Stoning

Stoning was the biblical penalty for blasphemy (Leviticus 24:16) and several other crimes. Rome, though, forbade executions unless the governor allowed them. Jewish and Gentile texts alike show that mobs often stoned people to death. In the ideal procedure of second-century Jewish tradition, the condemned was thrown from a height at least twice a man's height. The witnesses threw the first large stones, aiming for the chest. The condemned was to be stripped and to confess his sins. Executions and burials took place outside cities, and even after a mob killing inside a city the body would be dragged out. In Gentile cities stoning was a frequent act of urban mobs, who threw tiles and whatever else came to hand. The ESV Study Bible weighs whether Stephen died by formal sentence or by mob violence, since under Rome the Sanhedrin had no right to execute. Wright, telling Paul's story, says Stephen was stoned illegally because only the Romans could carry out the death penalty. God's disobedient people had threatened to stone his servants before (Exodus 17:4; Numbers 14:10). Josephus reports that in AD 62, between governors, the high priest Ananus assembled the Sanhedrin and "brought before them the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James," with some others, and had them stoned. The most fair-minded citizens protested, and Ananus lost the high priesthood after three months (Antiquities 20.9.1).

When crowds pick up stones, as in John 8:59, they treat a claim as blasphemy and take the verdict into their own hands. Stephen's death in Acts 7:58 follows the shape of a legal stoning outside the city, though Rome reserved the death penalty, and Paul could later say, in 2 Corinthians 11:25, that he had once been stoned.