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Integrated Stories and Israel's Contested Worship Space: Exod 15.17 and Stephen's Retelling of Heilsgeschichte (Acts 7)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 September 2018
Abstract
Lukan scholarship has paid attention to the ambivalent attitude towards the temple found in Stephen's speech. However, a coherent explanation of this ambivalence is still needed from within the narrative of Stephen's retold history of Israel itself. This study points to a pattern of connection between God's salvation and Israel's worship space captured in the Song of Moses, particularly Exod 15.17, as a sub-structure of the Lukan Stephen's basic understanding of Heilsgeschichte within which he integrates the stories of Abraham, exodus and David. The nature of Israel's worship space revealed in this scheme elucidates Stephen's ambivalent critique of the temple.
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References
1 For a comprehensive list, see Peterson, B., ‘Stephen's Speech as a Modified Prophetic Rîḇ Formula’, JETS 57 (2012) 351–69Google Scholar, at 351–5 nn. 1–13.
2 E.g. Bihler, J., ‘Der Stephanusbericht (Apg 6,8–15 und 7,54–8,2)’, BZ 3 (1959) 252–70Google Scholar, at 258–9, 264–6; Sylva, D. D., ‘The Meaning and Function of Acts 7:46–50’, JBL 106 (1987) 261–75Google Scholar; Weinert, F. D., ‘Luke, Stephen, and the Temple in Luke-Acts’, BTB 17 (1987) 88–90Google Scholar; Larsson, E., ‘Temple-Criticism and the Jewish Heritage: Some Reflexions on Acts 6–7’, NTS 39 (1993) 379–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Bachmann, M., ‘Die Stephanusepisode (Apg 6,1–8,3): Ihre Bedeutung für die Lukanische Sicht des jerusalemischen Tempels und des Judentums’, The Unity of Luke-Acts (ed. Verheyden, J.; BETL 142; Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1999) 645–62Google Scholar; Marguerat, D., ‘Du Temple à la maison suivant Luc-Actes’, Quelle maison pour Dieu? (ed. Focant, C.; Paris: Cerf, 2003) 285–317Google Scholar, at 303–6; Walton, S., ‘A Tale of Two Perspectives?’, Heaven on Earth (ed. Alexander, T. D. and Gathercole, S. J.; Carlisle: Paternoster, 2004) 135–49Google Scholar.
3 For a survey of these two models, see W. G. Shin, ‘The “Exodus” in Jerusalem (Luke 9:31): A Lukan Form of Israel's Restoration Hope’ (PhD diss., Fuller Theological Seminary, 2016) 254–65.
4 For a list of works, see Sylva, ‘Meaning’, 261–2 n. 4.
5 E.g. Jervell, J., Luke and the People of God (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1972) 18Google Scholar, 41–74; Bachmann, M., Jerusalem und der Tempel (BWANT 6/9; Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1980) 369–81Google Scholar; Brawley, R. L., Luke-Acts and the Jews (SBLMS 33; Atlanta: Scholars, 1987) 159Google Scholar; Ravens, D., Luke and the Restoration of Israel (JSNTSup 119; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1995) 67–71Google Scholar.
6 E.g. Donaldson, T. L., ‘Moses Typology and the Sectarian Nature of Early Christian Anti-Judaism: A Study in Acts 7’, JSNT 12 (1981) 27–52Google Scholar.
7 E.g. Ravens, Luke and Restoration, 67; cf. Barrett, C. K., ‘Attitudes to the Temple in Acts’, Templum amicitiae (ed. Horbury, W.; JSNTSup 48; Sheffield: JSOT, 1991) 345–67Google Scholar, at 351–2.
8 E.g. Weinert, ‘Luke, Stephen’, 89–90; Walton, ‘Tale’, 141–2; Bachmann, ‘Stephanusepisode’, 546–7; cf. Sylva, ‘Meaning’, 263–7.
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10 E.g. F. D. Weinert, ‘The Meaning of the Temple in the Gospel of Luke’ (PhD diss., Fordham University, 1979) 186; Bachmann, ‘Stephanusepisode’, 561–2; Keener, C. S., Acts (4 vols.; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2012–15)Google Scholar ii.1331.
