
the two items of the indictment against him. We do not
expect him to indulge in a general review of the history of
Israel : The story begins as a formal trial before the stately
Sanhedrin. It ends with a scene of mob violence. Later on,
in 22 : 20, and 26 : 10, words placed in the mouth of Paul
(bfr]<pura) suggest something more like orderly procedure,
and in a single clause at the end of the story (7 : 58"), the
witnesses of 6 : 13 momentarily reappear. But this clause
itself is introduced in the language of 22 : 20 and in a man
ner so awkward as to suggest interpolation even to Blass.2
Were we to omit here a clause or two (v. 58, 8 : 1"% 3),
which, as Blass 's comment suggests, serve to connect Paul
1 Cf. Meyer's Commentary, and Spitta, Acta, p. 105, citing Calvin : "Stephani
responsio prima specie absurda et inepta videri posset," and adding similar ob
servations from Baur, Nitzsch, De Wette and Overbeds.
2 Oeterum haec Kal oi — Sai\ov satis apparet ab auctore ipso, Pauli comite,
narratione inserta esse ; post quae, ex more scriptorum, repetitio fit priorum : 59
Kal (\i6o0ii\ow. Commentarium, ad loc. See also my Introduction to the New
Testament, pp. 211 ff.

214 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
with the story, and which seem to be connected with 22 : 4 f.,
20, the impression produced would be quite contrary to the
historical setting created by 6 : 11 to 7 : 1. We should con
ceive no longer the Beth Din, with its necessary respect for
at least the forms of orderly procedure (cf . 4 : 5-21 ; 5 : 26-
40), but " the synagogue of the Alexandrians " or some pop
ular assembly provoked to violence by Stephen's harangue.1
Such a scene, in fact, as we derive from Hegesippus (ap.
Euseb., H. E., II. 23) and Clement of Alexandria (Hypot.
VI. ap. Eus., H. E., II. 1) for the death of James, the Lord's
brother.2 In fact, Hegesippus in this account employs many
traits clearly connected with the Lucan writings, though he
does not of course derive them thence. Of these are the
public harangue " to Jews and Greeks " at the challenge of
"the Jews and scribes and pharisees" made from the "pin
nacle of the temple ; " 3 the exclamation " Why do ye ask me
concerning Jesus, the Son of Man? He himself sitteth at
the right hand of the great Power, and is about fo come
upon the clouds of heaven;" the stoning, and the prayer of
the martyr, who " turned and knelt down and said, I entreat
thee, Lord God our Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do."4
1 For the documentary analysis of Acts 6 to 8 see especially the article by Hil-
genfeld, Z. W. Th., 1895, p. 411, and the authorities there referred to. Hilgen-
feld attributes vv. 55, 56, along with 58b, 59 ; 8 : 1 (first and last clauses) and 3,
to R, on the ground that 7 : 57 connects directly with v. 54 as its motive. With
55, 56, 50, 60 we may compare Luke 22 : 69, 23 : 46, 34* (j8 text). For Spitta's
view, and the synagogue of the Alexandrians as the real scene, see below.
'' It is curious to observe how the account of the martyrdom of James in
Josephus (Ant. XX. 9, 1) presents the same contrast of judicial procedure vs. mob
violence, as the two elements of Acts 6-7.
3 To Trrepiyiov tou vaov (v. 1. iepou). Perhaps an assimilation to Luke 4:9 =
Matt. 4 : 6 from iva/HaB/iois. See the note below.
4 The later texts in inserting this prayer in Luke 24 : 24* are probably undoing
the work of the Autor ad Theophilum, who will have struck it out from the source
he followed because of the duplication in Acts 7 : 60. Scribes acquainted with the
precanonical form of the story replaced it, as in the Ferrariani they have re
placed the Pericope Adulterae (rightly discerned by Blass to be "Lucan," i. e.,
akin to the material of our Luke, cf., e. g., Luke 7 : 36-50) after Luke 21 : 38, but
without cancelling verses 37, 38, which were apparently written by the Autor ad

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 215
This account, while undeniably related to the Lucan nar
rative, is obviously not derived from it. On the contrary, it
has a connection tolerably clear, though indirect, with that
of Clem. Becogn., I. 64-70, where, after the apostles have
taught that the sacrificial system is done away, and the
temple to be destroyed, James, on the proposal of Gamaliel,
becomes their spokesman before the whole people on the
temple stairs and "brings to light whatever things are in
Scripture concerning Christ, showing by most abundant
proofs that Jesus is the Christ and that in him are fulfilled
all the prophecies which related to his humble (i. e., first)
advent." A later hand appends an account of how the mul
titude, incited by one whom the narrative later reveals to be
Saul of Tarsus, raises a tumult, in the midst of which " that
enemy " attacked James, threw him headlong from the top of
the steps, and left him for dead.1
Whatever the source of the account of a formal trial of
Stephen (Acts 6 : 11-7 : 1, 55, 56, 58b-8 : 1, first clause),
its introduction here cannot be independent of that of the
trial of Jesus (Luke 22 : 66-71); for the author of Luke-
Acts, in transferring to the pages of his own gospel Mark's
narrative of this event, is careful to omit all reference to the
"false witnesses," the charge of "blasphemy," even the saying
about "destroying the temple and building it in three days."
These we find introduced in Acts, together with parallels to
Luke 22 : 69; 23 : 34a (/3 text), 46, in almost the very lan-
Theophilum as a substitute ; cf. John 7 : 53-8 : 2, and see my Introduction, p. 220.
note 10. Zeller, Acta, vol. ii. p. 176, considers these "coincidences [of Acts 7 : 60,
etc., with Hegesippus ap. Bus., H. E., II. 23 : 7] scarcely likely to be accidental."
1 This portion of the Clem. Recogn. is probably based upon the 'AvajSafljuo!
>laict&$ov (Lightfoot, Gal. 10, III. pp. 330, 359) mentioned by Epiphanius (XXX,
16) as in circulation among the Ebionites. According to Hilgenfeld these chap
ters (I. 27-72) of Clem. Recogn. were taken from the Kerygma. Petri (see Clem.
Recogn., III. 75). Both may be true, the Kerygma being inclusive of the Anabath-
moi. For the (Seven ) steps in the temple (avaPaff/iot), from the top of which James
addresses the people and down which he is thrown, see Acts 12: 10 (0 text) and
22 : 35. Whether this and the irrepiytov toO vaov (v. 1. hpov) refer to the same
spot in the temple we do not know. On the irrtpvyiov see Zahn, Forschungen,
Teil VI. p. 233.

216 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
guage of Mark. To regard this as accidental is inadmissible.
The omissions of Luke 22 : 66-71 may be regarded as due to
conflict of another source with Mark, or it may be supposed,
though less probably, that R of his own motion preferred to
attach these traits to the martyrdom of Stephen. Their
omission in the gospel must be connected with their appear
ance here.1 Their appearance in the post-canonical sources
in connection with the martyrdom of James favors the view
that R found them in a second narrative, perhaps even twice
employed, once in connection with the passion of Jesus,2 and
a second time in the martyrdom of Stephen or some other
apostolic "witness."
Again in 6 : 1-3 the Autor ad Theophilum 3 is distinguish
able from the source he employs by the fact that he treats (in
the /3 text designates) the seven appointees of the church as
mere BiaKovoi, whereas the story of their career itself reveals
the fact that in it they were really evangelists, this title being
expressly applied to Philip in 21 : 8, and by implication to
the rest of "the seven." Their Greek names, so constant an
occasion for comment by interpreters, and the particular local
association of Nicholas with Antioch, the first great Gentile
Christian church (NiKoXaov irpocrrfKvTov 'AvTioxea, cf. 11 :
19-21), with the clear connection between 8 : 4 and 11 : 19,
indicate that the source attributed the earliest evangelization
of the Greek communities in Africa (? cf. 8 : 27), southern
and northern Syria to these Hellenists and those who with
1 It is characteristic of the Lucan method not (intentionally) to repeat, but to
omit in one place what is reserved for another ; cf. Luke, 1 : 17 with Mark, 9 : 12
f. and parallels; Luke 4 : 16 ff. with Mark 6 : 16 and 11:11; Luke 5 : 3 with
Mark 4 : 1 and 11:11 Luke 7 : 36-50 with Mark 14 : 3-9 and 11:11; Acts 1 : 7
with Mark 13 : 32, etc.
2 This would account for the introduction of the prayer in Luke 23 : 34* by
later ." Western " scribes.
8 We thus designate the final compiler of the two Lucan " treatises " not as
necessarily accepting the view of Hilgenfeld, author of the designation, but to
avoid the commonly assumed identity of Luke, author of one of the sources of
Acts with the Redactor (R) who is probably the author of the dedication to
Theophilus. As to the relation of the Lucan R to his sources, see my Introduc
tion, pp. 218 ff.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 217
them " were scattered abroad by the persecution which arose
about Stephen." In fact the story of Stephen and Philip
shows a constant tendency to run away from the Autor ad
Theophilum, treading upon the heels of his subsequent
narrative, which more decorously allows the apostles to
supervise, if not originate, the extension of the gospel to
Samaritans and heathen (cf. 1 : 8). We have thus a con
stant prolepsis in his account of the process, followed each
time by qualifying redactional supplements: 1. Evangeliza
tion of the Samaritans, 8 : 5-8 (cf. the Petrine version in
8 : 14 ff.); 2. First Gentile convert, 8 : 26-39 (Petrine ver
sion, 10 : 1-11 : 18; Petro-Pauline in 13 : 1 ff.); 3. Found
ing of the earliest Gentile churches of southern Syria (the
Philistine cities and Caesarea), 8 : 40 (Petrine version,
9 : 32-11 : 2 [/3 text]); 4. Northern Syria (Antioch),
11 : 19-21 (Petrine version represented by the correction,
in v. 20, oi"E\\vvas to 'EXXVvio-Ta<;,1 and by vv. 22 ff. ;
cf. 8 : 14 ff.). R reduces these " evangelists " to the rank
of mere administrative officers of the apostolic church, He
brew and Hellenist,2 reserving to the apostles, in his division
of labor, the functions of "prayer and the ministry of
the word." In R's introductory description, accordingly,
the apostles are to turn over the "service of tables" to the
Seven. In the actual story the Seven, in spite of R's
limiting additions, " turn the tables " on the apostles. They
"give themselves to the ministry of the word," in particular
play the part of diroa-ToXoi 3 or missionaries ; while the apostles
remain in charge at Jerusalem (8:1, last clause), and the
1 The true reading : though the original (i. e., the source employed) so mani
festly requires "EWtjvas that this emendation of some later texts has even been
adopted by critical modern editions.
2 The £ text again shows consciousness that this was not the original sense
by representing that the seven were appointed " deacons " of the Helleuists, as
against certain previously appointed deacons of the Hebrews.
8 The reservation of the term to the Twelve belongs to the later ecclesiasticism.
Outside Luke it is applied but twice in the gospels to the disciples. Paul em
ploys it of others, the Didache of the travelling evangelists of the later time. The
earliest fathers seldom apply the title to the " beloved disciple," to whom they
attribute no missionary career.

218 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
administrative SiaKovla either falls upon them (8 : 14) or, as
in the case of the provision for "the poor saints " contributed
by Antioch, is committed to " elders " (11 : 30). Thus R
shows the interest of his time in his conception of the part
played by the Twelve in the spread of the gospel,1 and more
particularly his interest in the origin of the later ecclesiastical
institutions of "widows," the KaOv/J-epivrj SiaKovla2 and the
"deacons." But all this later officialism is imposed by
literary violence upon the source, which has other views,3
and in the actual story is perpetually escaping from and
contradicting these pragmatic restrictions.
The story of Acts 6-8 of the spread of the gospel beyond
the barriers of Judaism is thus seen to be one whose univer-
salism, in spite of R's restraining hand, far outstrips not
only the Petrine, but even the Petro-Pauline elements of
the work. Far from being content to resign to the apostolic
body, as R's theory requires (1 : 8), or to Peter the chief
apostle, as his Petrine source (Acts 9 : 32-11 : 18) requires,4
the credit of having been God's chosen instrument to pro
claim the gospel to the Gentiles (Acts 15 : 7), this element
will not even resign it to Paul. From the very outset, it
maintains, Hellenists like Stephen and Philip perceived the
1 Cf . Acts 1 : 21-26 for our author's conception of " apostleship " and its neces
sary qualifications.
2 See Justin Martyr, Apol., lxv.
* Note the characterization of the Seven as irKfyets irvei/iaros itol <ro<plas (v. 3 ;
cf. Luke 21 :14, 15), and of Stephen in particular as HvSpa 7r\^prj ir/o-reeos Kal
irveifiaros (v. 5) in contrast with v. 8 ; and their actual work (6 : 10 ; 7 : 2-53 ; 8 : 5 ff.,
12, 26-40; 11 : 19 f.) with the formal ordination (v. 2 f). The ordination scene
should be compared with 13 : 1-3, which reduces the evangelistic work of Paul in
a similar unhistorical way under ecclesiastical form and authority.
4 N. B. the j8 text of 1 1 : 2 aO fitv ofiv Uerpos Sia Ixavov xp&vov i]6i\ria-ev iropeu-
Brjvai eis 'lepoff6\vti.a • Kal Trpoff<p&vnffas robs d5e\<pobs, Kal iiriowT't]pi^as airobs tt6\ov
\6yov iroioii/ievos Sia toiv x^P"" [Nestle, St' aiir&v tx&P*' '1 StSda-Kwv abrois.
Here Peter is engaged normally in mission work, contrary to R's representation
(8: 1,25), but in harmony with the implications of the source (9:32,38; 11 : 12). The
style also is too thoroughly Lucan to be mere scribal corruption. We are there
fore probably nearer the source than in the * text. It is significant, then, that
the parallel with the Pauline source (cf. 15 : 1 ff. etc.) is so close as to require that
a careful editor of the two in combination should modify the $ text to the form
of a.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 219
inherent universalism of the gospel, and that not by a change
in the divine economy through the death of Christ, but as
the inner and spiritual sense of the Old Testament itself,
brought to light in the appearance of Christ as the giver of
the New Law, the second Moses.
Thus the story of the seven Hellenistic evangelists, despite
constant modifying and qualifying additions, appears to pro
ceed from a type of Christian universalism more radical in
some respects than Paulinism itself. The original narrative
appears indeed to have undergone drastic readjustment. In
view of this, and of the unmistakable fondness either of R,
or one of his sources, for scenes of Christian diroXoyia before
tribunals (Acts 4 : 5-22; 5 : 17-42; 18 : 12-17; 19 : 33-41;
22 : 1-22; 23 : 1-10; 24 : 1-23; 25 : 23-26 : 32) we have
reason to look upon the setting of Stephen's speech as more
or less editorially recast and adapted. In particular, 6 : 11-
7 : 1, reproducing the elements of Mark 14 : 55-60 (omitted
in the "former treatise"), and 7 : 55, 56, 58b-60; 8 : 1 (first
and last clauses), 3, reproducing Acts 22: 4, 5, 20; 26 : 10;
Luke 22 : 69 ; 23 : 34, 46, appear to be in disagreement with
the discourse both as to form and substance, and are adapted,
on the contrary, to adjust it to the general scheme. We may
regard it as probable, therefore, that in the original, instead
of the " great signs and wonders " of v. 8, for which we are
not prepared by the description of Stephen in v. 5 as dvBpa
irXr/pr) iricrTeox; Kal irvevfiaTOi dyiov, nor by his actual history,
but only by the altered form of the characterization in v. 8,
7r\i]pv'i-xapiTo<i Kal 8vvd/j,eo)'i,1 there will have stood the sub
stance of that which R has transferred in 9 : 29 to the
account of Paul — quite unhistorically, as we learn from
Galatians 1 : 21-24 2 — "Stephen spake and disputed with
1 See Spitta, op. cit., p. 96.
2 There is scarcely need to demonstrate the drastic treatment the author o'f.
Luke-Acts has elsewhere given to his material. Familiar illustrations are found in
the Gospel and in Acts 2:1-11, where the phenomenon of glossolaly referred to in
the incorporated speech 2 :14-40 (cf. 10 : 44-46 ; 1 1 : 15) is developed into a parallel
to midrashic accounts of the giving of the Law from Sinai at Pentecost in seventy
languages at once (Spitta, op. cit., and Haussrath, N. T. Times, II, ii. p. 117).

