Expositor's Bible Commentary Commentary Acts 7:57

"But they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and rushed upon him with one accord;" — Acts 7:57 (ASV)

There is a progression in Luke’s portrayals of the trial scenes of 4: 1ff., 5:17ff., and here, with the first ending in threatenings (4:17, 21), the second with flogging (5:40), and the third with stoning (7:58–60). Moreover, the historical interplay of divergent ideological factors gave rise to Judaism’s united stance against the Hellenists.

The message of Stephen, it seems, served as a kind of catalyst to unite Sadducees, Pharisees, and the common people against the early Christians. Had Gamaliel been confronted by this type of Christian preaching earlier, his attitude as reported in 5:34–39 would surely have been different. The Pharisees could tolerate Palestinian Jewish believers in Jesus because their messianic beliefs, though undoubtedly judged terribly misguided, effected no change in their practice of the Mosaic law: the Pharisaic and priestly devotees of the new movement continued their scrupulous observance of the law, and the Hebraic Christians continued to live in accordance with at least its minimal requirements. But the Hellenistic Christians, who had probably entered Palestine avowing their desire to become stricter in their religious practice, were now beginning to question the centrality of Israel’s traditional forms of religious expression and to propagate within Jerusalem itself a type of religious liberalism that, from a Pharisaic perspective, would eventually undercut the basis for the Jewish religion itself. They might have been able to do little about such liberalism as it existed throughout the Diaspora and in certain quarters within Palestine. But they were determined to preserve the Holy City from further contamination by such outside elements and thus, as they saw it, best prepare the way for the coming of the Messianic Age.

It is not easy to determine whether the stoning of Stephen was only the result of mob action or whether it was carried out by the Sanhedrin in excess of its jurisdiction. The reference to “the witnesses” in v.58, whose grisly duty it was to knock the offender down and throw the first stones, suggests an official execution. If, as we believe, Stephen’s martyrdom occurred sometime in the midthirties and during the final years of Pilate’s governorship over Judea (A. D. 26–36), and if, as we have argued, the Pharisees were not prepared to come to his defense in the council, conditions may well have been at a stage where the Sanhedrin felt free to overstep its legal authority. Pontius Pilate normally resided at Caesarea, and the later years of his governorship were beset by increasing troubles that tended to divert his attention. “The witnesses,” Luke tells us, in preparing for their onerous work of knocking Stephen down and throwing the first stones, “laid their clothes at the feet of a young man named Saul.” This suggests that Saul had some official part in the execution. “Young man” generally refers to someone from about twentyfour to forty years old. Some have argued from the action of the witnesses and from Saul’s age that he was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin at the time (see comment on 8:1a), though he may also have been exercising only delegated authority.