11 Peterson, ‘Modified Prophetic Rîḇ’, 354.
12 Keener, Acts, ii.1335.
13 The harder reading (τῷ οἴκῳ Ἰακώβ, 
74, א*, B, D, H; Acts 7.46) creates an echo to Luke's earlier identification of Jesus as the one who is given ‘the throne of his father David’ (τὸν θρόνον Δαυὶδ τοῦ πατρὸς αὐτοῦ, Luke 1.32) and reigns over the house of Jacob (τὸν οἶκον Ἰακώβ, 1.33).
14 Larsson's research (‘Temple-Criticism’) does follow the internal development of Israel's Heilsgeschichte formulated in the speech. I will confirm his observation (following N. A. Dahl) that the stories of both David and Solomon (despite the difference between ‘tent’ and ‘house’) are a fulfilment of the promise given to Abraham (Acts 7.7b; ‘Temple-Criticism’, 392–3). However, his study does not do justice to the speech's ambivalent attitudes and even disregards strong evidence of temple critique in the term χειροποίητος (Acts 7.48; cf. 7.41; ‘Temple-Criticism, 394).
15 Stephen's speech identified as a redactional inclusion of ‘history-sermon’ (Haenchen, E., The Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1971) 288–9Google Scholar) raised numerous negative questions about literary unity and redaction history (see Peterson, ‘Modified Prophetic Rîḇ’, 353 n. 11). The current study is not concerned with such text-composition history but focuses on the narrative form of the retold history of Israel.
16 ‘Sub-structure’ does not refer to a ‘source’ for Luke's composition/redaction. For a survey of suggestions about sources and their challenges, see Hill, C. C., Hellenists and Hebrews: Reappraising Division within the Earliest Church (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992) 92–101Google Scholar. Rather, I point to Exod 15 as an ‘interpretive grid’ that may explain how the Lukan Stephen puts together Israel's stories (cf. Keener, Acts, ii.1335–6). For various suggestions of OT passages as the speech's background, see Soards, M. L., The Speeches in Acts: Their Content, Context, and Concerns (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994) 60–70Google Scholar.
17 A reading without τούτου is attested by better manuscript evidence (
74, א, A, D, E). However, internal evidence may construe this word as either a deletion or an addition; see Metzger, B., A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1994 2) 298Google Scholar. In either case, the phrase refers to the temple. If τούτου is original, it augments the interplay between τόπου τοῦ ἁγίου τούτου (6.13) and τόπῳ τούτῳ (7.7).
18 For Israel's interpretive traditions that typologically connect the exodus and the conquest based on God's promise of the land to Abraham in Gen 15, see Fishbane, M., Text and Texture (New York: Schocken, 1979) 122–7Google Scholar.
19 E.g. Haenchen, Acts, 279; Marshall, I. H., Acts (TNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980) 136Google Scholar; Pesch, R., Die Apostelgeschichte (2 vols.; EKKNT 5; Zürich: Benziger, 1986)Google Scholar i.249; Barrett, C. K., The Acts of the Apostles (2 vols.; ICC 34; London: T&T Clark, 1994–8)Google Scholar i.344–6; Fitzmyer, J. A., The Acts of the Apostles (AB 31; New York: Doubleday, 1998) 372Google Scholar; Keener, Acts, ii.1359–60.
20 Contra Ganser-Kerperin, H., Das Zeugnis des Tempels (NTAbh 36; Münster: Aschendorff, 2000) 244–5Google Scholar. He restricts this promise (7.7) to David's σκήνωμα (v. 46) in opposition to Solomon's οἶκος (v. 47), i.e. the Jerusalem temple. However, his reading is one-sidedly influenced by the subsequent negative developments (vv. 39–43, 48–50).
21 Contra Dibelius, M., ‘The Speeches in Acts and Ancient Historiography’, Studies in the Acts of the Apostles (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1956) 138–85Google Scholar, at 167; see Kilgallen, J. J., ‘The Function of Stephen's Speech (Acts 7,2–53)’, Biblica 70 (1989) 173–93Google Scholar, at 174–5 and Hill, Hellenists and Hebrews, 53–92.
22 Dahl, N. A., ‘The Story of Abraham in Luke-Acts’, Studies in Luke-Acts (ed. Keck, L. E. and Martyn, J. L.; Nashville: Abingdon, 1966) 139–58Google Scholar, at 145.
23 Fitzmyer, Acts, 378; Keener, Acts, ii.1399; Marshall, Acts, 141; Marguerat, ‘Du Temple’, 304; Tyson, J. B., The Death of Jesus in Luke-Acts (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1986) 105–6Google Scholar.
