It is important to recognize that
although the institutions of Judaism are not themselves attacked directly, their
value is necessarily deprecated. The Christian church was not, after all, a
back—to-Moses movement. The author is not contending that the Jews need simply
become better (i.e., more law abiding) Jews. He is not asking, in other words,
that they accept their heritage but that they accept the thing to which he
believes their heritage should lead. To Luke, Judaism is inherently good but
also inherently not good enough.
This insight does a long way
toward explaining the strangely contradictory attitude of Acts toward the Jews,
and it certainly helps to explain the inclusion of verses 48-50 within the
Stephen speech. Luke’s perspective encourages a spiritualizing tendency that
also appears in verse 51 (uncircumcised in heart and ears) and perhaps in the
story of Abraham as well (he [God] did not give him [Abraham] any of it as a
heritage not even a foot’s length, v. 5 [Deut. 2:5]; compare Heb. 11:39-40). In
a sense this allows him the luxury of denying what he at the same time must of
necessity affirm. Christians accept the law and the temple—rightly understood.
Johannes Weiss has commented, “The point of the speech is plainly directed
against the over-estimation of the temple in Jerusalem.” (Johannes Weiss, Earliest
Christianity 1:169 [123]). Although I cannot agree that this is the point
of the speech, I do agree that this them has been taken up by the author in verses
48-50.
The tendency to spiritualize is
assumed by many to have been common within Diaspora Judaism, and for this
reason these verses are sometimes taken as evidence of an Antiochene cum Hellenistic
source for the speech of Stephen. But if this sort of spiritualizing was as typically
Hellensitc as is often supposed, there is no reason to limit it to Antiochene
Christianity, much less to the Stephen circle particularly. Indeed, the point
made about the temple in Acts 7:48-50 is repeated (including use of χειροποιητος [made by human hands])
in Paul’s speech on the Areopagus in Acts 17:24. Räisänen’s observation is
pertinent: “This makes it probable that verses 48-50 represent Luke’s own
point of view.” (Räisänen, The Torah and Christ, p. 274) This confirms
an observation made by S. G. Wilson in a somewhat different context: “Luke
seems to stand closer to hellenistic Judaism in his understanding of the law,
[reflecting] . . . some of the major changes which took place in Judaism after
70 C.E.” (Wilson, Luke and the Law, p. 114)
Even if the tendency to minimize
the temple is understandable, we have not yet answered the question as to why
the theme is brought into the speech. A number of plausible answers could be
offered, but I believe that one in particular makes more sense of the presence
of the temple, and indeed of its dramatic location within the speech, than any
other. The key made be found in the attitude toward the temple expressed in
Luke 13:34-35a.
Ἰερουσαλὴμ Ἰερουσαλήμ, ἡ ἀποκτείνουσα
τοὺς προφήτας καὶ λιθοβολοῦσα τοὺς ἀπεσταλμένους πρὸς αὐτήν, ποσάκις ἠθέλησα ἐπισυνάξαι
τὰ τέκνα σου ὃν τρόπον ὄρνις τὴν ἑαυτῆς νοσσιὰν ὑπὸ τὰς πτέρυγας, καὶ οὐκ ἠθελήσατε.
35 ἰδοὺ ἀφίεται ὑμῖν ὁ οἶκος ὑμῶν. [Jerusalem,
Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those that are sent to
it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers
her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to
you.]
It is highly likely that the
sentiment expressed in this passage lies beneath the treatment of the temple in
the Stephen speech. Indeed, a number of key words reappear in Acts 6-7: ‘Ιερουσαλημ, αποκτεινω, οι προφηται,
λιθοβολεω, ουκ ηθελησαι, ο οικος (Jerusalem, kill prophets, stone, you would not, house). Viewed
in this light, the temple takes on enormous symbolic significance. The
destruction of the temple is Luke’s contemporary parallel to the incident in
the wilderness, in which “God handed [the Jews] over” for their rejection of
Moses (v. 42). If Luke was writing in the years after A.D. 70, the relationship
between these events could hardly have been missed by his readers. The Stephen
speech is very much as the center of the program of Acts, and the inclusion of
the temple is one critical element in its presentation. Verses 46-50 do not fit
logically within the speech if they are related only to the occasion of Stephen’s
martyrdom; but their logic is inescapable if one looks beyond to the underlying
movement of the Book of Acts.