220 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
the Hellenists." This view of R's activity here has further
corroboration in the historical objections encountered by the
trial scene he has produced; for so disorderly a judicial mur
der on the part of the Sanhedrin at this time is unlikely in
itself and still more unlikely to have been overlooked by
Pilate. The result of our critical scrutiny of the present setting of
the discourse will be that its original setting was more like
the scene depicted in 6 : 8-10, where Stephen, nobly play
ing his part as an "evangelist," proves "the wisdom and the
Spirit by which he spake, disputing against " certain of the
synagogue called " Synagogue of the Libyans, Cyrenians and
Alexandrians."1 Its imperfect adaptation to its present set
ting will be due to alteration, not of the discourse, but of the
narrative,2 by R.3
Again the speech (2 : 14-40) presents the Ascension as an inference from Scripture
(Ps.110 : 1) and from the charismatic outpouring (so Eph. 4 : 7 ff.), whereas in the
narrative (1 : 9-1 1 ) it rests on the testimony of the senses. Similarly the Pauline
speeches reveal a knowledge of the true significance of the final visit to Jerusalem
(24:17). In the narrative the " ministration to the saints " (Rom. 15:25-31) is
transferred to an earlier (unhistorical) visit (11:39 f.).
1 For ILtlSepTlvaiv read with CEcumenius, Lyra, Beza, Clericus, Gothofredus
and Volckenaer, hi^varlvav (see Blass, Philol. of Gospels, p. 69 f.) ; there will
thus appear to be but two synagogues concerned, an African, comprising Jews
from northern Egypt, and an Asian comprising those of Paul's native province
and vicinity. But even this is one more than was contemplated by the writer of
the opening words dviarr\aav 8£ tikes rav £k t5)s trvyayayrjs . . . (aa gig. correct to
rcov Xeyofievav) . I judge Kai twv airo KiAtKias Kal 'A eios to be an addition from the
hand which introduces Saul in 7 : 58 and 8 : 1 (D and A have KiAi/cias only). This
one synagogue of the Egyptian Hellenists with which the original story was
apparently concerned will doubtless be none other than that known to us from
Talmudic sources as existing in Jerusalem, viz., " the Synagogue of the Alexan
drians" [Megitt., f. 73, 4).
2 It need hardly be pointed out that alteration of the discourse is not only less
likely a priori, than of the narrative, but that this is the actual practice of all the
synoptic writers, whose closest coincidence is always in the discourse, and widest
variation in the narrative context. It is of importance, however, to emphasize
the fact in this instance, because of the recent attempt of Harnack (Das Magni
ficat, 1900) to prove the Autor ad Theophilum himself the composer of the Lucan
psalmody. 8 The question whether, as Spitta holds, R had a second source, parallel to
that containing the speech, as his authority for the new setting, or — as main
tained by Weiss, Hilgenf eld, and others — incorporated the embellishments from

STEPHENS SPEECH 221
Thus, while none of the proposed source analyses of Acts
6-8 may satisfy, enough is made probable to forbid our taking
the indictment of the court scene, 6 : 11-14 as our starting-
point for the interpretation of the speech, according to the
usual method. We shall be compelled, on the contrary,
to remove the speech from its present forensic setting and
determine its inherent structure and logical sequence. To
any one at all familiar with the loci classici of early Christian
apologetics this task should not be difficult. For as soon as
we review the speech independently it declares itself as deal
ing with the three institutions the right to which is disputed
between Jews and Christians : (1) The Abrahamic Inher
itance, the K\7]povo/j,ia, of which circumcision was the seal
(v. 8). (2) The Mosaic Revelation, the \6yia gwvTa (v.
38). (3) The Davidic Presence of God in Zion, the
Shekinah or Inhabitatio Dei, the o-Krjvw/jia (more exactly
TrapaaKT]va)cri<;) deov (v. 46).
These, the centres of interest of sacred history, are also
the foci of dispute for this age of the universalizing of reli
gion, because they embody the essence of Jewish particular
ism. Philo himself had rationalized the first in the treatise
whose very title is Quis heres rerum divinarum? A similar
title might well be applied to Galatians 3 to 5 ; for Paul also is
here debating the question, Who are the true "seed of Abra
ham," the heirs of God? Both Philo and Paul, each in his
own way, strive to put upon Scripture a broader sense than
the literal interpretation of Jewish claims to be the "heirs of
the world."
Equally fundamental to the age, and more diversely settled
is the question of the Law, Who has the true revelation of
the trial scene of Jesus on his own authority, may be regarded for our present
purpose as subordinate. The fact that the transpositions of Marcan material in
Luke seem generally to have a basis in the tradition attested by Mattliew, the
closer resemblance of Acts 6 : 14 to Matt. 26 : 61 than to Mark, the extra-canonical
parallels, and the remaining presence of apparently unintended duplicates (Acts
7 : 1, 55 f., 59 f. = Luke 22 : 66-69 ; 23 : 34, 46) are in favor of a second source.
According to Spitta, the connection of this source was simply 6 : 126-7 : 1, 55 f. . . .
58MO, a close parallel to Matt. 26 : 59-66.

222 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
God's will? Has God vouchsafed \6yia £a>vTa, a vop,o<s
Swd/jievof ^cooiroi-fjaat (Gal. 3 : 21), a i/6>os Trj<s %&y<} (2 Esdr.
14 : 30) ? And if so, where is it to be found ? The Jews
"search the Scriptures because they think that in them they
have eternal life" (John 5 : 39). Are they right? Or are
the Christians, who declare that the value of the Scriptures
is only in their testimony to Christ the living Word, of
whom Moses wrote, but to whom his professed followers
"will not come that they might have life?" Paul admits
(Rom. 3 : 2; 9 : 4) that primarily all three, K\r)povofj,ia, Xoyia,
and o-Krjvcofia, are prerogatives of Israel. In Rom. 3 : 2, the
second, " That they were entrusted with the oracles of God "
(to, Xoyia tov 0eov) is even declared to be "first of all."
The third prerogative claimed by Israel, the Tabernacling
(O520 of God with man is one whose literary history dates from
the period of the Book of Jashar itself (1 Kings 8 : 53,
LXX) through that of the Law (Deut. 33 : 12; Exod. 29 :
45 f.), the prophets (Is. 8 : 18, 57 : 15; Zech. 2 : 10 f., 8 :
3, 8), and psalmists (Ps. 68 : 16-18; 74 : 2; 135 : 21), down
even to that of the Talmud in its favorite term the Shekinah.
The question of this "dwelling (literally "tabernacling")
of God " with his people is always whether it is local, insep
arable from Zion, or spiritual (Is. 57 : 15). 1
Our author aims to present the Christian interpretation of
these Scriptural prerogatives of the " people of God " in their
historical order. He reviews accordingly the sacred history
in its three -great periods, (1) the Abrahamic, or patriarchal,
with the covenant of circumcision, vv. 2-16; (2) the Mosaic,
with the covenant of the Law, vv. 17-43 ; (3) the Davidic,
with the covenant of the Shekinah (Ps. 89 : 7-37), vv. 44-50.
The speaker's object is twofold: (a) to prove that the in
stitutions of the former dispensation were not ultimate but
typical, foreshadowing those of the Messianic age ; and (b) to
1 The purely spiritual conception corresponding to Is. 57 : 15 appears in John
4: 20-24 ; 14 : 23. Ini : 12 and 2 : 21 Jesus' flesh is the o-K-fiva/ia — Shekina. The
two views are not identical ; the former agrees best with the saying of Jesus, the
latter finds support in Jewish usage (2 Cor. 5:1; 2 Pt. 1 : 13, 14).

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 223
prove that its theocratic leaders and prophets were analo
gously types of the Messiah himself in their efforts for
redemption as well as in the rejection they suffered at the
hands of the people.1 Hence (4) the application, vv. 51-53,
summing up the whole speech in the climactic denunciation :
"Ye uncircumcised in heart and ears (i. e., outwardly people
of the covenant, v. 8, but actually deaf and disobedient to its
import), ye do always resist the Holy Ghost." The author
thus brings to bear with cumulative force his gathered evi
dences of Israel's blindness; for he who places this splendid
piece of rhetoric in the mouth of the proto-martyr looks forth
himself upon a wider audience than Stephen's. It is the
same which Justin, after his Apology to the heathen, con
fronts in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, the audience of
Aristides and the apologists generally, the whole unbeliev
ing world, which, if the folly of its heathenism be exposed,
retorts: If, then, your Christ be the Messiah foretold to
Israel, why is he repudiated by his own people? Why is
their interpretation of their Scriptures, to which you also
appeal, so different? The apologist's answer is, These Scrip
tures themselves bear witness of their spiritual intent. More
over, they testify that stiff-necked Israel has always lacked
the needful spiritual insight, has always grasped the ex
ternal, unessential sense, turning blind eyes, a deaf ear, an
unwilling heart to the true and higher sense. Israel's re
jection of the Messiah of whom Moses and the prophets did
write, as their fathers rejected and stoned the prophets, is
but one proof the more of his Messiahship.2 Such in outline
is the argument of the speech. We must look about us for
parallels in the contemporary literature, considering first the
1 For demonstration in some detail of this twofold purpose, see the discussion
of the argument of the speech below.
a Observe the predominance of this note in the Oxyrhynchus logia : III. [IV.],
VI. [V.], and VIII. [VII.]. The fragment itself shows closest affinity with the
Lucan gospel ; its mystic, enigmatic form of expression well illustrates the char
acteristic Alexandrian-Christian fondness for contrasting the inner and outer

224 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
application, vv. 51-53, the sense of which, fortunately, ad
mits no dispute.
The first to deal in an apologetic sense with the phenome
non of the obduracy of Israel is the apostle Paul in Romans
9 to 11. It belongs therefore to the very beginnings of
Christian literature, and is an item of no small importance
in the dating of our gospels, all of which have more or less
to say on this matter as a fulfilment of Isaiah 6 : 9 f.1 (cf.
Mark 4 : 11 f . and parallels; John 12 : 37-43), — more as
time advances.
But there are differences. All our New Testament writers
agree that Jesus has brought a new interpretation of Scrip
ture. But, as Harnack has shown, there is one mode of
dealing with the Scriptures and the conflicting interpreta
tion thereof by Jews and Christians, especially affected by
Alexandrian writers — continuous, in fact, with pre-Christian
Alexandrianism — and another which derives from Paul,
though even Paul is not free from occasional Alexandrianisms
(1 Cor. 10 :11; Col. 2 : 17).
Paul maintained that the old covenant had a real and
direct application. It was " spiritual " and divine for its own
time, though now superseded. Alexandrianism 2 followed
the lead of Philo in maintaining that the literal sense had
always been imperfect, if not evil. As time advances and
the hostility between Jews and Christians becomes more
bitter, the Alexandrian view tends more and more to super
sede the Pauline. Even the title " Jew " is a lie when
claimed by the Hebrew (Rev. 3 : 9), or a term of opprobrium
(Gospel of John, passim), and their interpretation of their
1 First employed by Paul, Rom. 11:8, and thence interpolated in Mark 4 : 12
after the logion /uvar-fiptov tp.bv (fiol Kal tois viols too oIkov /tov. See Resch,
Agrapha, § 9, logion 17, p. 103.
2 Including certain Palestinian sects of Essenic type, whose relation to Egyp
tian thought is not clear. The Ebionite-Christian Clementine Homilies and Recog
nitions are derived from these sectaries and are explicit in their teaching that the
illuminati of even ancient Israel had constantly perceived the worthlessness of
the external sense of Scripture and lived according to the inner and spiritual,
Recogn., i. 37.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 225
Scriptures is wilfully perverse and accompanied with text
ual mutilation.1 In the cruder representation of Pseudo-
Barnabas the same use is made of the prophetic, spiritualized
view of circumcision as in Acts 7 : 51. But here the typo
logical interpretation of the Mosaic ordinances is prefaced by
the explanation that Israel's adoption of the external sense
was due to the teaching of an evil angel, whereas the Chris
tian's ears are circumcised "that hearing the word we might
believe." "He saith unto them: ' Thus saith the Lord your
God (so I find the commandment): sow not upon thorns,2
be ye circumcised to your Lord.' And what meaneth he?
'Be ye circumcised in the hardness of your heart; and then ye
will not stiffen your neck. ' Take this again : ' Behold, saith
the Lord, all the Gentiles are uncircumcised in their fore
skin, but this people is uncircumcised in their hearts.'"
Then follows the allegorical interpretation of the ordinances
of clean and unclean meats, winding up : " Ye see how wise
a law-giver Moses was. But whence should they (the Jews)
perceive or understand these things? Howbeit we (Chris
tians) having justly perceived the commandments, tell them
as the Lord willed. To this end he circumcised our ears and
hearts, that we might understand these things." 3 The whole
epistle consists, in fact, of an exposition of the Old Tes
tament (cc. i-xvii.), which the writer insists was meant to be
understood allegorically, followed by "another lesson and
teaching " (cc. xviii.-xxi.), consisting simply of the Two
Ways, incorporated bodily, as "the new law of our Lord
Jesus Christ, which is free from the yoke of constraint," and
which of course, as being " unveiled, " requires no allegorical
interpretation. To the Alexandrian Christian, accordingly, the distinction

1 So Justin, Dial, with Trypho, lxx. 11 ff., and the later writers.
2 The interpolator of Mark 4 : 1 1 f. (see Enc. Bibl. s. v. Gospels, col. 1 866) mani
festing the same anti-Judaic spirit and employing the same prophecy (Is. 6 : 9 f .)
as Acts 28:26 f. ; John 12:37-41, connects the parable of the Sower with the
same " commandment " as Barnabas, i. e., Jer. 4 : 3.
8 Barn. ix. 4 ff. and x. 11 ff., employing Deut. 10 : 16 ; Jer. 4 : 3, 4 and 9 : 26.
15

226 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
between the new and the old is not, as to the follower of
Paul, temporal, the superseding of law by grace, obedience
by filial trust; but qualitative, the inner for the outer.
Faith tends to become insight, gnosis, vision of the spiritual
realities through which even the Old Testament worthies
were able to perceive the nullity of outward things, even the
outward sense of the law, and apprehend the real and spirit
ual significance (Heb. 11 : 1 to 12 : 2).
As the universalism of the narrative in Acts 6 to 8 out
does Paul, so the application of Stephen's speech is more
anti-Judaic than Paul, tending toward the Alexandrianism
of Ps.-Barnabas and the apologists. Paul finds no fault with
the pre-Christian Jew for not taking the law spiritually.
But our author takes him to task. Israel should have per
ceived the inner sense of the institutions which the speaker
has reviewed in their true significance. But they were
"stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, always
resisting the Holy Ghost. As your fathers did, so do ye.
Which of the prophets did not your fathers persecute? and
they killed them which shewed before of the coming of the
Righteous One ; of whom ye have now become betrayers and
murderers, ye who received the law to stand as ordinances
of angels (et? 8iaTayd<; dyyeXojv) and kept it not " (Acts 7 :
51-53). But the question raised concerning the forensic setting of
the speech may be inverted. It may be asked, Might not
the Autor ad Theophilum be responsible for the other ele
ment, having embellished a simple narrative of forensic pro
cedure with features derived from his own conception, in
particular an diroXoyia of his own composition?1
1 So Baur, Zeller, and Overbeck. But see especially the important contribu
tion of Harnack above referred to (Das Magnificat, 1900), in which the reason
ing is really conclusive as to the composition of the poems of Luke 1-2 by a hand
traceable throughout the Lucan narrative. The question we raise against Har
nack is only this : Is it the last hand, the hand of the Autor ad Theophilum ; or
the hand of some writer whose work is largely incorporated by R? The relation
of the narrative to the discourse material, as above set forth (p. 219), suggests the
latter answer.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 227
In one respect the facts are favorable to such a view. The
speech in its general framework aims to meet the question,
What is the relation of Christianity to Judaism ? It meets
it with the bold answer, Christianity is the true heir to all
the Scriptural prerogatives of the people of God. It thus
coincides in a general way with the answer of the Autor ad
Theophilum to the familiar objection, "He came unto his
own, and his own received him not," in a demonstration
from Scripture that the rejection was foretold, and that
" thus it behooved the Christ to suffer and to enter into his
glory " (cf. Luke 24 : 19-21, 25-27, 44-47). In fact, had it
failed to coincide to this extent with the purposes of R, it
is manifest that it would never have been incorporated.
It is also true that the Lucan appeals to the career of the
trah deov of Deutero-Isaiah, are more characteristic of cer
tain parts of the work. Distinctive features are more thickly
sown in special chapters which there is independent reason
for designating a "Special Source." Nevertheless, the out
line and grouping of elements in the whole work remain, on
which to base our judgment of R's special animus in the
composition. From these it is apparent that his purpose
was substantially the same as that attributed to the Special
Source. How else account for his departure from the estab
lished tradition (Mark 1 : 14 ff.) of how Jesus began his
career in Capernaum, to open it with the story of his
rejection in Nazareth (Luke 4 : 16 ff.), whose nucleus is the
well-known logion, "A prophet is of no repute in his own
country," (iraTpk') and which ends with the significant cita
tion of Elijah's mission to the Gentile widow of Zarephath,
though "there were many widows in Israel," and Elisha's
healing of the Syrian Naaman, though "there were many
lepers in Israel"? How shall we account for the fact that
he ends his irpS)TO<s Xoyos with a reference by the risen Christ
to his cruel rejection and death as that which, according to
Law and Prophets and Psalms, " it behooved the Christ to
suffer and to enter into his glory," coupled with a direction
to preach him to the Gentiles; and that he concludes his

228 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
SevTepos Xoyo? with the appeal of Paul in Rome to the classic
passage from Isaiah 6 : 9 f . and the declaration " Be it
known therefore unto you that this salvation of God is sent
unto the Gentiles: they will also hear"?
Surely none familiar with J. Weiss' admirable Absicht und
Character der Apostelgeschichte can any longer be blind to the
significance of our author's stereotyped method of relating
the preaching of the gospel to the Gentiles. Once for all,
that method is this : — first the offer of it to the Jews, with
the warning "Beware lest that come upon you which is
spoken in the prophets, ' Behold, ye despisers, and wonder
and perish ; For I work a work in your days, a work which
ye shall in no wise believe, if one declare it unto you ; ' then,
when ' the Jews see the multitudes, and, filled with jealousy,
contradict the things spoken and blaspheme, ' the apostles are
driven to address the Gentiles, declaring to the Jews : ' It
was necessary that the word of God should first be spoken to
you. Seeing ye thrust it from you and judge yourselves
unworthy of eternal life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles, For so
hath the Lord commanded us, saying,
I have set thee for a light of the Gentiles
That thou shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the
earth.'" With a dominant purpose, and an attitude toward unbe
lieving Jewry, thus indicated, the author of Luke-Acts is
certainly so nearly in accord with primitive Christian apolo
getics in general, and with that of Stephen's speech in partic
ular, that we need not wonder at his adoption of it.
Per contra, we cannot agree with those who ascribe the
composition of the speech, along with the rest of the dis
courses of Acts, to the author himself. Apart from the
relation of the discourse to its narrative setting, the charac
teristics of both thought and language are distinguishable
from those of the Autor ad Theophilum, and show a closer
relation than Luke-Acts as a whole to the distinctively
Alexandrian tradition, phraseology, and style. Besides this,
the speech advances doctrinally as far beyond the standpoint

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 229
of Paul, as the Lucan narrative taken as a whole lags behind
the actual course of Pauline missions, so that in both doc
trine and historical application we have here a more radi
cal point of view than that of our ecclesiastically minded
compiler.