24 M. C. McKeever, ‘Sacred Space and Discursive Field: The Narrative Function of the Temple in Luke-Acts’ (PhD diss., Graduate Theological Union, 1999) 242.
25 Pesch (Apostelgeschichte, 254) also makes this observation but does not discuss its significance.
26 See Marguerat, ‘Du Temple’, 304 for a similar conclusion.
27 For a distinction between the notion of apophatic and that of kataphatic, see Lane, B. C., Landscapes of the Sacred (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002) 241Google Scholar.
28 In this psalm that recalls the exodus story, the sanctuary-like place (גבול קדשׁ/ἁγίασμα (Ps 77 LXX)) into which God's deliverance of the people leads (v. 53) is what God's right hand has won (v. 54), which is contrasted with anger-provoking idols (v. 58).
29 These characteristics also appear in Ps 78. The description of a series of YHWH's feats against the Egyptians in their land (vv. 44–51) and at the sea (v. 53) is connected without interruption to YHWH's bringing Israel into his ‘holy land’ (v. 54), ‘the mountain that his right hand had won’ (v. 54). In this holy land the tribes of Israel settle their tents (v. 55), and the mountain turns out to be Zion, where he builds ‘his sanctuary like the heavens’ (vv. 68–9; NRSV).
30 Contra Barrett (Acts, i.345) and Weiser, A., Die Apostelgeschichte (OTKNT 5; Würzburg: Echter, 1981) 194Google Scholar, who are sceptical about the purpose of the exodus as the establishment of (temple) worship in Jerusalem; for an opposite view, see Dahl (‘Story of Abraham’, 145) and Davies, W. D., The Gospel and the Land: Early Christianity and Jewish Territorial Doctrine (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974) 268–70Google Scholar. However, even the latter interpreters do not consider the importance of Exod 15.17, whereas Déaut, R. L., La Nuit Pascale: essai sur la signification de la Paque juive a partir du Targum d'Exode xii 42 (Rome: Institut Biblique Pontifical, 1963) 162Google Scholar n. 77 points to Exod 15.17 as a background.
31 van de Sandt, H., ‘Why Is Amos 5,25–27 Quoted in Acts 7,42f?’, ZNW 82 (1991) 67–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar, points to Deut 4 as a background of the quotation of Amos 5. Although this may explain some motifs related to the anti-idolatry theme (e.g. ‘what he had seen’, ‘who spoke’) in Acts 7.44, the Deuteronomy passage alone does not explain why the anti-idol rhetoric occurs in the broader context of the Heilsgeschichte from Abraham to David.
32 The connection between David and Abraham has been researched e.g. by Dahl, ‘Story of Abraham’; O'Toole, R. F., ‘Acts 2:30 and the Davidic Covenant of Pentecost’, JBL 102 (1983) 245–58Google Scholar. However, the issue of whether these two figures are also related to Luke's portrait of the exodus has not been studied in depth.
33 Parsons, M. C., Acts (Paideia; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008)Google Scholar 101 follows this reading. However, he does not comment on its significance. Barrett (Acts, i.372) admits that, syntactically, ἕως τῶν ἡμερῶν Δαυίδ modifies ἐξῶσεν and even mentions that the inhabitants of Canaan were not completely driven out until the time of David. But he quickly turns to a ‘solution’ that reads it as a reference to the tabernacle, given the subsequent reference to the building of a ‘house’ (vv. 46–7).
34 In the ANE conceptualisation of divine enthronement, a building project (e.g. a palace or a sanctuary) follows the completion of the subjection of the enemies of a king or a deity. For how this notion bears on 2 Sam 7 and Exod 15, see Halpern, B., The Constitution of the Monarchy in Israel (HSM 25; Chico, CA: Scholars, 1981) 19–24Google Scholar.
35 On this ‘rest’ as reminiscent of the Deuteronomic vision of peace in the land as a destination of the exodus (Deut 12.10), see Anderson, A. A., 2 Samuel (WBC 11; Dallas: Word, 1989) 116Google Scholar.
36 Loewenstamm, S. E., The Evolution of the Exodus Tradition (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1992) 41–3Google Scholar points to traditions in which the process of conquest was not complete until the monarchic period and the building of the Zion temple, the beginning of which is rooted in the exodus (cf. Exod 15; Ps 78; Isa 11). Because of this close connection between the construction of the Davidic–Solomonic temple and Exod 15, Leuchter, M. (‘Eisodus as Exodus: The Song of the Sea (Exod 15) Reconsidered’, Bib 92 (2011) 327–33)Google Scholar proposes that the early monarchy is the background to the textualisation process of Exod 15.
