Tool Beta
The Ancient World Behind the Text
Pick a passage anywhere in the New Testament. See the customs and ideas a first reader knew without being told.
Acts 7:54-8:3, The stoning of Stephen
Stephen sees the Son of Man standing at God's right hand, and his hearers drag him out and stone him while a young man named Saul looks after their coats. Persecution scatters the church.
Acts 7:54-8:3, in every translation this tool compares.
Stephen's hearers are enraged, but he looks up and says he sees Jesus standing beside God in glory. They drown him out, drive him outside the city and stone him, and the witnesses leave their outer clothes with a young man called Saul. Stephen dies praying that his killers be forgiven, much as Jesus did. His death sets off a persecution that scatters the believers beyond Jerusalem, with Saul leading the hunt from house to house.
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- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/stoning\/","n":"Stoning","s":"The law of Moses named stoning as the penalty for blasphemy, but under Rome Jewish courts could not execute without the governor. In practice stoning was what angry crowds did, in Jewish and Gentile towns alike.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/zeal\/","n":"Zeal for God and the law","s":"Zeal meant burning loyalty to God and his law, and its heroes, Phinehas, Elijah and the Maccabees, had used force against those who betrayed it. Saul the persecutor saw himself in that line.","r":""}
- {"u":"https:\/\/jayms.com\/bible-study-tools-2\/ancient-world-ideas\/burial-and-mourning\/","n":"Burial and mourning","s":"Mourners came at once, the dead were buried the same day, wrapped in linen in rock tombs, and family carried the duty of burial. Pagan mourning, with little hope beyond a shadowy underworld, could be bleak.","r":""}
Judges stood to give a verdict, so the standing Son of Man vindicates Stephen as his accusers condemn him, and in Daniel 7 the Son of Man vindicates the righteous against their oppressors (Keener and his notes). Stephen's last words echo Jesus' prayers on the cross (Keener and his notes). A condemned man was supposed to confess his sins and pray that his death would atone for them; Stephen confesses his accusers' sin instead (Keener and his notes). The law stripped the condemned, but here the witnesses strip themselves, which Keener and his notes read as Luke quietly marking who is really on trial. Young man most likely means a man in his twenties (Keener and his notes). Public mourning for a condemned criminal was forbidden, so the loud mourning honors Stephen in defiance of the court; dying unburied was the greatest dishonor, and risking one's life to bury the dead was counted heroic (Keener and his notes). Only the most severe persecutions took women as well as men (Keener and his notes). Wright pictures Saul guarding the coats of men who believed they were cleansing the city.
- NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, notes on Acts 7:56, 7:58, 7:59, 7:60, 8:2 and 8:3
- Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, on Acts 7:54-55, 7:56, 7:57-58, 7:59, 7:60, 8:2 and 8:3
- N. T. Wright, Paul: A Biography, ch. 1, Zeal