230 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES

II
STYLE AND VOCABULARY
But let us .first examine the formal affinities of the speech.
(1) The midrashic character of the tradition followed is no
torious. A review of its features will show not only peculiari
ties which are only occasional in Luke- Acts (e. g., Acts 2 :
1 ff.), but can be traced more particularly in Alexandrian-
Ebionite sources.
In v. 2 . the tradition is followed which inferred from
Genesis 15 : 7 that a theophany had already been vouch
safed to Abraham in Ur, "before he dwelt in Haran," as in
Philo, De Air., 14 : 15 (II. p. 11, 16, ed. of Mangey), and
Josephus (Ant., I. 7, 1; cf. Neh. 9 : 7). In v. 4 Abraham
is made to leave Haran after the death of Terah, against
Genesis 11 : 26, 32; 12 : 4. This representation also recurs
in Philo (De Migr. Abr., p. 415). In v. lwthe number of
Jacob's family is 75 (70 in Gen. 46 : 27; Deut. 10 : 22;
Exod. 1:5; Hebrew 70, LXX, 75). Philo notes the differ
ence. The Clementines have 72 (Becog., I. 34), i. e., 6 x 12,
splitting the difference. In v. 16 there is a confusion of
Hebron and Shechem, Genesis 23 : 3-20 ; 50 : 13 and Joshua
24 : 32, with the result that Abraham's only possession in
Canaan is a tomb, even this, as the author is careful to note,
not given by God, but "bought for a price in silver," and
not at revered Hebron, but despised Shechem.1 The curious
change in the tradition which thus makes all the patriarchs
share a common tomb, instead of Joseph only being buried
1 Cf . the " humanitarianism of Luke " as evinced in his special plea for Sa
maritans, Luke 9 : 51-56 ; 10 : 30-37 ; 17 : 11-19 ; Acts 8 : 4-25, etc.

STEPHENS SPEECH 231
in Shechem (Josh. 24 : 32) and Jacob in Hebron (Gen. 50 :
13), is found in Josephus, Ant., II. 8 : 2, lut with the signifi
cant difference that in Josephus the Cave of Machpelah in
Hebron is the common site. The description of Moses, vv.
20, 22, 24 embellishes the Old Testament account with
midrashic traits reminding us of Philo (Vita Mos., I. 3, 5;
cf. Jos., Ant., II. 9 : 6, 7, 10), while the motive imputed in
v. 25 is found in Philo ( Vita Mos., I. 8, 9) but not in Scrip
ture. The same is true in some degree of the distinction of
three periods of forty years in Moses' life (vv. 22; 30), 1 and
the angelic character of the theophany at Horeb (v. 30) and
Sinai (v. 38, 53).2 The " Red " Sea as the scene of Pharaoh's
overthrow is another innovation. As the " Red " Sea is no
where mentioned in Scripture, but in Wisdom 10 : 18; 19 :
7; 1 Maccabees 4 : 2, and Hebrews 11 : 29, Hilgenf eld's
comparison of v. 36 to Assumpt. Mos., III. 10, " [Moses] who
suffered many things in Egypt and in the Red Sea and in the
wilderness forty years " is highly significant.3
Thus the variations of tradition, while not unexampled in
Palestinian literature, have decided affinities with Alexan
dria, and an Ebionite animus.
(2) Such light as the vocabulary and diction afford is
certainly not to be neglected. Kranichfeld, in an article
entitled Gedankengang der Bede des Stephanus, in St. u.
Krit., 1900, IV., pp. 541-562, shows successfully enough
how far short expositors have come in the attempt to trace
the real course of thought, and perhaps advances somewhat
beyond his predecessors in this direction. At least we must
admit his principle that departures from the usual form of
1 Found also in Beresch. Rabba, f. 115: 3; Schemoth Rabba, f. 118:3.
2 The Clementines have for the former instead of the angel " the true
Prophet" i. e., Christ. For the Sinai theophany " an angel." They also agree
in applying the 400 years of Gen. 15 : 13 to the oppression in Egypt, Recog., I. 34,
35. 8 See Charles, Assumption of Moses, 1897, p. lxiii, f. : " The likeness is too close
to be accidental. We must eitherassume that Acts 7 : 36 is derived from our text
(Ass. Mos.), or that III, 11 6 of our text is interpolated. The evidence of Apoc.
Bar. lxxxiv. 3 is against the latter supposition : likewise also the word " suffered."

232 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
the tradition are not to be assumed to be accidental. His
inferences from the peculiarities of diction and style are quite
superficial and inadequate.1 But even were they trustworthy,
they certainly could not prove more than that the Autor ad
Theophilum has here drawn from a written source. That
this source was the actual address of the protomartyr, rather
than one of the Siriyrjo-eK employed by R, is far from being
even indicated. Of the dira^. Xeyopeva adduced by Kranich-
feld (jieToiKicrev, v. 4, (jieToncifo, v. 43, xopTdcrfjiaTa, v. 11,
o-iTia, V. 12, KaTacro<f>icrdfj,evo<;, v. 19, dveiXeTo, . v. 21, and
ifwa-^piroina-av, V. 41), all save fieTcoKicrev, V. 4 and x°PTao—
fiaTa, v. 11, are irrelevant, because belonging to quotations
from the LXX. It is surprising that so recent a critic should
pass over in silence many real airaj; Xeyo/ieva of much more
telling significance. We set aside all words and phrases
derived from LXX, according to Nestle's text (1898), which
constitute nearly one half of the fifty-two verses under con
sideration. Even so there remain the following to be added
to Kranichfeld's two: ap,vvecrdai, v. 24, uupOn (of ordinary
sight), v. 26, o-vvaXXdcro-eiv (in Paul KaTaXX.), v. 26, icpvyd-
Sevcrev, V. 29 (/3 text), avv %eipl dyyeXov, v. 35, XvrpwTijs, V.
35, SiaSixeo-Oai, v. 45. If words derived from LXX were
admitted on condition that no intention of quotation were
apparent, still others might be enumerated.
As an argument for direct derivation of the speech from
Stephen rather than from R, these data are manifestly
worthless. Nor does it gain in strength even if we grant R
(Luke ?) to have been a Gentile, while Stephen was a Hel
lenist, from the occurrence of Hebraisms,2 of which there is
no lack. We instance only eKaKtocrev tov iroielv, v. 19, Sta
Xeipos, v. 25, dirb Trpocrdtirov, v. 45, eSpev X<*PIV ^vdoiriov, v.
46, etc. Vogel (Zur Charakteristik des Lukas, p. 33) notes
the exceptional absence from cc. 4, 6, 7, 10, and 24 of Acts
1 For more thorough treatment of the matter of style, phraseology, and lan
guage, see Zeller, Acts, vol. II, p. 175. For evidence of composition by the Autor
ad Theophilum (better the author of Luke's Special Source), Zeller compares 6 : 8
with 4 : 33 and 5:12; 6:7 with 12 : 24 ; 7 : 48 with 17 : 24 &c.
2 More properly Semitisms. See Dalman, Worte Jesu, p. 29.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 233
of the classic fiiv, rare in the New Testament, but used forty-
four times in Acts. The same appears to be true in c. 7 (7 :
26 is doubtful) of re, employed elsewhere in Acts over one
hundred times. But Hebraisms are notoriously most copious
in the so-called Special Source of Luke, particularly Luke
1 : 5-2 : 52.1 Per contra, dvSpe? dSeXcW, v. 2, is a Lucan
Graecism (Acts 2 : 29; 13 : 15; 15 : 7, 13; 22 : 1; 23 : 1,
6; 28 : 17). Acts 7.._ accordingly, is not more strongly
Semitic in style than some other parts of Luke- Acts, nor is
R's hand untraceable; yet as a whole its vocabulary sets it
apart from the adjoining chapters.
Much more significant, to the present writer's mind are
certain peculiar and rare expressions, not absolutely con
fined to Acts 7, but occurring elsewhere, principally in
Luke's peculium. Paraphrases of the names of God and
Christ are especially noteworthy.2 We observe that 6" 'Ti/fto-To?
of God, absolutely, occurs, aside from the speech (v. 48) only
in Luke 1 : 32, 35, 76 and 6 : 35. 3 Even 6 0eo? o tri/wro?
does not occur outside of Mark 5 : 7 and parallels, except in
Acts 16 : 17 and Hebrews 7 : 1.* Such a title as " Redeemer "
we surely might expect to find applied to Christ in the New
Testament. Yet its only occurrence is in v. 35, where, how
ever, its application to Moses is obviously intended to make
him appear more plainly as the type of Christ.6 Is it not
1 On the " Hebraisms " of Luke 1, 2, see Dalman, op. cit., p. 31 f.
2 'O 8eoj rrjs 8<if jjj, v. 2, is formally excluded by our rule limiting consideration
to expressions of the author's own. In reality he is not consciously quoting Ps.
29 : 3, and the remarkable expression is clearly his own free choice from an inde
finite number of possible titles. It is therefore appropriate to call attention to
Hebr. 9 : 5 as the nearest approach to a N. T. parallel.
8 The occurrence of & "trf/io-Tos in 6 : 35 should be noted as one example of what
may be instanced against the assertion of Soltau, Eine Lilclce, &c, 1899, p. 41 :
" Eine Verwandtschaft der Logiaabschnitte mit Acta besteht nicht." What Soltau
has called " ein Missgriff Feine's " is rather an evidence of keen perception.
* See Dalman, Worte Jesu, p. 162, and Swete, Comm., on Mark 5 : 7.
6 For the evidence of this intention see below. We believe that the addition
Kal aotplat, in v. 10 to the LXX characterization of Joseph HSuxtv avru xap'" Kal
aotplav ivavriov Qapati and o-o0io 'Aly. in v. 22 has a similar motive. It is worth
noting in this connection that it is the Special Source of Luke which gives such
prominence to Jesus' endowment with the " wisdom of God " (cf . the endowment
of the Seven, Acts 6:3; Tr\iipcis irveipaTos Kal ao<ptas).

234 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
significant, however, that Xvrpwo-t? occurs only in Luke 1 :
68; 2 : 38 and Hebrews 9 : 12, while even XvTpovo-0ai, aside
from Luke 24 : 21 (of which more presently) and Xvrpow
occur only once each (Tit. 2 : 14 and 1 Peter 1 : 18) ? But
perhaps we might expect different, results with the title
"Saviour," and the word "salvation" (v. 25). Is it not
rather surprising that neither %u>Tr)p nor crcoTnpia occurs in
the non-Lucan historical books of the New Testament, save
once each in John 4 : 22, 42 ?x But aooTijp appears in
Luke 1 : 47 ; 2 : 11 ; Acts 5 : 31 (dpxyyov Kal o-coT-rjpa, cf .
Hebr. 2 : 10, dpxvyov rr)<; crcornpias); 13 : 23; and crcornpia
in Luke 1 : 69, 71, 77; 19 : 9; Acts 4 : 12; 13 : 26, 47;
16 : 17; 27 : 34, and the synonymous atoTijpiov in Luke
2 : 30; 3 : 6; Acts 28 : 28; but nowhere else save Eph.
6 : 17, and "there in a LXX quotation. Can it be accidental
that the conception of Jesus as Redeemer and Saviour is
, thus limited ?
In y. 52 occurs a rare messianic title known to us as such
from Enoch, xxxviii. 2, o AUaias. The only other instances in
the New Testament are Acts 3 : 14 and 22 : 14, both of
them passages which are otherwise connected with our own.
But pass from epithets of God and Christ to distinctive
characterizations and other rare and peculiar expressions.
Of the former we have an example in our author's habitual
endowment of his theocratic heroes with cro<p£a, of which
more hereafter (p. 245). Of the latter in the phrase avepn
iirl ttjv KapSiav, v. 23, which occurs in Luke 24 : 38, else
where only in the fragment from the Apocalypse of Elias, 1
Cor. 2 : 9. But the phrase rfv Be Bvvarcx; iv Xoyois koI epyoi<;,
v. 22, paralleled only in Luke 24 : 19 (cf., however, Acts 18:
24), is much more than a mere facon de parler. It is, to
begin with, an addition to the Scriptural representation of
1 As an appellative o-ariip appears only in the latest of the N. T. writings,
seeming to increase in frequency with the lateness of date. In the Pastoral
Epistles it appears five times applied to God (1 Tim. and Titus), four times to
Christ (2 Tim. and Titus), in Jude once (of God). The expression aa^p rod
KoV/tou occurs but twice, John 4 : 22 and I John 4 : 14. In 2 Peter 6 aar^p i,p.5,y
(five times) is the habitual appellative of Jesus Christ.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 235
Moses, one which 'goes to the point of actual contradiction
of Exodus 4 : 10. Moses is to be depicted as the antetype
of Christ, and to this end must appear as both a teacher and
a worker of miracles (cf. v. 36), more especially, however,
as a "redeemer" (XvrpcoT-rjv , v. 35). The reverse process
appears in Luke 24 : 13-32, where Jesus is to be proved the
"prophet" foretold "in Moses and all the prophets" as
"like unto Moses" (Deut. 18 : 15). Accordingly Jesus is
unconsciously described as such by the two disciples. He
was "a prophet BvvaTO'i iv epyco Kal Xoyw, and they had hoped
that "this was he who should redeem (XvTpovaOai) Israel."
When we reflect on the rarity of the terms XvrpcoT^, Xvrpovv,
XvTpovo-6ai, and that no New Testament writer before Luke
makes any use of the doctrine of Christ as the alter Moses,1
the occurrence of this descriptive phrase only in Luke 24 :
19 and Acts 7 : 22, shows its true significance.
After this we need only mention the remaining peculiari
ties. The only other occurrence of iroieiv iKSiKvcriv, v. 24, is
in Luke 18 : 7, 8; of i%ci,6eiv, v. 45, in Acts 27 : 39; of iraT-
piapxv'ii Acts 2 : 29; Hebrews 7 : 4. Vogel (Zur Charak-
teristik des Lukas nach Sprache und Stil, p. 63) finds avyyiveia
only in Luke 1 : 61; Acts 7 : 3, 14, though employed in
LXX (Exod., Wisd., 2 Mace); /3pi<po<; occurs in Luke 1 :
41, 44; 2 : 12, 16; 18 : 5; Acts 7 : 19; elsewhere only in 2
Timothy 3 : 15 ; 1 Peter 2:2; igairoo-TeXXeiv in Luke 1:5;
20 : 10, 11; Acts 7 : 12; 9 : 30; 11 : 22; 17 : 14; 22 : 21;
elsewhere only in Galatians 4 : 4, 6 ; -n-poBorv^ in Luke 6 :
16; Acts 7 : 52; elsewhere only 2 Timothy 3 : 4; iv /3//3X.&J,
with gen., ontyLuke 3 : 4; 20 : 42; Acts 1 : 20; 7 : 42, and
Phil. 4 : 3. Finally Isaiah 66 : 12 is quoted in Barn. xvi.
with the same variation from LXX as in Acts 7 : 49 (Kal
7roto? for f) Tii), which leads Hilgenfeld (loc. cit., p. 408) to
infer dependence by Barnabas, not, indeed, on Acts 7 : 49,
but on the source employed for the speech.
1 It is the stereotyped conception in the Clementine writings, where the stand
ing designation of Christ is " the true Prophet " with explicit reference to Deut. 1 9 :
15, 18 f.

