When theories no longer belong to individuals but to a group, vested interests are served by cleaving to it and ridiculing alternatives.

Who Lies Sleeping?

Saul (Paul) and the Hellenist Faction 2

Stephen and the Hellenists
Stephen’s Speech in his Defence
Stephen is Martyred

Abstract

The main sources of information about Paul are his epistles and the Acts of the Apostles. The epistles naturally are partially autobiographical and show him in the best light, and the Acts of the Apostles is partisan. Paul apparently spent three years as a novice Essene, but failed the novitiate because he lacked Essene humility. But, having evaded Harith’s soldiers, Paul returned to Jerusalem knowing a great deal more about Essene philosophy, and the basis of Jesus’s teaching, than did the apostles, who were not trained Essenes but converted Jews. In 15 days there, he saw only two apostles, James and Peter, implying that the Nazarenes were hard to find and not at all prominent. The church at Antioch had no trouble in supporting the church in Jerusalem, suggesting that membership of the Jerusalem church was small. Paul left and did not return for another 14 years. The true apostles wanted nothing to do with him.

Stephen and the Hellenists

Luke begins a new pericope, in Acts 6:1, as the phrase “and in those days” shows. There is no more certainty here in Acts that the pericopes occur in the correct time sequence than there is in Mark. These verses might relate an incident that occurred not long after the defeat of the Nazarenes and the crucifixion of their leader.

The Nazarenes consisted, in terms of Jewish scholarship, of mainly ignorant people—they were not devout being either sinners, non-practising Jews who nevertheless retained Jewish customs, speaking Aramaic, or publicans, Jewish collaborators who adopted the Hellenistic culture of their paymasters, speaking Greek. Most local Jews had no regard for the foreigner, gentiles, who they wanted to evict.

The Nazarenes had been convinced by Jesus that, when Jews demonstrated unequivocally that the foreigner was unwelcome, God would return to dwell with His people in His kingdom. Sinners and publicans had a common belief that they would see the face of God in His kingdom having repented their sins. Nevertheless, divisions in the Nazarene band had occurred several times during Jesus’s lifetime, but the Master had been able to contain them. With the death of their charismatic leader, the feeble unity of the Nazarenes became hard to maintain.

Luke admits that some of the Nazarenes spoke Greek and not Hebrew (Aramaic)—they were Hellenized Jews. Evidently, the simple followers of Jesus had split into two factions—the Hellenists or Grecians and the Hebrews or Jews. It is not surprising. As soon as the expected miracle did not happen, with their leader dead and no immediate prospect of meeting God, the Aramaic speakers and the Greek speakers must have been at loggerheads. Earlier, Luke had sought to disguise this truth because his aim is to demonstrate an unfolding of the Christian message from a purely Jewish milieu in Jerusalem to the whole world, and it would not do to admit too soon that many of Jesus’s converts, the Nazarenes, were not Jews by culture.

Evidently, the disdain of the Aramaic speaking Jews for the Greek speaking ones surfaced over the issue of handouts to the widows of the Nazarenes who had died in the two battles for Jerusalem, or in the exemplary crucifixions afterwards. The bursars had been favouring the widows of Aramaic speaking Jews, and the Hellenists had complained.

Here Luke uses the dissension to introduce seven prominent men. The seven deacons seems to be a reflexion of the Essene number of perfection—inherited from the Persians—a number which became important to Christians. All had Greek names and had the job of supervising the fair sharing of dole to the widows, but some of them turn out to be much more important. Indeed, one of them, Nicolaus of Antioch, became the first Christian heretic, his heresy being mentioned twice in Revelation (Rev 2:6, 15). Luke is admitting that, almost from the start, the followers of Jesus were split into Jewish traditionalists and Hellenized Jews, and it is from this latter group that Christianity sprang.