Heikki Räisänen has written that “Stephen’s
speech does not contain the vehement criticism of the temple and its sacrifices
sometimes ascribed to it. . . . The temple section does not really lead
anywhere.” (Räisänen, The Torah and Christ, p. 274) We may now
appreciate the perceptiveness of the first of these assertions while choosing
to disagree with the second. Stephen does not vehemently criticize the temple,
but the vehemence his remarks incite does portend the rejection of the temple
and of its people. The temple section does indeed lead somewhere.
Αcts 7:39-43.
It should be noted that the kind of temple criticism most often (and erroneously)
attributed to this passage, that “God was happy with a tent but never wanted a
house,” does not actually present a fundamental challenge to the law. Some find
that challenge instead in the account of Israel’s idolatry in the wilderness in
7:39-40. The impetus for this interpretation comes from the citation of Amos 5:25-27
(v. 42): God was not the object of their sacrifices. Indeed, God never wished
to be. Thus the cult and the adulterated law that enshrined it were merely an
Israelite extension of the golden calf of Egypt. Stephen “draws a distinction
between the divinely ordered ‘lively oracles,’ i.e., the authentic law of
Moses, and the ordinances concerning sacrifices and temple, which were invented
by the Jews.” For this reason the people of Israel were finally removed by God “beyond
Babylon.”
The obvious difficulty with this interpretation
is the fact that it is not sustained in the verses that follow. In verse 44 the
polemic suddenly disappears. The tabernacle was a “tent of testimony” whose
construction was directed by God. It was brought by the people into the land
that God gave to them. David himself is said to have found favor with God. There
simply is no reasonable way to interpret the people as unrelenting idolaters
given up by God after the incident with the golden calf.
Many who do not go to these lengths still
believe that there is an essential link between the wilderness story and the
building of the temple. This correspondence is based in part upon the account
of the idolatrous Israelites, who rejoiced εν τοις εργοις των χειρων αυτων (in the work of their hands, v. 41); the temple is characterized in
verse 48 as χειροποιητοις (made by human hands). Hence it is
concluded that “the superstitious attachment of the Jews to their temple is
made to appear as a continuation of their idolatry in the desert.” (Jacques
Dupont, The Salvation of the Gentiles: Essays on the Acts of the Apostles,
p. 134 [251])
Again, the claim to temple criticism is
dubious. For one thing, it ignores the fact that the tabernacle was also
handmade. It may be objected that the construction of the tabernacle was, however,
directed by God (v. 44). This is true, but it is also true that David, whose
idea it was to construct the temple, is treated favorably and is not chastised
for his wish. The treatment of Solomon is neutral or else an amazingly subdued
criticism. And verses 48-50, as we have seen, minimize the role of the temple
(that is, of the notion that God dwells only [or perhaps is uniquely present]
in any handmade structure), without attacking it directly.
The solution to the difficulties of verses
39-43 should now be clear. The severity of these verses is directly attributable
to the severity of the judgment awaiting the Jews (from the perspective of
Stephen’s—and realized by Luke’s—day). If Israel’s rejection of Moses led to God’s
rejection of Israel (v. 42), what other consequence might the reader expect of
present Jewish rejection of the “prophet like Moses?” The corollary works only
if the first judgment can be made to parallel and thus to justify the second.
Thus the finality of God’s judgment in verses 42-43, while making a logical
nonsense of verses 44-45, makes its own admirable sense. To regard these verses
as the tokens of some obscure theology of the two laws encompassing a rejection
of the sacrificial system is to miss the point entirely. (Craig C. Hill,
Hellenists and Hebrews: Reappraising Division Within the Earliest Church [Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 1992], 76-80)
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