236 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
What inferences may we legitimately draw from this re
view of the style and vocabulary ? Certainly not derivation
direct from Stephen. The stylistic connection with other
parts of Luke-Acts is too unmistakable. But neither can
we infer composition by the Autor ad Theophilum. If we
conceive him as the Gentile Luke, the Hebraistic thought
and phraseology exclude the supposition. If we conceive
him as some unknown Christian of Jewish birth, still the
affinities are rather with special parts of the work, where a
characteristic source appears to be employed, in particular at
the beginning and end of the gospel a than with the work as
a whole, and, as we have seen, the doctrinal standpoint of
the speech, as well as of what survives of the narrative origi
nally belonging to it concerning the work of the "Seven
Evangelists," is more radical than that of R.
Let us not exaggerate the importance of evidence from
language and style ; but, such as it is, it confirms our previ
ous results. The speech of Stephen is linguistically of a
piece with the first and last chapters of Luke, and various
other passages peculiar to Luke and Acts. It is the type of
Hellenistic Greek framed on the model of the LXX.2 Fur
ther, so far as we can trace affinity with other Christian
writings, the resemblance is most marked to those of Alex
andrian and Ebionite type and origin, Ps.-Barnabas, the
Epistle to the Hebrews, and the Clementines.
1 Soltau (op. cit., p. 38), though rejecting Feine's theory of a " precanonical
Luke " combining a version of the Logia with a special type of the narrative, ad
mits a special relation between chapters 1 f. and 24. " Andrerseits kann nicht
verschwiegen werden dass die Grundanschauung von Lc. 24 : 19 f. derjenigen von
Lc. 1-2 entspricht. Auch die Erzahlungsweise ist derjenigen der Jugendgeschichte
verwandt." 0 For minuter characterization of this type of Greek and its " Hebraisms "
which are in reality neither Aramaisms nor Hebraisms, but Septuagintisms, see
Dalman, Worte Jesu, pp. 13-34.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 237

III
DOCTRINAL CONCEPTIONS OF THE SPEECH AND THEIR
LITERARY AFFINITIES
If now we were to pass to a review of cognate ideas — far
more significant than mere vocabulary — we should find not
only the conception, already noted for its distinctive phrase
ology, of Christ as the "prophet like unto Moses," "mighty
in deed and word," "which should redeem Israel," connect
ing the speech with the end of the third gospel and the
Clementines, but other ideas, equally fundamental and equally
distinctive, corroborating the indications of language which
point to a connection with the beginning of this gospel. But
space does not permit detailed consideration of each concep
tion of the speech. A single illustration must suffice,
before we proceed to review its treatment of the three pre
rogatives of the people of God which we have seen to be
principally in debate.
Kranichfeld rightly points out that the interfusion of Gen
esis 15 : 13 f. and Exodus 3 : 12 (Acts 7 : 6 f.) is a depart
ure from tradition which cannot be accidental. It is to be
understood by reference to v. 42. In the author's mind the
conception of the promise of God to the fathers as an assurance
of relations with himself in the true worship,1 has so com
pletely displaced that of a special sacred territory to be owned
by them, that he substitutes Exodus 3 : 12 for the promise
of Genesis 15 : 13 f., neglecting the essence of the transac
tion in verses 7 f., 18, so as practically to substitute XaTpeia
for KXwpovo/iia. Thus "the time of the fulfilment of the
1 That prerogative of Israel which Paul significantly speaks of as " the wor
ship " (Sv t\ \arptia, Rom. 9 : 5).

238 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
promise " becomes that of the deliverance from Egypt and
institution of the true worship at Sinai, to the complete
eclipse of the giving of the land; correspondingly the
stiff -neckedness and perversity of Israel bears fruit, not so
much in te*mporary exclusion from Canaan as in the substitu
tion of a Xwrpeia rrj<; crrpaTia'; tov ovpavov (v. 42), in epyoi?
tmv xelP'*3V avT&v, for the promised worship of God. The
motive for this becomes perfectly intelligible as soon as the
polemic interest of the times, and of the speech as a whole,
is considered. The fundamental questions are as to the
KXr/povo/j,ia and the Xoyia ffivTa. Israel points to circumci
sion as the sign and seal of the former (v. 8) and to the Xarpeia
instituted at Sinai as the sign of the latter. Our speaker (v.
51) denies that circumcision was anything more than a type
and symbol, and is equally free in his attitude toward the
Sinaitic ritual (v. 42 f.). But he does not stand alone in his
treatment of the promise, Exodus 3 : 12. This overshadow
ing of the territorial conception of the covenant with Abra
ham, by one which cuts loose entirely from local relations and
considers deliverance from the oppressor for the sake of the
true worship to be the real content of the promise, is that of
Luke 1 : 73-75, where "the oath which God sware to Abra
ham our father" (Gen. 15 : 7 ff.) is not the KXrjpovofiia, but
" that we, being delivered out of the hand of all our enemies
should serve him (Xarpevetv avTw) in holiness and righteous
ness before him all our days. " Now this peculiar tendency
does not belong to all types of early Christian thought. The
effort to spiritualize the promise to Abraham from KXr/povo/iia
to Xarpela, from a territorial to a religious sense, is character
istic of the Alexandrian writers, Hebrews, and Barnabas.
The Pauline interpretation, as we shall see, takes a different
direction. With this single illustration of the relationship of individ
ual ideas of the speech we turn to a consideration of its
general course of thought, confining ourselves to incidental
interpretation. Section 1 of the speech deals in its first subdivision ([a]

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 239
= vv. 2-8) with the prophetic institution of the first or
Abrahamic period, the KXvpovop,ia or inheritance of the holy
land; or as it is designated in v. 8, "the covenant of cir
cumcision." But by circumcision, as appears from v. 51,
the speaker, after the example and in the language of the
prophets, understands a rite. of value only for its symbolism,
which is unveiling — preparedness of heart and ears for
divine instruction. But beyond and above this the content
of the covenant, the thing promised, is not the Pauline
blessedness of the Gentiles (Gal. 3:8; Rom. 4 : 16 f., rest
ing on Gen. 12 : 3), employed in Acts 3 : 25. Our author
goes rather to Gen. 15 : 7-21; only, instead of finding there
the territorial sense,1 he combines Genesis 15 : 14, as we
have seen, by a curious and significant anticipation, with
Exodus 3 : 12, to read from it a promise of God to give
deliverance and the true Xarpeia. The oath of God is to
execute judgment for the seed of Abraham against their
oppressors, bring them forth from bondage, and cause them
to serve him. Persistent and reiterated emphasis is placed
upon the fact that the promise was not fulfilled in the ex
ternal sense.2 When God had removed Abraham into the
land after his father's death, "he gave him none inheritance
in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on," but promised it
to a certain "seed" to be given him, whose special "spirit
ual " character (cf. Rom. 9 : 7-9), as well as the " faith " of
Abraham (cf. Rom. 4 : 19-22), is suggested in the reminder
that "as yet he had no child." The conclusion of the sec
tion is (v. 16) that not an inch of soil in Canaan was given
to any of the patriarchs save a burial-place, and even that
in despised Samaria, which was not given, but " bought with
1 Possibly the disappearance of the territorial sense was made easier for Hellen
istic Jews by tlie LXX rendering %v &v a-oi Seijai, " the land, wherever it be, that I
shall show thee." The point that Abram " knew not whither he went " is em
phasized in Hebr. 11:8. The fact that the patriarchs were " strangers and sojourn
ers, " and as such types of the Christian people of God, is emphasized both in Hebr.
11:9, 13-16, and here, vv. 6, 29.
2 Meyer, Comm., ad loc, "He gave not . . . and promised." So in Hebr. 11 : 13
the fact is emphasized that the inheritance was not received.

240 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
a price. " The Abrahamic Inheritance, we are to infer, was
not so much a particular land, but "freedom to worship
God." This was first made clear to the patriarch himself.
God withheld the land — and gave a larger promise.
Where then do we find the parallels to this characteristic
interpretation of the KXvpovofila, which the speaker opposes
to that of the " uncircumcised in heart and ears " ?
Paulinism does not by any means neglect to spiritualize
the conception of the Abrahamic KXnpovofi'ia; but how? —
Not by connecting the great story of God's act of cession
of the land, Genesis 15 : 7-21, and its modification in the
attached promise of deliverance from Egypt, forward with
Exodus 3 : 1-12, but backward with Genesis 12 r 3 and
Genesis 1 : 26-28. The KXvpovofjiia ceases to be particular
istic by becoming cosmic. Abraham becomes "heir of the
world" (Rom. 4 : 13). His "seed," the " many nations " of
Genesis 12 : 3, are all, Jews and Gentiles, who are "of
faith," and as such are "blessed with faithful Abraham"
(Gal. 3 : 7-9; Rom. 4 : 16-18). More particularly it is in
the person of the " one new man " in whom the redeemed
race is federated, as the lost race had been federated, or
subsumed, in Adam, that this inheriting of the world is to
be realized. " He saith not ' seeds ' as of many, but as of
one, * and to thy seed,' which is Christ" (Gal. 3 : 16, 28, 29;
cf. Eph. 2 : 15); so that one may say equally that God
"made Abraham heir of the world" (Rom. 4 : 13), that he
" appointed his Son heir of all things " (Heb. 1 : 2), and may
promise the same inheritance " to him that overcometh "
(Rev. 21 : 7). For we too are "heirs of God " only as being
" joint-heirs with Christ " (Rom. 8 : 17). God has created in
him (in his spiritual second creation, 2 Cor. 4 : 6) of the
twain, Jew and Gentile, "one new man " (Eph. 2 : 15).
The heir is the Second Adam, "one new man," and yet not
one, but Messiah and his people together. The ' AyaTrvros
and dyairvToi, 'EkX€kt6<i and eKXeKToi are heirs together,
"even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the
world: having in love foreordained us in the Beloved . . .

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 241
according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto
a dispensation of the fulness of the ages, to make Christ the
head (avaKe<paXamcracr0ai) of all things, the things in the
heavens, and the things on the earth, in whom we also were
made heirs (iKXnpcodniJiev) and were sealed with the promised
Holy Spirit as an earnest of our inheritance " (KXnpovoiua)
(Eph. 1 : 3-14, abridged). But if the life-giving Spirit is
the dppaf3d>v of our inheritance, it by no means follows that
to Paul the inheritance itself was of an exclusively spiritual
character. Quite the contrary. He proceeds at once to
explain its character. It is " dominion " (jcaTaKvpieva-i'i) over
the entire creation of God, "things visible and invisible,
things in heaven and on earth," personal, semi-personal, and
impersonal (Eph. 1 : 10, 20-23; Col. 1 : 16-20). Messiah
and his people — in Christian phrase, " Christ and the church "
— not separately but in their united capacity, are to be in the
fullest and completest sense "lords " over the entire creation
of God. The creation is their inheritance, and is waiting for
them, waiting impatiently under the dominion of " vanity "
(fiaraiorvTi', cf. HX, lilf) of false gods, Baip,ove^ made objects
of worship, e. g., Jer. 14 : 22), till the sons who are the real
heirs are made manifest (Rom. 8 : 19-23). When the time of
tutelage is over and the day of adoption predetermined by the
Father is come, these mere "stewards and governors," which,
though worshipped among the heathen as deities, "are by
nature no gods " (Gal. 4 : 8), will then be subjected under
the dominion of the heir. This is "the mystery of the
Creator's will, hid till now from the foundation of the
world " (Eph. 1 : 9; 3 : 3-5 ; Rom. 16 : 25) even from angels
(Eph. 3 : 9 f. ; 1 Peter 1 : 12), who, according to Slav.
Enoch, are ignorant of the mystery of their origin, but re
vealed in the manifestation of the Second Adam as Son and
Heir of God. For the purposes of discipline it pleased God,
in the pre-messianic dispensation of law, to put all, both
Jews and Gentiles, under the mentorship of the angelic o-toi-
Xei'a tov Koafiov.1 But while for a time the o-Tot^eta have
1 See Deissmann, s. v. " Elements," in Encycl. Biblica.
16

242 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
a delegated authority over the children for their conduct
(jraiBaycoyoi) and even (as iiriTpom-oi and oIkovo/ioi) control
their property, once the Heir is come he is seen to be the
true possessor of both the power and the riches. They are
"weak" and "beggarly" (Gal. 3 : 24-26; 4 : 1-11); the
universe is his, and he will judge their administration of
his estate (1 Cor. 6:2, 3; cf. Enoch lxxxix. 59; 25, the
judgment of the 70 shepherds, i. e., angelic guardians of
Israel, by Messiah).1
This conception of the KXvpovofiia is fundamental with
Paul. It is the basis of his defence against the Judaistic
stoicheiolatry and " worship of the angels " in the churches
of the Lycus valley. It is the foundation stone of his cos
mology and eschatology. In harmony with all the apocalyp
tic writers, the two are to him inseparable. A Christ who
does not bring to fulfilment the declared purpose of God in
creation, Genesis 1 : 28, irXvpdocraTe ttjv yi)v, Kal KaTOLKupic-
v<ra,T6 auT%, Kal apx^Te tojv lx0vcov Tr)<; 0aXdTTws, Kal tojv
irereivcov tov ovpavov, Kai irdvTcov T&v ktt)Vwv would be to
Paul no Messiah at all. He would not only disappoint the
just expectations of Israel, based for centuries on the promise
of God (Gen. 1 : 26-28 ; Ps. 8 : 6) and re-echoed in every
apocalyptic writer,2 but he would be unable to wrest the
1 " And He called 70 shepherds and put away those sheep (Israel) that they
might pasture them .... And he spake to that man who wrote before Him, who
was one of the seven white ones, and said to him, ' Take those 70 shepherds to
whom I delivered the sheep, and who, taking them on their own authority, slew
more thau I commanded them. And behold they were all bound, I saw, and they
all stood before Him. And the judgment was held first over the stars (the angels
who sinned in the days of Noah, Gen. 6:3), and they were judged and found guilty
and went to tlie place of condemnation, and they were cast into an abyss, full of
fire and flaming, and full of pillars of fire. And those 70 shepherds (the angelic
guardians of Israel) were judged and found guilty and likewise cast into that fiery
abyss." Scholars are now agreed that the 70 shepherds are not human, but an
gelic. See the note of R. H. Charles' edition, ad loc.
2 See, e. g , Assumplio Mosis, 1 : 12-14 (God created the world on behalf of his
people and revealed this final cause to Moses) ; Apoc. of Baruch, xiv. 18 f. ; xv. 7 ;
xxi. 24. II Esdras 6 : 55, 59 is striking : " O Lord, thou hast said that for our sakes
thou madest this world. ... If the world now be made for our sakes, why do we
not possess for an inheritance our world 1 How long shall this endure t" Cf. II

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 243
"dominion" from the stewards and governors, the apxai and
k^ovcriai, the BvvafieK Kal KvpiorvTes, Kal irdvra ovofiara bvo-
[ia£op,eva ov fiovov iv Tip aloovi tovtw, dXXd Kal iv tc3 fieXXovn.
Man was made to "have dominion over the works of God's
hands." The end will come only when in the person of the
second Adam he shall have delivered up the kingdom to
God, even the Father, when he shall have put down irdaav
dpxvv Kal iracrav i^ovaiav Kal Bvvap.iv. " For the Christ must
reign till he hath put all enemies under his feet. The last
enemy that shall be put down is death." The ground ex
pressly cited for this unshakable confidence is Psalm 8:6 —
"For ' he hath put all things under his feet.' But when he
saith, All things are put under him, it is manifest that he
is excepted who did put all things under him. And when
all things are subdued under him then the Son also himself
shall be subject unto him that put all things under him,
that God may be all in all " (1 Cor. 15 : 24-28).1
Paul's conception of the KXwpovop,ia as inclusive of lord
ship over the creation and its angelic administrators does not
differ a hair's breadth from that of the messianic Pharisaism
of his time, save that to him Jesus is that Second Adam or
" Son of Man " of Psalm 8 : 4-8, to whom for his obedience
God has given the name which is above every name — the
name Kvpiov iravTOKpaToop — that to him every knee should
bow. Thus the essential, fundamentally distinctive feature
of this Palestinian, apocalyptic idea of the KXvpovop,la, is
that it is cosmological. The promise to Abraham is univer
salized by being carried back and brought into connection
with the story of the creation and fall. It becomes the anti
dote to the curse by which evil and death came into the
world (Gen. 2-3), restoring the primal creation as contem-
Esdras 7 : 11 ; 8 : 1, 44 ; 9 : 13. In Rabbinic literature the world is created on ac
count of Abraham, Yalk. I. 766. In Christian apocalypse " he that overcometh "
becomes " heir of all things," Rev. 21 : 5-7. For the doctrine of the creation of
the world " for the Church " in Hermas and later writers see below.
1 For the importance attached in later times to this Pauline doctrine of the
" lordship " (kvdioVijj) of Christ sea the denunciations of Jude 4, 8, 25 and 2 Peter
2 : 10, against those who despise and rail at " lordship."