Luke is always anxious to show the church as united under the influence of the Holy Ghost, when evidently it was not, in fact, and he quickly moves from the dissension to great successes:

And the word of God increased, and the number of the disciples multiplied in Jerusalem greatly, and a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith.
Acts 6:7

Later Christians see in the large number of priests that joined the embryonic Christian movement here in Acts, the beginning of the Judaizers who opposed Paul. The truth is quite the opposite, in that many of the priests were already influenced by foreign culture—they were already Hellenized. It was the Essenes and Pharisees who were steadfastly Jewish.

Priests were Sadducees who held only to the Torah, the five books of Moses, not to the rest of the scriptures or to the oral law of the Pharisees, except where it had been adopted by the Sanhedrin as the civic law that even the Sadducees accepted. Sadducees were not interested in study or scholarship, content that precise temple ritual and obedience satisfied God. They believed that God’s pleasure with them was proved by their wealth and power.

In 70 AD, the destruction of the Second Temple left them redundant. Where did they go? What did they do? They joined the Christians! Luke features the flood of priests joining the Nazarenes so early to provide an explanation why, after the destruction of the temple, so many former priests were Christians. Admittedly, the Hellenist Nazarenes were happy to accept them because there were Sadducees among the companions of Paul to judge by their names. Indeed, the recruitment of Levi in Mark shows that some junior priests, at least, were happy to join the Nazarenes when the prospect of God’s Vengeance had to be faced.

Oddly, in Acts it turns out that Stephen sounds much more like an Essene than a Greek, although Luke makes him abuse the Jews. Acts 6:8 says that Stephen was proselytizing among the synagogues of Hellenized Jews from different parts of the Roman Empire resident in Jerusalem. But the expression “wonders and signs” or “wonders and miracles” that occurs here is probably a reference back to the apocalypse of Joel, showing that Stephen had been using the fulfilment of Joel’s prophecy in the Nazarene victory over the Roman garrison of Jerusalem, to prove that the End was nigh.

Stephen was recruiting Jews for the kingdom just as Jesus and John the Baptist had—and precisely the same kingdom! Conceivably, they still felt they might be called upon to fight with the heavenly host at some stage in the forty years of cosmic conflict. The authorities certainly thought they had some such idea—the reason why they were often arrested.

Thus, for the first post-crucifixion Nazarenes, the message of Jesus remained the same—Jews had to repent sincerely, be baptized and be ready to lay down the life of their corruptible body in this wicked world in exchange for resurrection into everlasting life when God founded His kingdom on earth. The difference was that the heavenly host would be led by Jesus instead of the archangel Michael.

Some of the diaspora Jews took umbrage at Stephen’s message. They were worldly. They knew the power of Rome. They thought that talk of God’s Jewish kingdom was absurd and dangerous. Possibly, from Acts 6:11:

We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God,

he even taught that Jesus had abrogated the laws of Moses, not knowing the special circumstances of Jesus’s concessions, or opportunistically feeling that many diaspora Jews would be glad to be freed of the burden of the law. Perhaps many would have been glad, but they saw such a danger to their vested interests in the zealotry of the Nazarene movement that they united with the orthodox to report Stephen to the authorities.

The introduction of the “stirring up of the people” in this context confirms the surmise that the ordinary Jews of Palestine, though favourable to the Nazarenes led by Peter and the apostles, were not favourable to the Hellenizers (Grecians) like Stephen and readily joined the haranguing of him.

The charges against Stephen before the Jewish court are clearly expressed in Acts 6:14:

This Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place, and shall change the customs which Moses delivered us.

The Sanhedrin met in the Temple precinct, so the threat to destroy “this place” was the threat to destroy the Temple. Abrogation of the law is also cited. The supposed false witnesses are simply to harmonize with the trial of Jesus in Mark’s gospel. If Stephen had been preaching violation of the law, the witnesses were not false ones.

Christians are certain that Jesus advocated abandonment of the Mosaic law and that Stephen, the first Christian martyr, preached the same. But yet the law was the law of the land and, if Christian belief is true, both men were urging it to be broken. Few liberal governments let alone conservative ones would be happy with such disrespect for the law even today.

