Saint Stephen and the Jerusalem Temple

Marcel Simon

doi:10.1017/S0022046900035909

Saint Stephen and the Jerusalem Temple

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 March 2011

Marcel Simon

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Marcel Simon: Affiliation:
Professor and Dean of the Faculté des Lettres, University of Strasbourg

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It has often been noted that St. Stephen stands, at first sight, as an isolated figure in the history of the early Church. His theological thought, as expressed in his speech (Acts vii), is very personal and, if compared with other forms of primitive Christian thought, almost completely aberrant. Its main characteristic is a strongly antiritualistic trend, and a fierce hostility towards the Temple, which he obviously considers almost as a place of idolatry. The building up of the Temple by Solomon seems in his eyes to stand on the same plane as the making of the Golden Calf. It is the last of those many and grievous sins and apostasies which mark the whole course of Israelite history. He thus clearly demonstrates that the accusations produced against him by so-called ‘false witnesses’, and which motivated his trial, were perfectly well founded: lie had indeed spoken ‘blasphemous words against this holy place’ and, ipso facto, against at least part of the Law.

Type: Research Article
Information: The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , October 1951 , pp. 127 - 142

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022046900035909 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1951

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^{page 127 note 1} This paper reproduces the substance of a lecture given at the University of Manchester in February 1951, and is part of a larger work to be published on St. Stephen.

^{page 127 note 2} The most complete and accurate study on the subject is by Bacon, B. W., Stephen's Speech: its Argument and Doctrinal Relationship, in Biblical and Semitic Studies (Yale Bicentennial Publications), 1901, 213–276Google Scholar. Pahncke, H., Der Stephanismus der Apostelgeschichte, in Theol. Studien und Kritiken, 1912, 1–38Google Scholar, is of little help.

^{page 127 note 3} Acts vi. 13.

^{page 127 note 4} Acts ii. 46, 47.

^{page 127 note 5} Acts xxi. 20 ff.

^{page 127 note 6} I Cor. ix. 20.

^{page 128 note 1} Vie de Jésus, Paris 1932, 491 ff.Google Scholar

^{page 128 note 2} Heb., x. 1.

^{page 128 note 3} Heb., ix. 24.

^{page 128 note 4} Acts vii. 46, 47.

^{page 128 note 5} I disagree on this point with H. J. Schoeps, Theologie tmd Geschichte des Judenchristentums, Tübingen 1949, 238, who has some very clever remarks on Stephen's speech, but who has, in my opinion, failed in trying to establish that οἴκῳ is the true reading.

^{page 129 note 1} On that episode and its relation to Psalm cxxxii, cf. Desnoyers, L., Histoire du Peuple Hébreu, ii, Paris 1930, 189–202Google Scholar.

^{page 129 note 2} Samuel vii. 2.

^{page 130 note 1} 2 Samuel vii. 3.

^{page 130 note 2} Ibid., vii. 5, 6.

^{page 130 note 3} The opposition mischkan-baith is not maintained throughout the whole Bible. In the harmonising perspective of the Chronicles, for instance, it is completely wiped out, and we find such phrases as: mischkan-beith haelohim (σκην οἴκου το Θεο) 1 Chron. vi. 33 (= LXX vi. 48). It is all the more significant to see it reappear in all its strength in Acts.

^{page 131 note 1} 2 Samuel vii. 11.

^{page 131 note 2} The critical view as to verse 13 has been recently challenged by S. Mowinckel, Natanforjettelsen, 2 Sam. Kap. 7, in Svensk Exegetisk-Aarsbok, xx (1946) 220–229Google Scholar. Mowinckel holds that v. 13 not only is genuine, but provides the clue to the understanding of the whole chapter. I cannot here, for lack of space, discuss his arguments in detail. A comparison, which I hope to work out on another occasion, of 2 Samuel vii and the parallel recension in 1 Chron. xvii would show them to be unfounded. It reveals some very significant differences, proceeding doubtless from intentional retouchings, which stress by contrast the true meaning of the episode in its original shape and make it at least likely that v. 13 in 2 Samuel vii. was interpolated precisely from 1 Chronicles.

^{page 131 note 3} Jeremiah xxxv.

