The Martyrdom of Stephen
about AD 34, estimated dateEstimated date
Acts tells how Stephen, one of seven men chosen to serve the Jerusalem church, is accused before the council of speaking against the temple and the law and is stoned to death. The persecution that follows scatters the believers beyond Jerusalem.
Acts introduces Stephen in a dispute over the daily distribution of food in the Jerusalem church. The believers whom Acts calls Hellenists complained against those it calls Hebrews that their widows were being passed over. The twelve apostles had the community choose seven men to take charge of the matter, and Stephen is named first among them, with Philip the Evangelist second. The apostles prayed and laid their hands on them (Acts 6:1–6).
Stephen, Acts says, did great wonders and signs among the people. Members of the synagogue called that of the Freedmen, with Jews from Cyrene, Alexandria, Cilicia and Asia, argued with him and could not answer him. They brought him before the council, where witnesses, whom Acts calls false, said that he never stopped speaking against the temple and the law, and that he taught that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy the temple and change the customs handed down by Moses (Acts 6:8–15).
His reply fills most of a chapter. It retells the history of Israel from Abraham through Joseph and Moses to Solomon. Its points are that the people repeatedly rejected those whom God sent, and that the Most High “doesn’t dwell in temples made with hands”. It ends by charging the hearers with resisting the Holy Spirit and with the betrayal and murder of “the Righteous One” (Acts 7:2–53).
The hearers were enraged. Stephen, looking up, said that he saw the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. They rushed at him, drove him out of the city and stoned him. The witnesses laid their cloaks at the feet of a young man named Saul, the future apostle Paul. Stephen died praying, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit”, and “Lord, don’t hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:54–60).
Acts says that a great persecution of the Jerusalem church began that day. All except the apostles were scattered through Judea and Samaria, and Saul went from house to house dragging men and women to prison (Acts 8:1–3). Those who were scattered carried the message with them: Philip to Samaria, others as far as Phoenicia, Cyprus and Antioch (Acts 8:4–5) (Acts 11:19–20). Stephen is the first follower of Jesus whose death for his testimony Acts records. In a later speech in Acts Paul calls him the Lord’s “witness” and recalls that he himself stood by and approved (Acts 22:20). The Greek word for “witness” there, martys, is the one from which “martyr” comes.
How this is dated
Estimated date. A scholarly estimate from primary evidence, with a margin of years.
Acts gives no date. It sets Stephen’s death after the first growth of the church in Jerusalem and before the conversion of Saul, who is present at the stoning (Acts 7:58) (Acts 8:1). The year therefore depends on the date of Paul’s conversion, which is itself reckoned backwards from later fixed points to about AD 31–36; see the Conversion of Paul. No other New Testament book mentions Stephen. Paul’s letters say that he persecuted the church (Galatians 1:13) but do not name Stephen.
Primary sources
In context
Grows out of
- AD 30 or 33, estimated date
Leads to
- about AD 34, estimated date
- c. AD 31–36, estimated date
- about AD 43, estimated date