244 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
plated in Genesis 1. In its Christian form it takes in
Genesis 15 : 6 and 12 : 3 on the way, and includes as
beneficiaries of the inheritance not only "Israel," or "the
righteous in Israel," or the "People of God" (meaning
Israel and proselytes), but "them that are of faith," "the
Israel of God," "the Church," or "Christ and the Church,"
"the redemption of God's own possession." 1
But we have already seen that this was not the only early
Christian manner of spiritualizing the hope of the KXvpovofiia.
It is not that of the speech of Stephen. The Abrahamic in
heritance here is connected, not backward with Genesis 1-3,
but forward with the deliverance from Egypt. Genesis
15 : 7 ff. is amalgamated with Exodus 3 : 1 ff. Everything
possible is done to detach the promise from its material
content. In the fundamental passage (Gen. 15 : 7-21) the
attention is concentrated on vv. 13-16 (a later interpola
tion in Gen. 15 : 7-21, according to critics), to the ignoring
of 7-12, 17 ff., which constitute the heart of the story.
Thus the conception of the prerogative of the KXnpovop,ia
tends to merge in, or actually becomes indistinguishable
from that of the XaTpeia. The place is nothing, the
deliverance from oppression and bringing into relations of
pure and unhindered " worship " is everything.
Now this conception of " God's holy covenant, " as we have
seen, does not stand alone in Acts 7 : 7, but is distinctively
that of Luke 1 : 71-75. It stands in striking contrast
to the Pauline, which develops exclusively in an opposite
direction. In view of its spiritualizing character, no less
than its affinities of phraseology and style, we are justified
in applying to it the name Alexandrian. The essential dif
ference of this mode of conception of the KXnpovopia from
the Pauline lies in its mode of escape from the particularism
1 The pre-Christian apocalyptic writers meet the question of fitness for the
K\r\povop.la by restricting it to the righteous remnant rather than all Israel. See
Apoc. of Baruch, xvi. 18 f. ; xv. 7 ; xxi. 24, and cf . Charles' comment, Assumption of
Moses, i. 12-14. In the early Christian writers the doctrine takes the form " God
created the world on behalf of the Church " (Hermas, Vis., ii, 4 : 1 ; cf. Mand.
xii. 4 ; Justin, Apol. i. 10 ; ii. 4 : 5 ; Dial. xii. Irenaeus, Her., v. 29 : 1, &c).

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 245
of the Old Testament. The Pauline was cosmological ; this
is idealistic. The believer retreats from that outer world
which the Palestinian apocalyptist would boldly subjugate,
into the inner, spiritual realm. As Paulinism goes back to
Pharisaic and Apocalyptic thought, this other reverts to
pre-Christian Alexandrianism, whose essential and character
istic trait is idealism. The Alexandrian-Christian's answer
to Philo's question, Who is the KXrjpov6p,o<i of the things of
God? in some forms is almost identical with Philo's, viz.:
The wise man who controls his own faculties and desires ; 1
in all it tends to lose terrestrial footing. It is in the Lucan
form the same as the answer of Hebrews, whose author rea
sons along the same lines. The inheritance of Abraham
cannot have been an earthly country (as the uncircumcised
in heart and ears maintain), for even in the land of promise
he dwelt in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him
of the same promise, as a stranger and sojourner; for he
was looking for the city which hath the foundations, whose
builder and maker is God. He and his died in faith, not
having received the promises, but having seen and greeted
them from afar. For they were indeed seeking a country of
their own, but a better country, that is a heavenly; and for
this reason God was not ashamed to be called the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, because there is no real particu
larism where the country sought is the heavenly, and in this
case the city sought was one prepared of God.
The course of reasoning is similar when in Hebrews 3 :
7 to 4 : 11 the author (who here as elsewhere is followed by
Barnabas') reasons from Psalm 95 : 7-11 that the "rest"
(tcaTdiravo-i';') set before Moses (Exod. 33 : 14) and Israel
(Num. 14 : 21-23) in the wilderness was not that which
Joshua gave in the land of Canaan, but that of Genesis 2 :
1 Cf. Clem. Recogn., i. 37. All this (Moses' appointment of "a place in which
alone it should be lawful to them to sacrifice to God ") was arranged with this
view, that when the fitting time should come, and they should learn by means of
the Prophet (Dent. 18: 15 has just been referred to) that God desires mercy and not
sacrifice, they might see Him who should teach them that the place chosen of God,
in which it was suitable that victims should be offered to God, is his Wisdom."

246 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
2, the eternal sabbatic rest of God in the perfected creation.
The promise was not realized in the literal sense, therefore
the true sense was the inner or spiritual. It was discerned
by the ancient worthies through "faith," i. e., the insight
which "gives substance to these hoped-for things, and puts
to the test of action the things not seen. " 1
Both Alexandrian and Pauline ideas are carried out more
emphatically, and similarly intermingled in Ps.-Barnabas.
True, this Alexandrian writer flounders about among ideas
much too large for him, borrowed partly from Hebrews,
partly from a source at least connected with Acts 7. But
his most salient characteristic is his marked effort to get
away from the local sense of the KXr/povofila. In his view
both Genesis 1 : 26 to 2 : 3 and Exodus 3 : 14 look to the
messianic Sabbath, which is the Inheritance. The land (y?5)
"flowing with milk and honey," when gnosis is applied —
" for the Lord established among us wisdom and understand
ing of his secret things " — is seen to be not at all a reference
to Canaan but to the redeemed creation. It is "a parable
concerning the Lord." "In reference to the new creation
of man in the likeness of Christ the prophet (Moses)
preached, Enter into an earth (et? yr)v, omitting the article)
flowing with milk and honey, and be lords over it (Exod. 3 :
14; Gen. 1 : 27). 2 We therefore are they whom he brought
into the good earth. What, then, is the milk and honey ? — •
The promise and the word by which we are nourished to live
and be lords of the earth. " 3
These examples from Hebrews and Barnabas must suffice
to illustrate the Alexandrian method of universalizing the
conception of the KXnpovop,ia. It is universalized, but not
1 In 1 : 2 ; 2 : 5-9, where Ps. 8 : 4 is interpreted as applying to Christ's dominion
over the world in fulfilment of Gen. 1 : 28, our author manifestly rests on a Pauline
basis (cf. 1 Cor. 15 ; 27 f.), but the Alexandrianism of Hebrews is quite as marked
as its Paulinism.
2 Cf. this intermingling of Gen. 1 : 27 and Exod. 3 : 14 with that of Gen. 15 : 14
and Exod. 3 : 12 in Acts 7 : 7.
8 Compare with this the modern expression rationalizing the older view of
the hereafter : " Heaven is not a place but a condition."

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 247
as having the Kocrp,o<; as its content, except where the influ
ence of Paul is unmistakable. It escapes the bondage of
Jewish particularism by spiritualizing the sense. The KXvpo-
vop,la is essentially a condition of the soul in relation to God.
Stephen, Hebrews, and Barnabas are all agreed that it must
be understood tvttikco<; of the Messianic Age, and they appeal
to history in proof that no literal fulfilment was ever given.
In Luke 1 : 73-75 ; Acts 7 : 2-7 we have even a substitution
of the true Xarpeia as its essential content.
[b] But it is also characteristic of the speech no less than
of Hebrews, that it considers the theocratic characters of the
Old Testament as types of Christ, though only in the case
of Moses is this fully developed. In the patriarchal period
it is of course the story of Joseph which foreshadows that of
the Messianic Deliverer. Hence we have in the latter half
of § 1 (vv. 9-16) a rehearsal of how Joseph was rejected by
his jealous brethren and sold into Egypt, but was made by
God the means of their deliverance. This mention of the
patriarchs' treatment of Joseph, the one "with whom God
was, delivering him out of all his afflictions and giving him
favour and wisdom " (j(dpiv Kal aocplav, cf. Luke 2 : 40, 52,
irXwpoiipievos rrocplas, Kal %a/at? 0eov r)v eV airov . . .
irpoeKOTTTev ry crocpia . . . Kal x^ptri. Also Acts 6 : 3 -irXtfpeis
•jrvevp.aTO'i Kal crocpias and 10, rfj crocpia Kal rm irvevfiari) is
enough to suggest in connection with vv. 25-29, 39^13,
51-53, the author's idea of why the promise was deferred
four hundred years. For the motive attributed to Joseph's
brethren (cf. vv. 27 f.) is also characteristic. Like Jesus,
Joseph was delivered up to the Gentiles by his brethren, to
whom he came as prophet and king (JSaa-iXevoeis, Gen.
37 : 5-11, LXX.) Their motive was Zfikos (Gen. 37 : 11,
Acts 7 : 9), the characteristic fault of the unbelieving Jews
in Acts (5 : 17; 13 : 45; 17 : 5) and Clement of Rome (cc.
iv-vi.).1 1 The term appears also in James 3 : 14, 16 ; 4:2 as a fault. Elsewhere it
appears in this sense only in the Pauline epistles. Even the " envy " of the chief
priests who deliver up Jesus is described by another term (ipB6vos, Matt. 27 : 18;
Mark. 15 : 10).

248 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
But the divine endowment of Joseph with "wisdom and
favor," and the presence of God with him as against the
£r)Xo<; of his brethren is not all which suggests that the por
trait is drawn tvitikcos. Pains are taken to distinguish a
first and second encounter of Joseph and his brethren. It
was only " at the second time " that Joseph was made known
unto his brethren, and became their deliverer (7 : 13). This
might easily pass as mere accident, had we not immediately
after a similar distinction in the portrayal of the career of
Moses, where the first and second coming to " his brethren "
is certainly to be understood TvirtKcix;, and perhaps even the
forty years, as corresponding to the forty years of Israel's
obduracy between the first and second coming of Jesus (cf.
Heb. 3 : 17). Our author sees in both a foreshadowing of
his own age. Jesus has been rejected; presented now a
first time to his brethren he is not recognized as " ruler and
deliverer," but has been withdrawn into heaven. But from
thence he must appear a " second time to them that wait for
him unto salvation " (Heb. 9 : 28).1
2. [a] In the review of the Mosaic dispensation the order
of treatment is reversed. The typological significance of the
redemptive personality occupies the author's attention before
that of the institution. That our author is here approaching
the heart of his argument is clearly indicated by the transi
tion verse 7 : 17, "But proportionately as the time of the
promise which God promised to Abraham was drawing nigh
the people increased and multiplied in Eygpt." Were it
possible here to be blind to his conception of " the promise "
and its content, verses 35-38, with their five-times-repeated
emphatic ovtos, make sure that none shall mistake the por
trait of Christ in that of Moses. Every trait is made to
suggest the great messianic passage quoted from the Law
(Deut. 18 : 15, 18 f.), "A prophet shall the Lord God raise
1 Cf. the rabbinic doctrine of the withdrawal of Messiah (Pesikta 496) • " Mes
siah, like Moses, will first appear, then be withdrawn 45 days (45 instead of 40,
the number of years of Moses' withdrawal on account of Dan. 9 : 26). See below
p. 251, note 4.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 249
up unto you of your brethren like unto me. To him shall ye
hearken in all things," a passage undoubtedly in our author's
mind in Luke 24 : 27, 44, but nowhere employed in any
earlier writing. The doctrine of Messiah as the alter Moses,
"that prophet," is subsequently alluded to in John 1 : 21
(4 : 25?); 5 : 46; 6 : 14, * and fully developed in Acts 3 : 19-
26, where the interpretation of the prophecy is that Messiah
first appears as a prophet raised up by God from among his
brethren of Israel, to turn them to repentance in preparation
for the great and terrible Day of Jehovah (a function else
where assigned to Elias, or Moses and Elias). After he has
thus been sent to Israel a first time, to bless them in turning
away every one of them from their iniquities, and has after
wards been preached to the Gentiles, he will be sent a sec
ond time as the appointed Christ (3 : 20); for until this time
of d'KQKaTdcTTaai'i ttuvtcov the heavens must receive him.2
But the significant thing is that, aside from these passages
and the possible exception soon to be discussed of Matthew
2 : 20, there is no trace in the New Testament of this treat
ment of Moses as a type of Christ save in Hebrews 3: 1-6. 3
It is in the Clementine literature, as already noted, that " the
true Prophet," or "the Prophet," becomes the stereotyped
1 The fourth gospel has consideration for the Alexandrian ideas apparent in
our sources in other instances. See above, p. 222, note.
2 A tracing of the relation of Acts 3 to Luke I f. and 24 has only indirect con
nection with our theme through the apparent relationship of Acts 3 to Acts 7 ;
but one may be permitted to suggest a comparison of Acts 3:21 with Luke 1 : 70
and 3:18 with Luke 24 : 26 f.
8 The passage is exceedingly obscure, but may be elucidated with the help of
Barn. viii. as follows : — The description (Num. 12 : 7) of Moses' dealing with Israel
in the Exodus as faithfulness " in all God's house " is seized upon as a point of
comparison for Jesus' faithfulness to God in building the house, viz., us, God's
people in whom he dwells. Jesus thus appears not only as the new Redeemer,
greater than Moses by as much as the builder is greater than the steward, but as
the new Creator, for the new creation of God is not the universe, his " house " in
the external sense, but his people in whom he dwells. Cf. Matt. 16 : 18 in the
light of the rabbinic parable cited at end of Chase's art., " Peter, First Epistle
of" in Cheyne's Encycl. Bibl. from Yalkuth, where the Creator, seeking a founda
tion on which to build his house, says, ' I have found Abraham, the rock on
which to build.' See also Barn. viii.

250 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
designation of Christ, even in his pre-existent activity. In
the same connection as Acts 7 : 37, viz., between the apos
tasy of Israel at Sinai with the consequent institution of the
sacrificial system, and the institution of the " place in which
alone it should be lawful for them to sacrifice," Moses' pre
diction is thus referred to (Clem. Recogn. I, 36): "He said
himself, ' A prophet shall the Lord your God raise unto you,
whom ye shall hear even as myself, according to all things
which he shall say to you. Whosoever shall not hearken to
that prophet shall be cut off from his people. ' " 1
So with the speech of Stephen. The great figure of Moses
is introduced with the remark that the time of the promise
which God vouchsafed to Abraham had come nigh (v. 17).
After the four hundred years of affliction in Egypt which
followed upon the patriarchs' treatment of Joseph, God set
out to redeem his promise. Then appeared the prototype of
Messiah and was "fair unto God."2 In his childhood the
oppressor sought his life, and he is hardly rescued, but by
the adoption of Pharaoh's daughter he becomes "instructed
in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, " and " mighty in words
and works. " 3 The former trait is borrowed from (Alexan
drian?) midrash,4 the latter certainly not suggested by Ex
odus 4 : 11. Finally Moses like Abraham and the patriarchs
(Acts 7 : 5 f., 29; Heb. 11 : 9, 13-16), like the people of
God in the writer's time (1 Peter 1 : 1 ; 2 : 11, 17), spends
the period of his manhood as a "stranger and sojourner."5
1 Cf. Acts 3 : 22, 23, which has at the end the same variation from the 0. T.,
Hebrew and LXX.
2 Combining Exod. 3 : 2 with the description of Messiah in Ps. 45 : 2; cf . Hebrews
11 : 23, and Justin, Trypho, xxxviii. The same Psalm is quoted as messianic in
Hebrews 1 : 8 f. The extraordinary beauty of Moses is a favorite theme of
Talmudic writers. Hebrews 11 : 23 f. dwells on the beauty of the child, the rescue
from the oppressor, the adoption by Pharaoh's daughter and return of Moses to
his own people.
8 On the phrase Swarhs h \6yois Kal epyots here (Acts 7 : 22) and in Luke
24 : 22, see above, p. 235.
4 Philo, Vita Mos., I. 5, Jos., Ant., II. 9, 10.
6 The only other occurrences of irapotKelv and its derivatives in the New Tes
tament besides those here referred to are as follows : Luke 24 : 18 (of Jesus the

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 251
But why dwell upon the story of Moses' infancy? Only in
Matthew 2 have we a corresponding deliverance of the infant
Redeemer from the wrath of the king,1 and this incident is
wholly excluded from the Lucan form of the story. On the
other hand the legend of the hiding of the infant Messiah from
the oppressor is older than any of our New Testament writ
ings 2 and was doubtless connected with the story of Exodus
1 : 15-2 : 10 at least as soon as the doctrine of Messiah as the
alter Moses began to be developed.3 Had we the gospel of
the infancy known to our author and to the author of
Hebrews 11 : 23, we might perhaps learn the nature of the
correspondence he seems aiming to bring out. Meantime
there is plenty to indicate affinity with Alexandrian and
Ebionite teaching.
A more striking peculiarity of our author's sketch of the
career of Moses is that he seizes upon the story of Exodus 2 :
11 ff., as if it were simply an abortive attempt to carry out
the deliverance which is made Moses' mission in c. 3, cer
tainly involving a strain upon the original. But in this also
he agrees with Philo's Vita Mos. Moreover, this attempt is
not frustrated by Moses' own violence or precipitancy; for
Moses " supposed that Israel would understand how that God
was granting them redemption by his hand." It was pre
vented by the callousness and obduracy of his people, and
the £?)\o? of the evildoer, who thrust him away, saying,
Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us ? " Thus through
Israel's incapacity to appreciate a divine deliverance symboli
cally offered, the Deliverer was withdrawn and the redemp
tion deferred forty years.4 The redemption which then at
prophet like unto Moses) ; Acts 13:17 (the fathers delivered when " sojourners in
the land of Egypt ") and Eph. 2 : 19 (Gentile Christians are not strangers and so
journers with Israel, but fellow-citizens).
1 Heb. 1 1 : 23 f. "By faith Moses was hid three months . . . because they feared
not the king's commandment."
2 Cf. Rev. 12 : 1-6.
8 Cf. Exod. 4:19 LXX, TeBvfiKao-t yap irdvrcs ol fyrovvris cov rr\v ^ivx'fiv,
with Matt. 2 : 20, redviiKatrt yap ol fyrovvres t^v tyvxty tov iratbiov.
4 Cf. Pesikta, 49 b, " Messiah like Moses will first appear, then be withdrawn