^{page 133 note 1} For the same reason, probably, in 2 Chron. v. 13, ‘then the house was filled with a cloud, even the house of the Lord’, the Septuagint simply drops ‘of the Lord’ after ‘house’, and puts it after ‘cloud’: κα οἴκος ἔνεπλσθη νεφλης δξης κυροου. The δξα here plays the same part as the Name in the previous passage. It signifies the partial presence of the Deity in the Temple. Moreover, it is perhaps not by mere accident that the Septuagint drops those verses (11–14) of 1 Kings vi, where God promises to abide in the Temple. It thus leaves, as it were, the whole responsibility of that merely human enterprise with Solomon; and we do not know exactly whether God agrees or disagrees.

^{page 133 note 2} Acts vii. 47.

^{page 133 note 3} Acts vii. 41.

^{page 134 note 1} Acts vii. 42–3.

^{page 134 note 2} 2 Sam. vii. 7.

^{page 134 note 3} Dialogue, xxii. 3–6.

^{page 134 note 4} Hebrews ix. 11 and 24.

^{page 134 note 5} Cf. on this point, C. Spicq, ‘Le Philonisme de l'Epitre aux Hébreux’ in Revue Biblique (April 1950), 222 ff., where references are given.

^{page 134 note 6} Περ ἱερο I, cf. Spicq, op. cit., 223.

^{page 135 note 1} Heb. ix. 24.

^{page 135 note 2} Heb. viii. 2.

^{page 135 note 3} Acts vii. 44.

^{page 135 note 4} Acts vii, 43–4.

^{page 136 note 1} Dialogue, cxvii. 2.

^{page 136 note 2} On the chronology of the Sibylline writings, cf. Geffcken, Komposition und Entstehungszeit der Oracula Sibyllina, Leipzig 1902, and more recently, art. Sibyllinische Orakel, by Rzach, in Pauly Wissowa's Real-Encyclopädie, 2. Reihe, ii. 2103.

^{page 137 note 1} Or. Sibyll., iv. 8–12.

^{page 137 note 2} Isaiah Ixvi. i.

^{page 137 note 3} Orac. Sibyll., iv. 27–30.

^{page 137 note 4} Cf. on this point, Simon, M., Verus Israel, Paris 1948, 111 ff.Google Scholar, where texts are quoted.

^{page 137 note 5} Barn., vii-x.

^{page 137 note 6} The most striking instance of this position is given by the Didascalia, with its conception of deuterosis or repetition, including al those commandments given by God to the Jews after the worship of the calf and considered by the Didascalia as the means of divine reprisal for the crime of idolatry: Verus Israel, 114.

^{page 138 note 1} Justin Martyr, Dialogue, xviii. 2.

^{page 138 note 2} Ibid., xix. 6.

^{page 138 note 3} References in M. Simon, Vertus Israel, 111 ff., 196 ff.

^{page 138 note 4} Hom, contra Judaeos, iv. 6.

^{page 139 note 1} Ep. to Diognet., iii.

^{page 139 note 2} Apol. xiv. 2.

^{page 139 note 3} Acts vii. 38.

^{page 139 note 4} Theologie und Geschichte des Judenchristentums, 233–42 and 440–56.

^{page 139 note 5} Op. cit., 441.

^{page 140 note 1} Ibid., 236 n. 2, 232 n. 3.

^{page 140 note 2} Apart from die Pseudo-Clementines, there is very little evidence that James actually professed the ideas developed in these writings. Hegesippus, quoted by Eusebius (Eccl. Hist., ii. 23, § 6) tells us that ‘to him alone it was permitted to enter the holy place’ (which, by the way, still calb for a satisfactory explanation), and that ‘he was found on his knees, asking forgiveness on behalf of the people, so that his knees became hard like a camel's’. This is certainly not the behaviour of one who considers the Temple as a place of idolatry. Should we not admit that Stephen is the original and the James of the Pseudo-Clementines the copy and the ‘Tendenzfigur’, and that the Ebionites dressed him after their own fashion because they needed a patron belonging to the circle of the first disciples? Schoeps himself (p. 446) admits that the Ebionite Acts were a replica of the canonical Acts.

^{page 140 note 3} Schoeps, op. cit., 148 ff.

^{page 141 note 1} Acts vii. 52 and 37.

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