Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 6:12

"And they stirred up the people, and the elders, and the scribes, and came upon him, and seized him, and brought him into the council," — Acts 6:12 (ASV)

Four things are said about certain members of the synagogue of the Freedman: (1) “they secretly persuaded some men to say” that Stephen had spoken “blasphemy” (GK 1060); (2) “they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law” on their trumped-up charge against Stephen; (3) “they seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin”; and (4) “they produced false witnesses” at his trial.

The rumors had to do with Stephen’s being “against Moses and against God”—“against Moses” because his arguments appeared to challenge the eternal validity of the Mosaic law, and “against God” because he appeared to be setting aside that which was taken to be the foundation and focus of national worship— the Jerusalem temple. In so doing, the rumors struck at the heart of both Pharisaic and Sadducean interests. In the first century, “blasphemy” was broadly interpreted along the lines of Nu 15:30: “Anyone who sins defiantly, whether native-born or alien, blasphemes the LORD, and that person must be cut off from his people.” The testimony of witnesses who repeated what they had heard a defendant say was part of Jewish court procedure in a trial for blasphemy. But the testimony against Stephen (v.14), according to Luke, was false (cf. the testimony against Jesus, Matthew 26:61; Mark 14:58). Its falseness lay not so much in its wholesale fabrication but in its subtle and deadly misrepresentation of what was intended. Undoubtedly, Stephen spoke regarding a recasting of Jewish life in terms of the supremacy of Jesus the Messiah and expressed in his manner and message something of the subsidiary significance of the Jerusalem temple and the Mosaic law, as did Jesus before him (e.g, Mark 2:23–28; 3:1–6; 7:14–15; 10:5–9; cf. Jn 2:19-22). But that is not the same as advocating the destruction of the temple or the changing of the law—though on such matters we must allow Stephen to speak for himself in Acts 7.