252 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
last followed is described simply by citation of Moses' mis
sion (Exod. 3 : 2 ff.) to be the ruler and judge and \u-
TpcoT7]<i whom they had refused. The parallel to the career
of Jesus is accentuated by a reference to the " wonders and
signs " 1 (cf . Acts 2:22; Heb. 2 : 4), wrought " forty years long
in Egypt, and in the Red Sea, and in the wilderness. " 2 The
section is rhetorically finished by a citation of the promise (v.
37): "This is that Moses which said unto the children of
Israel, A Prophet shall God raise up unto you from among
your brethren like unto me. "
[b] The second part of this section on the Mosaic period,
vv. 38-43, turns to its prophetic institution, the Law. And
Tiere we come upon an interpretation of Exodus 19-34 as
unique in the New Testament as anything in the depiction
of the career of Moses. The point that the speaker makes
is indeed one for which the rabbinic writings furnish some
thing of an analogy in their distinction of the oral law or
qabbalah, delivered to Moses on Sinai, and by him orally
transmitted to Joshua and the succession of prophets, from
the written torah;z but it is one which marks an attitude
toward the law wholly different from, the Pauline, one which
is in fact the distinctive characteristic of the Alexandrian
45 days " (from Dan. 9 : 26). The doctrine of the withdrawal of Messiah (Web.,
Altsyn. TheoL, p. 348) is seen also in Apocalyptic literature ; cf. Rev. 12 : 6. 13-16.
1 Cf. Clem. Recogn., I. 57, " Jesus was indeed he who according to the prophecy
of Moses was to come ; since indeed as Moses wrought signs and miracles, so also
did Jesus."
2 Hebrews, which stands alone among canonical writings in support of our
author's reference to the " Red Sea as the scene of deliverance (Heb 11 :29; see
above, p. 231, for the parallel to Assumptio Mosis), also emphasizes the period of 40
years of deferred redemption, seeming to suggest a parallel between the 40 years of
Deut. 1 : 3, when God bore with disobedient Israel, and his own time (3 : 9 ff .). This
has been taken as an indication of the date of Hebrews. But Acts 7 : 23, 30 inserts
into the tradition two other 40-year periods, one in which Moses, like Christ, was
" growing in wisdom," the other corresponding to that of God's long-suffering
between the first and second mission of the Redeemer.
8 The midrashic saying, " Moses became rich from the chips struck off by his
chisel " (Exod. 34 : 1) illustrates the later conception of the superior value of the
oral communications on Sinai. Deuteronomy itself purports to give the content
of this intercourse with God, Deut. 5 : 1-6 : 1.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 253
type of Christianity. For, as both Baur and Harnack have
made clear, our discrimination of the various types of early
Christian thought must be based principally on their attitude
toward the principal question of the age, and this is unmis
takably the question of the validity of the Law. Now it is
undeniable that both Paul and the Alexandrians are ani
mated by a spirit of revolt against the particularism of Old
Testament religion, and while the Alexandrian solution of
the problem is, as we have seen, a qualitative distinction be
tween the formal and the spiritual content of the law, Paul's
being a temporal distinction, these two tend easily toward
combination, so that even in Paul we have the beginnings of
typology (1 Cor. 10 : 6 ; Col. 2 : 17), and in the apologists a
well-defined theory of the imposition of the aKid twv fieXXov-
tcov at a definite time and for a particular fault.1 That
which is distinctively, even surprisingly, wanting in Paul is
the discrimination of the later writers between the moral
and the ceremonial elements of the law. Paul is completely
lacking, apparently, in that sense of revolt against sacerdotal
ism and the sacrificial system so strikingly evinced in the
agraphon from the Ebionite gospel. " I came to put an end
to sacrificing, and if ye cease not from sacrificing, wrath shall
not cease from you. " 2 Again and again we wonder why
Paul does not draw the distinction so constantly drawn by
Justin between the eternal moral law and the enactments of
the Mosaic ceremonial. But he never does. The law is to
him always synonymous with the perfect revelation of the
divine will, and so long as one is " under law, " all its parts
go together and are equally indispensable. But the very
essence of the redemption is to Paul that the redeemed (Jews
and Gentiles) are "no longer under law but under grace."
1 Justin, Trypho, xxi, arguing from Ezek. 20 : 19-26, that the ceremonial was
imposed, although " not good," on account of the sin of apostasy at Sinai, Exod.
82 : 6 ff. See below, p. 256.
2 From Epiphanius, Her., xxx. 16, p. 140 B : ais to trap' avrols (sc, to?j "E&unval-
ots) evayyeKiov Kaholtfievov 7reo(exei, 0Y1 fj\6ev KaraKvffai Tas Ovtrias, Kal titv fiij
waio-no-Be toO Bieiv, ov iravo-erai a(p' i/iuiv r) bpyi). See Resch, Agrapha, § 12;
Apocryphon 6, p. 373.

254 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
Hence the distinction of a spiritualized law brought by
Messiah as second Moses and true Prophet (Weber, Alt-
synag. Theologie, § 84) represented in the Gospel of Matthew
(Sermon on the Mount, and 19 : 16-21; contrast Mark),
James (2 : 8, 12 vop,o<; fiacriXiKos e\evv0epia<;j, and Barnabas
(ii. 6, 6 Kaivbs vop,o<; tov Kvpiov r)pcov, 6 avev fryov dvdyK-n';'), the
nova lex of the second century fathers, is to Paul un-Chris-
tian. It is from non-Pauline sources that the second cen
tury takes its interpretation of the law as twofold in charac
ter. That this non-Pauline attitude toward the law existed
even in the primitive church should not be difficult to demon
strate. There is evidence that, directly or indirectly, it stands
related to Alexandria in pre-Christian and post-Christian
times, and of this evidence an important link is formed by
Acts 6-8, taken in its connection with Hebrews, Ps. -Barna
bas, the Kerygma Petri, and the Clementine writings.1 Of
the worth of this evidence the reader must judge. Alexan
drian Christianity made no such violent rupture with its
legalistic past as Paul with Pharisaism. Its system of alle
gorical interpretation, insight, or gnosis, as it is designated
by Barnabas, enabled it to retain the Jewish Scriptures while
repudiating Jewish particularism, specifically, as we have
seen, in the case of the Abrahamic KXnpovopiia; and the
o-Kr)va)p,a 0eov, but also, as we shall see, in the case even of
the Mosaic ceremonial. More than one Jewish sect, some
within the limits of Palestine itself, had revolted from the
temple worship and scribal ceremonialism, carrying to a more
or less radical extent the principle of spiritual interpreta-
1 The dependence of the Clementines, in their present form, on our canonical
sources is undisputed. Some may regard this as a sufficient explanation of their
special connection with certain parts of Luke- Acts. . What is here aimed at is a
demonstration of the affinity as existing not only here, but in a whole group of
writings, of which the Clementines and their sources form but a part, and which
goes far back and extends widely. For not all the Alexandrianism of early
Christianity comes from Alexandria. The term is used of a special type of non-
Pauline universalizing of Old Testament religion, because its chief centre was
Alexandria; but Palestinian thought, Essenic and Ebionite, was affected by it,
even in pre-Christian times.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 255
tion.1 Messiah himself was to be dvrjp dvaKaivoiroicov tov
vop,ov iv Bvvdp,et lyjriaTov.2 The Essenes, as is well known,
had wholly broken away from the sacerdotal system; but
the most systematic pre-Christian attempts at universalizing
Judaism were in Alexandria, where Philo is only the last
and greatest of a school whose effort was to read into Mosa-
ism the theism of Plato by allegorical interpretation. Philo
himself protests against more radical predecessors, icono
clasts, who rejected altogether the literal sense, which to
him was only of lesser value,3 and regarded the spiritual
only as obligatory. We have the evidence that Alexandrian
Christian writers fell naturally in with this process in the
Epistle of Barnabas, whose allegorical interpretation of the
law of clean and unclean meats is taken bodily from Ps.-
Ari^tcas (ca. 95 B. c.) and is in turn employed by Justin
Martyr.4 Hebrews 9 : 5 even suggests that it is only the
limitations of the occasion which prevent this author from
developing the typological significance of the tabernacle fur
niture. But in one respect Christian Alexandrianism takes
a step in advance of Judaism. It accepts indeed the doc
trine of the inner sense of the Law of the more radical

1 Cf. the sayings of Jesus on the law of clean and unclean in Mark 7 : 15 ff.,
and Luke 11 : 41 (almsgiving of the contents of the dish purifies the food. Wash
ing of its surface, while the contents are the fruits of rapacity and oppression,
does not). Even Pharisaism of the broader type had similar tendencies in the
distinction of the greater and lesser commandments of the Law ; cf. Luke. 10 : 26 f. ;
Mark 12: 32, and the golden rule of Hillel with the remark, "This is the whole
Law, the rest is commentary." Old Testament precedent will occur to every
one ; e. g., Mic. 6 : 6-8 ; Ps. 40 : 6-8 ; 50 : 7-15; 51: 16 f . This was the decided
tendency of the Wisdom literature, with which the Epistle of James is in nearest
connection. It is noteworthy that here we meet, along with the warnings against
(rj\os (see above, p. 247) the conception of the New Law, as in Barn., ii. 6 (cf.
James 2: 8, leXelre rbv v6/iov fiaaiAiKov, 1 : 25, v6/ios TeAeios, S rrjs iAivBeptas),
and of the BpndKeta (= Aarpeia) as social morality.
2 Test, of Levi, xvi. ; the passage is of Christian origin.
8 See Gfrorer, Philo, I., p. 104.
4 Cf. Barn., x. with Ps.-Aristeas, xxxix. 10 ff. (Merx., Archiv, I, 1869, p. 279 ;
Swete, Introd. to O. T. in Greek, 1900, pp. 541-548). For some reason Har
nack (Litgesch.) regards the utilization of Barnabas by Justin as "not strictly
demonstrable ! "

256 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
iconoclastic type, which Philo deplored,1 but it has also an
explanation to offer of the reason why the law was given in
this enigmatic form, apparently teaching a worship substan
tially identical in its rites with heathen worship,2 although
its real meaning was spiritual and universal. This new
departure is the application of the doctrine of accommodation,
probably based on the saying of Jesus in explanation of the
Mosaic statute of divorce. Jesus taught that the literal law
was adapted to conditions of human imperfection. The true
principle must be found in the description of man's ideal
state " in the beginning of the creation " (Mark 10 : 2-9).
In Christian Alexandrian teaching the application is more
specific. The law is not human, nor even Mosaic law in
general, but the Mosaic ceremonial. The " hardness of heart "
is that of Israel, which compelled Jehovah to "give them
statutes which were not good, and judgments whereby they
should not live" (Ezek. 20 : 25; cf. Gal. 3 : 21). More
over, even the occasion becomes specific; it was that of
Exodus 32 : 6 ff., the making of the golden calf. Thus
Justin Martyr explains the Christian non-observance of the
Mosaic ceremonial as follows in the Dialogue with Trypho
the Jew: "For we [Christians] too would observe the fleshly
circumcision and the Sabbaths, and, in short, all the feasts,
if we did not know for what reason they were enjoined you;
namely, on account of your transgression and the hardness
of your hearts . . . for the righteous until Moses, Adam,
Abel, Enoch, Melchizedek, though uncircumcised and keep
ing no Sabbaths,3 were pleasing to God; and after them
Abraham, with all his descendants until Moses, under whom
1 Cf. the doctrine of Barnabas that Israel was misled by an evil angel to ac
cepting the Law in a literal sense with the agraphon above cited, and Clem. Recogn.
1 : 64 : " Nos enim, inquam pro certo comperimus, quod super sacrificiis, quae
offertis, multo magis exasperatur deus, sacrificiorum tempore duntaxat expleto.
Et quia vos non vultis agnoscere emensum esse jam tempus hostias offerendi, ob
hoc destruetur et templum, et abominatio desolationis statuetur in loco sancto."
2 Barn., xvi. 2. " For, like the heathen almost, they consecrated God in the
temple." 8 Hardly the conception of the Priestly Document.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 257
your nation appeared unrighteous and ungrateful to God,
making a calf in the wilderness ; wherefore God, accommodat
ing himself to that nation, enjoined them also to offer sacrifices
as if to his name, in order that you might not serve idols,
which precept, however, you have not observed. . . . More
over, you were commanded to abstain from certain kinds of
food, in order that you might keep God before your eyes
while you ate and drank, seeing you were prone to depart
from his knowledge, as Moses also affirms : ' The people ate
and drank and rose up to play.' . . . Thus also God com
manded you by the mouth of Moses to abstain from unclean,
and indecent1 and rapacious animals, when, though you
were eating manna in the desert . . . you made and wor
shipped the golden calf. Hence he cries, and justly, ' They
are foolish children in whom is no faith.'2 Moreover that
God enjoined you to keep the Sabbath and imposed other
precepts upon you for a sign, as I have already said, on
account of your unrighteousness, and that of your fathers
. . . these words of his can prove to you. They are nar
rated by Ezekiel. ... I gave them also statutes which were
not good, and judgments whereby they shall not live. . . .
And that you may learn that it was for the sins of your own
nation, and for their idolatries, and not because there was
any necessity for such sacrifices that they were enjoined,
listen to the manner in which He speaks of these by Amos.
. . . ' Have ye offered to me victims and sacrifices in the
wilderness, O house of Israel ? saith the Lord. And ye took
up the tabernacle of Moloch and the star of your god Ra-
phan the figures (twou?) which ye made for yourselves, and
I will carry you away beyond Damascus, saith the Lord. ' " 3
1 For the justification of this term compare Barn, x, 6-8, and Ps.-Aristeas xiii.
10 (Swete, p. 547, 15).
2 Faith in the Alexandrian sense of insight, gnosis, penetration to the inner
spiritual sense, as in Hebrews, passim. Cf. Justin, Trypho, xliv.
8 Abridged from Trypho, cc. xviii.-xxii. Cf . xxvii. " And although God com
mands you by all the prophets to do the same (ritual) things which he also com
manded by Moses, it was on account of the hardness of your hearts ... so that
as in the beginning these things were enjoined you because of your wickedness,
17

258 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
This remarkable doctrine of Justin's regarding the Mosaic
ceremonial worship as offered only "as if to God's name,"
enjoined " by accommodation, " and as supplanting an original
more spiritual type, in consequence of the sin of Aaron and
the people at Sinai, if it stood alone, might perhaps be suffi
ciently explained as a mere interpretaton of Acts 7 : 38-42,
which is manifestly employed. Whether correct or not would
still require to be ascertained. But it occurs as part of a
larger connection reproduced in a whole series of writings of
Alexandrian origin, the remotest link being even of pre-
Christian date. Item by item Justin reproduces the argu
ments and even the language of Barnabas; and Barnabas
not only builds on Hebrews and Acts, but on Ps.-Aristeas.
In Justin we find the same ideas as in Barnabas, supported
by the same passages, with new and more copious citations.
Physical circumcision is a type only, since it is shared by
Gentile nations ; the real meaning being, Take away the veil
from your hearts and ears, as says Jeremiah (4 : 3) : " Sow
not upon thorns, break up your fallow ground, circumcise
the foreskin of your heart" (Trypho xvi., xxviii., Barn, ix.,
Heb. 6 : 7 f . ; Acts 7 : 51). Sabbaths were ordained as a
type of the messianic age, the "rest" of God in the "new
creation" and the true "promised land" (in Trypho xii.,
xix., xxi., xxiii., Sabbaths were ordained for a type of the
perpetual Sabbath of the regenerate life; cf. Barn, vi., rest
ing on Heb. 2 : 5-4 : 13). The law of clean and unclean
meats was symbolical of abstinence from the vices character
istic of the beasts in question, swine, birds of prey, hares and
hyenas (Trypho xx., Barn, x., Aristeas xxxix. 10-xliii. 10 —
Swete, pp. 544-548). "The temple, which is called the
temple in Jerusalem, God admitted to be His house or
court, not as though he needed it, but in order that you, in
this view of it, giving yourselves to Him, might not worship
in like manner because of your persistence in it, or rather your increased prone-
ness to it, he calls you to a remembrance of it." Also c. xxx : " Impute it to
your own wickedness that God can even be accused by those who have no under
standing of not having always instructed all in the same righteous statutes." In
later passages the doctrine is reiterated.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 259
idols. And that this is so, Isaiah says : L What house have
ye built me, saith the Lord. Heaven is my throne and earth
is my footstool' " (Trypho xxii.; cf; Barn, xvi., Heb. 9,
Acts 7 : 44-50).
Not only does Justin coincide with Barnabas in his general
principle, and his application of it to the greater institutions
of Mosaism as a whole, circumcision, Sabbaths, the law of
clean and unclean meats, the sacrificial system, the temple;
but in great detail he reproduces the particular types found
by Barnabas, as the two goats as symbols of the two comings
of Jesus, Trypho xl., cxi. (Bam. vii.), the outstretched hands
of Moses (Trypho xci., cxii., Barn, xii.), Joshua's name
(Trypho cxiii., Bam. xii., cf. Heb. 4 : 8), and the like.
The difference between the Alexandrianism of Justin and
that of Barnabas is that whereas in Barnabas the literal sense
is said to be of the Devil (Barn., ix., x.), in Justin the typo
logical theory is more fully adjusted to the Pauline by the
doctrine that the external sense was temporarily intended.1
Before returning to the doctrine of Stephen's speech on
this fundamental question of the age, the occasion and valid
ity of the Mosaic law and of the temple and its worship, we
have still to cite one or two other early Christian documents
which illustrate the more radical type of Alexandrianism rep
resented by Barnabas, and which treat them as "statutes
which were not good." The Essenic tendency already noted
as apparent in the agraphon from the Gospel of the Nazarenes
appears quite clearly in the Clementine Becognitions, whose
parallels to Acts 7 :38 ff. are thus abridged and paraphrased
by Hilgenfeld.2 Peter (Becogn. I. 32 f.) teaches Clement
that the true Prophet (Adam-Christ) had revealed to Abra
ham that circumcision was instituted as a sign and seal of
chastity. Afterward the twelve patriarchs, numbering 72
(sic, cf. Acts 7 : 14) with their families, abode four hundred
l Trypho xxvii., quoted above on p. 77 (note). In the Clementines Peter even
admits to Clement that there are elements of Scripture which misrepresent the
truth, and must be disregarded.
2 Wiss. Th. 1895, p. 408 f.

