Stephen's Speech
Stephen said that God appeared to Abraham and told him to go out of Mesopotamia. He also told him about the covenant of circumcision. The patriarchs sold Joseph to Egypt. There was a famine, but our fathers heard that there was grain where Joseph happened to be, so when they went there Joseph made himself known to his family. Jacob died and was carried back to Shechem and was laid in a tomb.
I'm having a bit of trouble summarizing this story, it just seems like a bunch of random details to me.
The people of Abraham multiplied in Egypt until there was another king who didn't know Joseph who killed all newborns of their group. But Moses slipped through the cracks and wasn't killed and was even raised by Pharaoh's daughter. When Moses was 40, he defended the oppressed and killed the Egyptians. He then tried to stop quarreling among his people and they asked what his authority was to tell them what to do. He then fled to live in exile in Midian where he had 2 sons.
Then Moses went up to Mt Sinai and saw the burning bush and talked to God who told him to go to Egypt and help his people. So Moses went to Egypt and parted the red sea to help them get out of there. They were in the wilderness for 40 years. They didn't want to obey Moses and made calves to worship like the Egyptians. Stephen then calls all of the people holding him a lot of names.
As I said, that was a long meandering story as far as I can tell. There might have been more to it, but he basically seemed to just be telling the story of Moses and then called the people holding him captive names at the end. Given that he gets stoned in the next section, it seems like he is just pushing them to it.
The Stoning of Stephen
They were pissed at him, so they threw him out of town and stoned him. Stephen looked up at heaven and saw God and Jesus and told them to receive his spirit.
Basically looks like suicide by cop to me.
It seems like it is just your typical religious persecution and martyr story....same crap, different generation...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I think you are right RB. It's sad.
ReplyDeleteAt least they are consistent with it! That is far better than much else that comes from the bible.
DeleteThis chapter seems pretty boring to me as well. I kind of like your interpretation of the death. It pretty much is just that, anyway you look at it. I even made a comment in my bible. =P
ReplyDeleteJust a few things I wanted to point out in this chapter that were bothering me. I could go into some depth about why there has to be something wrong with the timeline here with Abraham, but it's kind of boring. But, in verse 5 it says that God gave no promise to Abraham, but in Genesis God promised Abraham the land. Promise breaker anyone? Also, they make it sound like Moses was an eloquent speaker, but in the Old Testament it's pretty clear that he wasn't. Also, to me these verses sound like he's again blaming the Jews for the death of jesus.
There are a few other factual errors when compared to the OT in this chapter that really aren't worth pointing out like where he was buried, how long they were in captivity. Speaking of captivity and some of the OT stories, this is a pretty interestingarticle. It's finally coming out that those stories probably never happened. The article is about ten years old, but it's weird how I didn't really hear much about it except through atheistic readings.
I can see what you mean, the whole feel of the thing is off. It actually reminds me of a podcast I listened to recently. They were talking about some contradictions in acts compared to Matthew. The focused on 3 details and talked about how they went together, and how they could find apologetics to deal with any one of the 3 things, but they never really meshed with the other problems. The real problem I think is that the tone is fairly clear and yet hard to get your finger on, so the apologetics can use the slipperyness of the whole thing.
DeleteIt's worth checking out the whole thing, but the part I'm talking about starts at around 40min I think
http://freethoughtblogs.com/reasonabledoubts/2012/05/16/episode-102-the-skeptics-psychology-of-religion-toolkit/
Awesome! I saved this link for later. :)
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