This is the key schism in the foundation of Christianity. Jesus had not taught the abrogation of the law of Moses but simply an expedient for soldiers in battle who had written the law in their hearts. Converts like Stephen, many of whom were not strict adherents of the law, took it as a license for the repentant and ultimately as an abrogation. It is precisely from this point of schism that the myth was introduced that Jesus had actually abrogated the law, the myth which allowed Judaism to spread to gentiles unadorned with the trappings of the Mosaic law.

Stephen’s speech in his defence

Stephen’s speech in his own defence is remarkably long—52 verses. It is not really a defence against his charges except in a small part. Rather its importance is that it highlights the split between the proto-Christian and the Jew. Its length is an indication of the importance Luke placed upon it for later Christianity, and its composition is that of a speech to be read rather than one which was actually spoken in court. For Luke, the speech is a challenge to, and an accusation of, the whole of Judaism and the position of Jews in God’s plan.

Nevertheless, Luke has told us that he had sources and this speech shows every indication of having its origin in an Essene polemic against the froward priests of Jerusalem and backsliding Jews. Indeed, in many ways it is similar to parts of the Damascus Rule which relates the repeated straying of the children of Israel ultimately necessitating the New Covenant made by God and the remnant of Israel who remained friends of God.

Stephen’s scriptural quotations are from the Septuagint though some are inaccurate, just as we find with quotations by Paul and Philo, but the Dead Sea Scrolls have shown that the Septuagint had a basis in variant manuscripts of Hebrew scriptures some of which were preserved by the Essenes, so this too is possibly evidence that Luke’s source was Essene.

The parallel of Jesus with Joshua in Acts 7:45 also suggests an Essene influence, and much of it also compares Jesus as messiah with the first messiah, Moses. The Essenes would certainly have considered their messiah as prophet, priest and king to be an embodiment of Moses, so, much of the comparison can convincingly be attributed to the Essenes. Moses, like the Essene Righteous Teacher and Jesus, had been rejected by the Jews and had to go in exile into the wilderness. Moses led the Jews for forty years in the wilderness before reaching the promised land and the messiah’s promise of God’s kingdom took forty years of tribulations before it was realized.

Interestingly, Stephen, rather pointedly, in the light of the expectation of a forty years wait for the coming, mentions “forty years” four times in his story of Moses. It seems unnecessary to keep saying it except for the sake of a reader, and is probably an editorial refinement by Luke—another way of showing to the faithful how the idea of a forty year interlude before the Parousia had arisen. It was simply a standard mystic number of the Hebrews.

Stephen speaks (Acts 7:37) of “that prophet” promised by Moses whom I have argued Jesus believed he became at his transfiguration—a ritual coronation of him as “that prophet” making him the prophet, priest and king—the messiah. Stephen highlights the rejection of Moses and the oracles of God by the Jews in favour of the idols of the Egyptians—the golden calf—and the tabernacles of Moloch and Rephan. This is a veiled reference to the Hellenizers who were influenced by Greek culture including their pantheon of gods so could not have been said by a Hellenizer like Stephen, showing that it is an unedited portion of an Essene screed.

The building of the temple by Solomon is picked out as an error because the God of the Hebrews did not live in a house built by hands—another echo of the Persian religion which preferred worship in open spaces, and, incidentally, yet another biblical warning ignored by Christians who have long been fond of building enormously elaborate houses for God. Finally, the habit of the Jews of killing God’s prophets is also criticised. Luke even uses the expression, “The Righteous One”, of Jesus the expression used by the Essenes of their Righteous Teacher.

The whole of the history of the Jews cited by Stephen seems to be directed at establishing that at no time did God ever want to have an immovable house to dwell in. From the covenant with Abraham, God was with His people wherever they went. The inference is that God resides with, or even in, His people not in stone houses. God’s true temple is a living temple as Jesus believed and the Essenes before him.