260 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
years in Egypt (Acts 7 : 6). The true Prophet appeared to
Moses in Egypt (Acts 7 : 30) for Israel's deliverance. But
when Moses had climbed the Mount, the people showed their
idolatrous inclination by worshipping the golden calf (1 : 35
cf. Acts 7 : 41), and Moses was then forced to concede to
them the evil practice of sacrifice, but left the eradication of
it to the true Prophet, who should be like him and come
after him (i. 36, cf. Acts 7 : 37). He was also obliged to
concede to the weakness of the people a special place in
which alone it should be lawful for them to sacrifice. Only
a few (Essenes and the like) had been able to raise them
selves to an understanding, of the worthlessness of sac
rifice. Finally Peter explains that the building of a ma
terial temple on the spot which had been set apart as a
place of prayer was the impious act of an ambitious tyrant1
(Becogn., I. 38).
An equally radical attitude of distinct hostility to the
sacrificial system appears in an early Christian writing of
unmistakably Egyptian origin, whose relation to the Clemen
tine sources and the sources of Luke-Acts is a difficult prob
lem.2 The Kerygma Petri, the surviving fragments of which
are principally found in Clement of Alexandria, dates. from
early in the second century, as the copious use made of it in
the Apology of Aristides proves. Like Justin, like Aristides,
its author aims to present Christianity in contrast first with
heathenism, then with Judaism, dividing the world reli-
1 Ubi vero tyrannos sibi magis quaesivere quam reges, tunc etiam in loco, qui
eis orationis causa f uerat prsedestinatus, templum pro ambitione regia construxere.
Recogn., I. 38.
2 There is also conclusive evidence of literary dependence between the
Kerygma Petri and the Clementines (see v. Dobschiitz, T. u. U. xi. p. 33). Recogn.
V. 20, and Homil., X. 16 agree verbally in their description of Egyptian brute
worship, both (and consequently their older common source) reproducing the
Ap. of Aristides, c. xii., which in turn reproduces Frg. Ill of the Kerygma, this
in turn showing connection with Aristeas, xxxviii. 10. To complete the chain of
Alexandrian sources we need only add the relations which von Dobschiitz has
pointed out between Frg. II of the Kerygma and Philo, the Prooimium in Theoph.
ad Autol., II. 36, and the Sibylline Oracles, viii. 375 ff., and 390. Also between
Frg. Ill and Celsus (Orig. c. Cels. iii. 19), with Origen's refutation.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 261
giously into these three "genera." For his contrast between
Jewish and heathen worship, in particular the description of
heathen rites, wherein the Egyptian receive special atten
tion, he resorts in part, as had Barnabas, to Aristeas.1 The
whole passage is also so close in form and substance to
Acts 17 : 24-31 (cf. also Acts 14 : 15-17) as to compel the
recognition of some more or less direct, but apparently liter
ary connection.2 But we are concerned now with the de
scription of Jewish worship which in the Kerygma is placed
in the mouth of Peter, and which appears to have followed
upon that of the heathen : — " Neither worship ye as do the
Jews, for these, fancying that they alone know God, know
him not, but are worshippers of angels and archangels, the
month and the moon. And unless the moon appear they do
not observe the sabbath, which is called First,3 nor do they
observe the new moon, nor Unleavened Bread, nor the Feast
(Tabernacles), nor a great day. "
We get the full significance of this arraignment of the
Mosaic ceremonial, and its ritual calendar, as a "worship of
angels and archangels," by comparing Paul's arraignment of
the Judaizers in Galatia for returning in their newly adopted
observance of (Sabbath) "days and months (new-moons),
and seasons (D'lJflQ) and (Sabbatic) years " to a worship of
1 Cf. Aristeas, xxxviii. 15-39: 5 Swete, 542, 10-544, 20, with Kerygma Petri,
Frg. Ill, ed. Dobschiitz (Texte u. Unt. xi.). See the preceding note.
2 " Voraussetzung des in der Heidenkirche sich bildenden Dogmas ist ein nur
in diirftigen Grundziigen feststeheudes, sonst aber hochst bildsames Kerygma
von dem einen Gott und von Christus " (quoted by v. Dobschiitz, ibid, from Har
nack, D. G.2 1, 67). He adds : " Bei jenem herrseht der Gedanke der Weltschbp-
fung, bei diesem meist der des Endgerichtes vor," and cites II Clem. 1 : 1, and
Hani., Patr. Apost. Opera, I, 2, p. 140. Cf. Acts 17 : 24-31, and Kerygma Petri
Frags. Wisdom of Solomon, also attributed to Alexandria, gives one of the best
and fullest examples of this Kerygma. Cf. Wisd. 13: 6, 10, with Acts 17:
23-27. Its comparison of Greek with Egyptian idolatry is specially noteworthy
in connection with Aristeas and Kerygma Petri (cf. Wisd. 15 : 18-16 : 1, with
Aristeas xxxviii. 1-15 (Merx. Archiv. i. p. 278).
* For the elaborate ceremonies connected with the establishment of the annual
religious calendar, beginning with the examination of " witnesses of the moon "
for the "sanctification of the (Passover) new moon," see the Talmudic tractate
Rosh-hasshanah.

262 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
the a-Toixeia tov Kocrp.ov, which, as compared with the direct
"access in one Spirit unto the Father" (Eph. 2 : 18), ob
tained by Christ for both Jew and Gentile, is no better than
their original heathenism. Everling1 long ago proved that
the o-Toixeia tov koct/j-ov, both here in Galatians 4 : 3, 9 and
Colossians 2 : 8, where the observance of "feast-days, new
moons and sabbath days " is associated with " worshipping
of angels " and the rites declared to be a Kid tcov fieXXovTcov
whose corporeal reality is "of Christ," are angelic beings in
control of the four elements of nature and the heavenly
bodies. Since then the Apology of Aristides has been brought
to light ; and this writer not only declares the Jews to be in
their worship " like the heathen, even if in some sort they do
appear to approach the truth," asserting that the Mosaic cere
monial is addressed " to angels and not to God, seeing they
observe Sabbaths and new moons and the Passover and the
great Fast, and fasts and circumcision and cleanness of
meats,"2 but employs o-Toixeia tov koo-jiov as his favorite
term for the elemental spirits who are the real beings actu
ally honored in the worship offered to angels, demons, spirits
and divinities whether Jewish or heathen. The Judaizers of
Colossae, accordingly, are but slightly different from those of
Galatia. The common besetting sin of contemporary Juda
ism, a superstitious angelology and demonology,3 comes a little
more into the foreground, Pharisaic nomism has retreated
a little more into the background. In both epistles Paul is
setting forth this contrast of Christianity with a more or less
theosophic Judaism, and the point of superiority emphasized
is that Christianity affords direct instead of merely indirect
1 Paulinische Angelologie und Damonologie, 1888. See also E. Y. Hincks in
Journ. of Bibl. Lit. 1896 ; and Woods, " Survivals in Christianity," 1893, p. 71,
quoting Garnett, " Women of Turkey and their Folk-lore."
2 Ap. of Aristides, u. xiv. (Texts and Studies, I, 1, 1891). See also Zahn, Gesch.
d. Kan. II, 2 : 2, p. 823). In 2 Clem., a writing affected by Egyptian sources, the
Jews are called oi Sokovvtcs ixetv rov "e0'»' ! cf • Ep. to Diogn. t. iii., 6poiorp6irus
(sc. tois <?0c6O-i) rfyv BpncrKetav irpoo-dyova-iv, ktX.
3 Note the special character of early error in neighboring Ephesus. Acts
19:13-19.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 263
access to God (cf. Gal. 3 : 19 f. ; Eph. 2 : 18). The Mosaic
ceremonial, as proved by its " days and months and seasons
and years," and by the fact that it was "ordained through
angels by the hand of a mediator " (Gal. 3 : 19) was adapted
to the immaturity of the recipients. Its rules and ceremonies
were addressed to " beings who by nature are not divine "
(4 : 8) but were temporarily appointed by the Father as
"stewards and guardians of the heir," having only a dele
gated authority (hence da0evrf) and no personal ownership
(hence irrcoxa) of the inheritance (the world) with which
they had been entrusted until the coming of the "lord of
all."1 The nature of the Mosaic ceremonial (e. g., its lunar
calendar), especially its extraordinary resemblance to heathen
rites 2 and the beings through whom, historically, it was
mediated, show it therefore to be in form 3 a worship of
angels, although the distinctions of meats (the Colossian
Judaizers had in addition distinctions of " drinks ; " cf . Rom.
14 : 17, 21) and the observances of new moons, sabbaths and
feasts, are providentially adapted to foreshadow Christ (Col.
2 : 17) and might thus conceivably be utilized TV7nKoj<>, after
the Alexandrian manner. That which proves, however, that
these allusions to the law externally conceived as being a
"worship of .angels" or o-Toixeia, do not belong to the sub
stance of Paul's teaching, but are merely borrowed for the
occasion, is the fact above noted, that there is no attempt to
distinguish between the external and the spiritual, the divine
and the human, the temporal and eternal in the law, and no
attempt even to carry out the typology whose practicability
is implied. It is therefore a mistake, to attempt to account
1 See above (p. 242) the citation from Enoch, lxxxix. f., as to the 70 angels to
whose guardianship Israel was entrusted by God, and who are judged for unfaith
fulness to their charge. In Clem. Recogn., II. 42, each of the 72 nations has its
"prince" or angelic guardian, that of Israel being Michael.
2 In Gal. 5:12, Paul regards the mere outward rite of circumcision as com
parable to the heathen religious castration.
8 Cf. Col. 2:11, where the Jewish fleshly circumcision is x*'Po™itit6s ; with
Acts 7 : 48, iv x"Pmol^rols> and 41> wnere those wn0 *v<ppalvovro iv tois cpyqis
riv xtipSi' avrwv, receive the ordinances of angels in place of the Aarpeia.

264 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
for the doctrine of the Kerygma, Barnabas, and the Epistle
to Diognetus (c. 1), which treats the Mosaic ceremonial as a
" superstition " addressed to semi-divine beings, as based on
Galatians 4 : 1-11. In Paul we find at most occasional off
shoots of the doctrine. Its roots must be sought among
Ebionite and Alexandrian writers, in the distinction between
the Xoyia £ebvra, discovered by gnosis underneath the Mosaic
ceremonial, and the system itself, which, if not actually evil
and idolatrous, is at least heathenish, and tolerated by God
only " by accommodation to that nation. "
With this understanding of the distinctive elements of
Pauline and Alexandrian thought, however occasionally in
termingled, we return to the doctrine of Stephen's speech,
which represents in Acts 7 : 42, that the Mosaic ceremonial
was ordained as a punishment for the stiffneckedness (cf.
Ex. 32 : 9 ; 33 : 1) and hard-heartedness of Israel, God being
compelled continually by their grossness to put off the fulfil
ment of his promise to Abraham, and to hide the true Xarpela
behind one adapted to a people which delighted in "the
works of their hands " (externalities), " turned back in their
hearts to Egypt," and had to be given over to a Xarpeia of
" the host of heaven. "
For we have here as sharp a distinction as in Barnabas and
Justin, between the Xoyia £a>vra originally delivered to Moses
for the people in fulfilment of the promise whose time for
fulfilment had now come (v. 17), that they should serve
him in the appointed place (v. 7), and the ceremonial law.
The "living oracles" proved all too ideal for an unworthy
people, and were dashed to fragments at the foot of the
mount. The sacrificial system actually ordained was suited
to the people's demand of Aaron, "Make us gods which shall
go before us." It was not a worship addressed directly to
God, but to "the host of heaven," for the prophet declares
(so argues our speaker) that the slain beasts and sacrifices of
the forty years in the wilderness were not offered to God.
On the contrary, to the prophet its tabernacle was a taber
nacle of Moloch, and its implements mere tvttov;, images of

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 265
Saturn the star-god,1 ignorantly worshipped. It would be
unreasonable to attempt to show that the Elohistic account
of the giving of the Decalogue, followed by the people's
apostasy under the lead of Aaron, and the subsequent insti
tution of the ceremonial worship was intended by its prophet
author to suggest the superiority of the moral law as the true
basis of divine favor (cf. Micah 6 : 6-8). Actual continuity
between the ancient prophetic and the later Alexandrian and
Ebionite antipathy to ceremonialism is more than we under
take to show. We observe only that this interpretation of
Exodus 20 to 34 lay very near to hand, and is seized upon by
our author and his followers. Because of the stiffnecked-
ness of the people and their craving for external forms like
the Egyptian, "God turned (from his purpose that they
should serve him, v. 7) and gave them up to serve the host
of heaven," i. e., angels, in particular those represented by
the heavenly bodies. For proof he refers to Amos 5 : 25,
assuming that the question "Did ye offer unto me slain
beasts and sacrifices forty years in the wilderness, O house of
Israel?" is to be answered, No, but to beings who find de
light in ceremonial worship, viz., the host of heaven, the
o-Toixeia of sun and stars. This he takes to be indicated in
the words which follow, "And ye took up the tabernacle of
Moloch, and the star of the god Rephan, figures (tvttovC)
which ye made to worship them."2
Undoubtedly there are objections to this interpretation of
Acts 7 : 39-44, in spite of the fact shown by the parallels
1 For Moloch as sun-god, see Miller in Herzog's Realencykl.2 Rephan is the
Coptic name for \V3, Chiun, or Saturn, intelligible to the LXX, and apparently
to the author of the speech of Stephen.
2 The sense of the original : the wilderness period one destitute of sacrifices
and offerings, although a time of special favor, was hopelessly lost after the
Priestly Document came in to represent the sojourn in the wilderness as the
sacerdotal period, kot' i^ox-h". Our author does not, of course, venture to deny
the continual burnt offerings and sacrifice of the forty years in the wilderness,
though such is really the meaning of Amos, neither does he assert that they were
not intended for Yahwe" ; but he appeals to prophetic denunciation in proof that
God refused to regard them as offered to himself, and turned over this unworthy
\arpeia to " the host of heaven."