37 Bauckham, R., Bible and Mission: Christian Witness in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2003) 44Google Scholar.
38 This double function is also found in Ps 78. See n. 29.
39 4Q174 is important evidence of the association of Exod 15, 2 Sam 7 and Amos 9, which are all connected in its pesher. It posits a sanctuary-like place stated in Exod 15.17 (iii 3) as forecasting the promise of a secure habitation of Israel within the Davidic kingdom stated in 2 Sam 7.11–14 (iii 7–11a), which will be fulfilled by the Shoot of David who will arise in Zion to raise the fallen booth of David in the promise of Amos 9.11 (iii 11b–13).
40 For this reason, Schwemer's, A. M. contention (‘Lukas als Kenner der Septuaginta und die Rede des Stephanus (Apg 7,2–53)’, Die Septuaginta und das frühe Christentum (ed. Caulley, T. S.; WUNT 277; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011) 308–10Google Scholar) is only half-right. She correctly sees that building the Jerusalem sanctuary (by both David and Solomon) is the fulfilment of the Abrahamic promise, but she falls short of showing what undergirds this connection in Stephen's speech.
41 Cf. Loewenstamm, Evolution, 259–60; Clifford, R. J., ‘In Zion and David a New Beginning: An Interpretation of Psalm 78’, Traditions in Transformation (ed. Halpern, B. et al. ; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1981) 120–41Google Scholar, at 133–7.
42 In this sense, David's request to find a dwelling place (σκήνωμα, Acts 7.46), realised in the form of a ‘house’ that Solomon builds (7.47), is the juncture at which the promise of the exodus – ‘they shall come out and worship me in this place’ (7.7) – reaches its zenith (pro Larsson, ‘Temple-Criticism’, 392–3). But Stephen's rhetorical agility shows up here as this building is the very place misconceived idolatrously by his accusers (7.48–50; contra Larsson, ‘Temple-Criticism’, 394).
43 O'Toole (‘Acts 2:30’, 257) overlooks the exodus-related matters in his construal of the relationship between Abraham and David.
44 E.g. Bihler, ‘Stephanusbericht’, 269–70; van der Waal, C., ‘The Temple in the Gospel according to Luke’, Neot 7 (1973) 44–59Google Scholar, at 52; Turner, H. W., From Temple to Meeting House: The Phenomenology and Theology of Places of Worship (The Hague: Mouton, 1979) 116–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sanders, J. T., The Jews in Luke-Acts (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987) 34Google Scholar; Tyson, J. B., Images of Judaism in Luke-Acts (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1992) 116Google Scholar.
45 The easier reading, τῷ θεῷ Ἰακώβ, is supported by א2, A, C, E.
46 Weinert, ‘Luke, Stephen’, 89–90.
47 Contra Barrett, ‘Attitudes’, 351–2, and Turner, From Temple, 92–4; a tent (σκηνή) can also be used for an idolatrous purpose (Acts 7.43). The key issue is how to understand the involvement of human hands not only in tent-building (7.40–1) but also in house-building (7.49–50).
48 Cf. 2 Chron 6.41–2; Walton, ‘Tale’, 139–40.
49 Walton, ‘Tale’, 140.
50 This critique also applies to Larsson's judgement about this term (‘Temple-Criticism’, 394).
51 In this regard, Walker is correct (Holy City, 66).
52 Barrett, Acts, i.372; Keener, Acts, ii.1414; Pervo, R. I., Acts (Hermeneia; Minneapolis: Fortress, 2009) 191Google Scholar.
53 I thus take the harder reading as original. Schwemer (‘Kenner’, 319–20) further suggests that this reading avoids in the context a notion of ‘housing God’ in a physical place.
54 Cf. Rhodes, J. N., ‘Tabernacle and Temple’, Contemporary Studies in Acts (ed. Phillips, T. E.; Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009) 197–37Google Scholar, at 123–4.
55 It is notable that the birth of this Davidic figure (Luke 1.32) is enabled by the overshadowing (ἐπισκιάζω, 1.35) of the power of the Most High, just as the cloud associated with the glory of God overshadowed (ἐπισκιάζω, Exod 40.35) the tabernacle built subsequent to the exodus.