Stephen's Real Bias

The speech in Acts 7 is not anti-Jewish. It's anti-institutional.

The words Luke claims for Stephen are pro-Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, pro-Joseph, and pro-Moses. Aaron gets blamed for the gold calf, and the people of Israel are blasted for their historic idolatry, but Joshua and David are clearly on God's side of things. In other words, Stephen was no more anti-Jewish than the Hebrew Bible itself!

It's when Stephen gets to Solomon that things change abruptly. Suddenly, the contrast is evident. It's not Judaic roots, tradition or laws that get blasted here. It's the Temple itself that gets equated with idolatry. (I caught Dunn pointing this out recently - compare 7:41 & 7:48, "made with hands".)

Luke's agenda in Acts 7 is to show that God works outside Israel. The God of the Patriarchs was not bound to Mount Zion. It's been said that we might not have noticed this theme of Stephen's speech without Luke's surrounding agenda - but I think that's because "we" western Christians (and Jews) have been overwhelmingly steeped in our heavily institutionalized faith traditions.

But let me be personally clear. People know my views about this. Institutions are relative. We can institute something today and then change it next week, month or year. But Institutionalism is an attitude that says, "Let's establish a system to safeguard our ways for all time." God showed Moses his House as a Tent. Solomon made it a stone box that stood in one spot for a millennium. That is quite a large difference.

In my humble opinion, Stephen's (and Luke's) bias was not against Judaism, but against human-controlled religion, and against those who put boundaries on Christ-centered spirituality. Like, for example, literally putting God in a Box.

This should also make us wonder how Stephen really felt about Peter and Solomon's Porch... but that may be going a bit too far for today. I don't want to get stoned! ;-)