266 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
we adduce from the Kerygma, Barnabas, Justin, and the
Clementines, showing that this was the understanding of
the author's contemporaries and literary kindred. We are
well aware that the worship of "the host of heaven" (Jer.
7 : 18, LXX) belongs specifically to the time of Manasseh.
We are also aware that the question and answer quoted from
Amos refer to two different periods separated by an interval
of some six centuries. The inference is too easily drawn
that the Christian speaker has the same idea ; that he means,
" Did you continue in the high and spiritual worship ordained
for you in the wilderness, according to the promise, ' Ye shall
worship me in this place,' O Israel? Nay, repeatedly you
forsook it and worshipped strange gods." But what has the
apostasy of Israel in the time of Manasseh and Jeremiah to
do with the Stephen's argument ? No one then denied these
later -idolatries of Israel. No one then would have ventured
to assert that Israel's present Xarpela was not scrupulously
conformed to the prescribed ceremonial, and sincerely in
tended for God. At the utmost this subsequent apostasy
was an episode of Israel's past, which aggravated the gen
eral charge against them (v. 53, Kal ovk icpvXdgare); but it
was the merest incident to the principle at stake. The ques
tion as between the speaker and his opponents concerns the
present Xarpela of "slain beasts and sacrifices," as to whose
ordination at Sinai both agree, the Jew claiming that this of
itself is decisive as to its being " the Xarpela " (Rom. 9 : 5),
the worship promised in Exodus 3 : 12, and actually insti
tuted by God, perfect, absolute, ultimate. The question
concerns the worship of the forty years in the wilderness, a
period conceived by both parties, and proverbially by every
Old Testament writer, as the typical period of Israel's faith
ful adherence to Yahwe". Unless the Christian can prove
in some way that this is not the Xarpela, not ultimate but
provisional (Paulinism); not direct, but indirect (Gal. 3 :
19 f., 24; 4 : 1-4, 8-11) ; not life-giving (Xoyia tcovra, vop,o<:
Bwdfievos £woTroieicr0ai), but a matter of "dead works,"
"works of men's hands" (epya veKpd, Heb. 6 : 1; 9 : 14,

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 267
epyois r&v x^P&v aircov, Acts 7 : 41); not "worship in spirit
and in truth," not the XoyiK^ Xarpela and 0vaia fao-a "ac
ceptable to God " (Rom. 12 : 1), not the 0pncrKeia Ka0apd Kal
dp,lavTo<i rrapd rep 0ecp kui irarpi (James 1 : 27) ; but falling
far short of the divine intention (Acts 7 : 7, 38), he has
wasted his words. All he has said proves nothing, the sec
ond Moses can do no more when he comes than improve, if
that be possible, on the scrupulosity of the ritual ordained
after the apostasy at Sinai.
Accordingly our speaker most indisputably conceives his
quotation as referring to the worship of the forty years in the
wilderness, that of the tabernacle, which " our fathers had in
the wilderness " as a " tabernacle of p,aprvpia, even as he
appointed who spake unto Moses, that he should make it
according to the two? that he had seen." If additional
proof were needed that the speaker conceives the prophet as
referring not to subsequent idolatries in the answer he gives
to his own question, but to the same wilderness worship, the
worship of the tabernacle, it would be found in the illogical
break advocates of the accepted view are obliged to discover
not only after v. 42, but again after v. 43. Against this we
have the interweaving from v. 42 to v. 46 of words and ideas
which prove that in the speaker's mind all refer to the same.
God gave Israel up after the apostasy at Sinai to serve (Xar-
peveiv) " the host of heaven " (crrparla rov ovpavov). This
inference (of v. 42a) is drawn from the (supposed) fact that
Amos had designated the tabernacle "a tabernacle for the
sun " ("Moloch," Amos 5 : 26, cf. Ps. 19 : 4), and its uten
sils as made for the worship of this sun-god, and the star-
god Rephan. The back reference of v. 44 to the tvttovi of
v. 43 is equally clear, since the author draws from it his
inference that this tabernacle and its utensils were in fact
"types," though both here and in Hebrews 9 : 5 the less
important " types " are passed over for the sake of the
greater, the type of the tabernacle itself, a o-kijvv rrjs p,aprv-
pia<s, which testified of the " tabernacling presence " (o-ktj-
va>p.a) sought by David.

268 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
Besides this break, wrongly assumed in the usual interpre
tation, there is the violence assumed to be done by Stephen
to the sacred history. In the Old Testament as well as in
a constant and unvarying tradition, the forty years of the
wilderness were the period of all others of Israel's con
stancy.1 It is most improbable that Stephen (or the author
of the speech) should conceive them as the reverse.
On the other hand, if we are willing to look outside the
New Testament to analogous statements in Ebionite and
Alexandrian sources, the author's declaration that the taber
nacle worship was in reality (though not of course in the
estimation of the worshippers) a worship not of God directly,
but of "the host of heaven," i. e., "angels and archangels, the
moon and the month,"2 and that the prophets manifest their
knowledge of the fact in their repudiation of the ritual, will
evince itself as by no means so startling as at first sight appears.
In reality it is essential to the argument of the speech as a
whole; for, be it noted, the conflict of early Christianity is
not with the temple ceremonial, which offers but slight temp
tation to the people, none whatever after 70 A. d., but the
tabernacle ceremonial of Exodus -Numbers conceived as hav
ing magical effect through mediation of angels. It is this
"ceremonial on paper" of Rabbinic Judaism which is an
tagonized by Hebrews and by our author from a practically
identical standpoint. Doubtless our author understands the
prophet in the passage he cites as employing the names
Moloch and Rephan hyperbolically, but it is the same taber
nacle worship, that which now claims to be the Xarpela, that
which Amos repudiated, to which he now would oppose Xoyia
t,5)vra and a XoyiKr) Xarpela eidpeo-rot rco 0ecp. Israel still
continues to delight in "the works of their hands," fondly
imagining that such an outward Xarpeia is acceptable to
God. The prophet with clearer vision perceived it long ago
1 Num. 25 : 1 ff. ; Deut. 32 : 12, fall outside this period, and moreover could not
be regarded as justifying the statement that God, after the Sinai apostasy,
" turned, and gave them up to serve the host of heaven."
2 Kerygma Petri.

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 269
to be not only unworthy to be addressed to him, but by the
divine intention a service of sun and stars, properly to be
classed with heathen rites 1 addressed to Moloch and Saturn,
though "typical " of a higher worship.
Our author accordingly distinguished between the Xoyia
%vsvra God was on the point of giving, — had in fact already
given — through Moses, and the actual Mosaic law. Like
Barnabas he would deny the claim of the Jews to possess
even the covenant of the law. "Ours it is; but they lost
it in this way forever, when Moses had just received it.
For the Scripture saith, And Moses was in the mountain
fasting forty days and forty nights, and he received the
covenant from the Lord, even tables of stone written with
the finger of the hand of the Lord. But they lost it by turn
ing unto idols. For thus saith the Lord: Moses, Moses,
come down quickly, for thy people whom thou broughtest
out of the land of Egypt have done unlawfully. And Moses
understood and threw the two tables from his hands; and
their covenant was broken in pieces, that the covenant of the
Beloved, Jesus, might be sealed unto our hearts in the hope
which springeth from faith in him."2
Our author, like the author of the Kerygma Petri, denied
that the Mosaic ceremonial was addressed directly to God,
and declared it to be a "service of angels." How else shall
we account for the contrast of v. 7 with v. 42 Xarpevaovcri
pi,oi iv rco roircp tovtco . . . iiricrrpe^e, Kal irapeBcoKev avrov<;
Xarpeveiv rfj crrparia tov ovpavov? Whether the conception
came from Galatians 3 : 19; 4 : 1-8, or both are derived
from some earlier Alexandrian writer, at all events we have
in Acts 7 a more advanced and radical form than in
1 Cf. Barn. xvi. 2. "For almost like the heathen they sanctified him in the
temple." The very fact that it is here so hard to draw the line between actual
heathen worship, and the Mosaic ritual as conceived by this writer, is the charac
teristic feature. The further we go from Paulinism in the direction of the later
Christian Alexandrianism the more evanescent becomes the line of differentiation
between the Jewish "superstition" (Ep. to Diognetus, c. 1) and actual heathen
worship. 2 Barn. iv. 6-8.

270 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
Galatians and Hebrews, where the mediation of the Law
through angels is more prominent than its character as a
worship of angels.
But our author's Alexandrianism finds typological signifi
cance even in this worship of angels. The tabernacle itself
and the " star of Rephan " 1 were " types, " v. 43, though
naturally the speech does not stop as the author of the Xoyos
TrapaKXr)crea>s (Heb. 9) intimates that he might, to "speak
severally " of the " candlestick and the table and the shew
bread. " It passes on rather in its final division, verses 44—
50, to deal with the third prerogative claimed by Judaism,
leading over through reference to the iK/isMaw-tabernacle, a
" type, " in the author's view, of the iShekinah-'pTesence 2 of
God, sought for by David, misconceived and lost by Solo
mon, but realized in the Messianic age.
3. In this section there is no development of the personal
theocratic type of Messiah, although we are not left in doubt
as to who it is, for v. 45 closes a period (" until the days of
David ") and in v. 46 David is expressly characterized as
the man " who found favor in the sight of God. " But the
supreme significance of David, as here conceived, is not that
he achieved the independence of the nation and thus became
forerunner of the Messianic king (cf. 2 : 30 ff.), but that he
again brought the divine promise (7:7; cf. Luke 1 : 69-75)
to the verge of fulfilment in the form of the dwelling of
God with his people. The speech rightly considers this
Shekinah--pTesence to have been symbolized by the taber
nacle, Exodus 25 : 8; 29 : 43-46. The temple, on the con
trary, it conceives to have been a perversion of the promise
1 What our author understood by " the star of Rephan " is a puzzle. That the
tiJitos symbolized to him the Star of Jacob (Num. 24: 17) would seem credible;
but what utensil carried by Israel in the tabernacle or in heathen worship had
the shape of a star ? Perhaps he would have been as much at a loss to answer
as we. 2 We should be obliged to coin some such term as cotabernaculatio dei to cor
respond in sense with the Hebrew. The Greek plays upon the terms o-Knvii
(vv. 43, 44) and aKi\vap.a (v. 46) in a manner fairly equivalent to the Hebrew
mishkan and. shekinah, both formed from IDS' "to tabernacle."

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 271
in the same way as the ceremonial worship had been a per
version of the covenant : " they shall serve me. " Was it not
called the tabernacle of the testimony (tov p,aprvpiov)? And
had it not been made according to the figure (two?) ap
pointed by God, who showed the pattern to Moses in the
Mount?1 Did not the story of Exodus 33 : 1-7 represent
that the tabernacle was a substitute for the actual presence
of God ? It remained then during the period of the conquest
under Joshua, " unto the days of David, " and this is clearly
conceived as a period of God's favor, when he "thrust out
the nations from their possession before the face of our
fathers." During these years it remained a "testimony"
and " type ; " but David, a theocratic forerunner of Messiah,
assured of God's favorable regard, sought actual fulfilment.
He asked of God — not to " build him an house, " but — to
"find a habitation (o-Kr)vcop,a) for the God of Jacob." The
phraseology is borrowed from Psalm 132 : 2, 5, but both
here and still more clearly in the fundamental passage,
2 Samuel 7 : 5-11, David appears as receiving from God
something better than " a house of cedar " for the ark. In
deed there is already in the Elohist narrative of 2 Samuel
7 an unmistakable antipathy for ceremonialism in general,
and particularly for the claims of the Judsean royal sanctuary
in Jerusalem to be the exclusive " house of God, " whatever
we may say as to the anti-priestly, anti-Aaronic animus of
the story of the golden calf and the institution of ceremonial
worship in Exodus 32 f. In the original David receives, in
stead of what he asks, the assurance that God will build
(i. e., establish) his, David's, house (i. e., his dynasty). In
Stephen's speech we are carried further still, the thought of
the divine o-Krjvcop,a overshadows that of the Davidic throne ;
cf. Rev. 21:3.
But the speech leaves no manner of doubt regarding its
conception of the Solomonic way of realizing what David
had sought. Solomon's act was a supreme illustration of
1 So Heb. 8 : 5, which also quotes Ex. 25 : 40, takes not the temple rites and
utensils as types, but those of the tabernacle.

~7

272 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
Israel's habitual " uncircumcision of heart and ears." There
is indeed abundant historical ground for regarding the Solo
monic temple on Mount Moriah as a monument of tyrannical
oppression, which, politically, led to the disruption of the
kingdom of David; religiously, to superstitious dependence
on rites and ceremonies. Yet to find such treatment of it in
a biblical writer is surprising enough, even when supported
by the citation from Deutero-Isaiah : "The heaven is my
throne, and the earth the footstool of my feet. What man
ner 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 ? " It is not strange even that Meyer and Wendt
(Comm. ad loc.') should reject almost violently the interpre
tation of vv. 48-50 by Gfrb'rer, Baur, Zeller, Rauch, and
Overbeck as meant to disparage the temple, the building of
which is represented as a " corruption of the worship of God
in its own nature free, bound to no fixed place and to no
rigid, external rites " (Zeller), and even more, when Schneck-
enburger (St. u. Krit. 1855, p. 528 ff.) concurs, ascribing to
the speech a view akin to Essenism. The idea is strange to
the New Testament. But so is that of the covenant of the
law as a worship of angels, imposed "by accommodation,"
which, nevertheless, appears in Paul, in Barnabas, in Justin.
If in a whole family of writings of the period both ideas are
found associated, their strangeness in the New Testament
only proves that the affinities of these particular chapters are
largely outside it. Our author agrees with the Clementine
writer that the temple-building of Solomon was "an act of
tyrannous ambition, perverting a place of prayer into a dis
play of royal magnificence." Herein he is followed, as we
know, by Barnabas, who explains at length that the temple
was a wretched misunderstanding of the promise of the in
dwelling of God in his people's hearts. This promise is now
come to pass inasmuch as the outward temple was first "abol
ished" by Isaiah's word (as in Acts 7: 49 f.) and has now
been destroyed in the war, whereas the true habitatio dei is
being built up in the community of his people. " For God

STEPHEN'S SPEECH 273
dwelleth truly in our habitation within us. How ? ... He
himself prophesying in us . . . dwelling in us, opening for us
the door of the temple, which is the mouth . . . this is the
spiritual temple built up to the Lord. " 1 Admit that conceiv
ably both Barnabas and the Clementine writer might have taken
the idea from Acts, even so, the fact that they so understand it
is no slight evidence that it should be so understood. Add now
that this interpretation is in line with the course of thought in
the speech as a whole and that all its ideas are, so to speak,
" constants " in a particular stream of Christian thought of
marked individuality and firmly rooted in a well-known pre-
Christian philosophy, and the strangeness (to us) of the
interpretation tends not so much to disprove its correctness
as to discover its source. We have already referred to the
peroration of the speech, vv. 51-53. Take the anti-Jewish
Alexandrian standpoint it occupies in common with so many
writings of the period of the great apologists, and nothing
can be more perfect than the unity of the discourse and the
pertinence of each successive section to the fundamental idea.
It has shown by a review of the Old Testament history that
the true interpretation of each of Israel's fancied preroga
tives, the Inheritance of Abraham, the Oracles of God, the
Shekinah-presence, is the inner, that witnessed by the Holy
Spirit ; and that the reason for its rejection by Israel accord
ing to the flesh, is simply that they, like their fathers, are
obdurate, gross, and stiffnecked. This they have shown not
only in their rejection and persecution of the theocratic
leaders who were types of Messiah, and the prophets who
foretold the coming of the Just One, but ultimately by the
betrayal and murder of the Messiah himself. Even the law
which they had, with its " types " and " testimonies, " an
ordinance of angels only, because for the hardness of their
hearts they could not receive the "living oracles," nor "serve
God" himself, they did not keep, but wandered from it into
absolute heathenism and idolatry.2
1 Abridged from Barn. 16.
2 Such in Justin Martyr, Trypho xix., is the sense manifestly given to this
passage : " God accommodating himself to that nation, enjoined them also to
18

274 BIBLICAL AND SEMITIC STUDIES
But turn now to 2 Esdras 14 : 30, where we have a t
lar denunciation, " Hear, O Israel. Our fathers t *, th' jbsv
ginning were strangers in Egypt, and they were del: red
from thence, and received the law of life, which they ke lot,
which ye also have transgressed after them." The di* i>
between this and the Christian denunciation of Aetb %*>,.
53 is just here, that the Christian denies that the law Aw-
ally received by Israel at Sinai was a " law of life. " ' For
if a law had been given such as were capable of giving 1 'e, "
says Paul (Gal. 3 : 21), "verily justification wouH have xr
of the law." The commandment was indeed in its uiti ite
intention " unto life, " but was found in practical workii i
be " unto death " (evpe0tj p,oi 97 , ivroXrj r) et? ^coijv, avr sly
0dvarov, Rom. 7 : 10). Barnabas xiv. 1-4 1 knows of , th
a " law of life " presented at Sinai, biit not " recei v . '
" Yea, verily, but as regards the covenant which He swai Ix.
the fathers to give it to the people, let us see whether ic
hath actually given it. — He hath given it, but they on tl : j
part were not found worthy to receive it by reason of th iir
sins. For the prophet saith: 'And Moses was fasting at
Mount Sinai forty days and forty nights, that he might
receive the covenant of the Lord to give to the reo^"
And Moses received from the Lord the two tables which
were written by the finger of the hand of .the Lord in ti
spirit.' And Moses took them and brought them down ¦.
give them to the people. And the Lord said uiito Moses:
' Moses, Moses, come down quickly; for thy people, whom
thou leddest forth from the land of Egypt, iath^lone
wickedly. And Moses perceived that they had made for
themselves again molten images. And he cast them ou of
his hands, and the tables of the covenant of. the Lord wero
broken in pieces.' Moses received them, biit they on cheir
part were not found worthy. But how did we receive them?
offer sacrifices as if to his name, in order that you might not serve idols. T.'hich
precept, however, you have not observed : nay, you sacrificed your children; to
demons." • '.
1 Kepeatipg-iii substange, wlvaii.b^had previously written in iv. 6-0 L

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