Essenes did not believe in the built temple but in the temple of the community, a temple of the human spirit. They rejected the Sadducees as idolators, influenced by the Greeks. They honoured their Righteous Teacher who, it seems, had died in the first century BC at the hands of the wicked priest of Jerusalem. They saw the coming of the everlasting kingdom as the equivalent of the seed of Abraham entering the promised land. They considered the heroes of Stephen’s speech as being the Righteous Ones of Jewish history.

Luke has manifestly cribbed an Essene exhortation, proving yet again that the early Christians drew heavily on Essene tradition. Stephen who was a backslider and an idolator as far as Jews were concerned could not have made such a speech. Luke has placed in Stephen’s mouth the words of an Essene critique of the wayward children of Israel, their temple and the delinquent priests who served in it.

Stephen’s speech tells us quite the opposite of the Christian clergy. The true covenant of God was with Abraham and was denoted by circumcision. God reinforced the covenant by giving through Moses his oracles, the law and the commandments, to guide His people. The law came via the angels:

Who have received the law by the disposition of angels, and have not kept it.
Acts 7:53

And at Acts 7:39, the speech criticises the Jews for not obeying the law. These are strange words for a man who was defending himself against abrogating the law. In Acts 7:24-25, Stephen describes Moses as trying to deliver the Jews by smiting the foreigner, apparently admitting that the latter day Moses, Jesus, had done the same.

In Acts 7:42-43, Stephen quotes from Amos 5:25-27, where God berates the Jews for insincerely giving sacrifices and offering up hymns to God but not being righteous. The same quotation appears in the Damascus Rule where it is interpreted, using the pesher method of the Essenes, in messianic terms. The pesharists word associations lead to references to king David, the books of the prophets despised by Israel, the interpreter of the law who would come as a star out of Damascus (correct, Stephen’s ”Babylon” being an error), and a sceptre who is the prince of the congregation who will smite all the gentiles. As a result, at the day of the Lord (the Day of God’s Vengeance) apostates would be given up to the sword, particularly those who have walked in the ways of whoredom and wicked wealth. These people were none other than the scoffers of the Jerusalem temple who married foreign women and got rich from pandering to the foreign occupiers and extorting the people.

The speech continues (Acts 7:44-45) saying that God’s presence is with His people, wherever they were, not in an immovable building. The movable home, the tent or tabernacle, signified that God was always with His people wherever they went. Essenes considered themselves the tabernacle of the Covenant—the place where God dwelt. They, as people, were a holy house for Aaron—a temple. They considered that their dedication was more solid than a house of stone—they were the precious corner stone which supported God’s house.

The quotation from Isaiah 66:1-2 is not accurately Septuagint, suggesting an independent translation of an Essene original. An identical quotation appears in the, non-canonical but strongly Essene, Epistle of Barnabas. The verses in Isaiah are part of a devastating criticism of temple practices, not merely animal sacrifices but cereal offerings and even the burning of incense. Those who followed such wrongful practices were to be severely punished. The target of the criticism was the Sadducees and the priests and the implication that their practices were pagan is plain. This quotation is again indicative of the speech being a comprehensive attack on the temple priesthood not on Judaism in general.

Having related Jewish history, the speech becomes a direct attack on the froward priests. In Jewish legend, the prophets were considered as martyrs murdered by Jewish leaders treading the paths of idolatry. Jesus used the same idea in the parable of the wicked husbandmen, the chief priests.

Stephen is Martyred

At the end of the speech Stephen declares a vision of the Son of man standing at God’s right hand.

He looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God.

Here Jesus is called the Son of man in the only place outside the gospels and plainly in the context of a vision like Daniel’s. This should be proof enough that almost every gospel—or at least synoptic gospel—instance of the title is really a modest circumlocution and not a messianic boast. But the martyr does not say that he sees Jesus. He says that he sees the “Son of man”. It is Luke who tells us that the “Son of man” is Jesus! From Stephen’s direct speech as quoted by Luke all we know is that he had a vision akin to Daniel’s, and that was the very vision that all Essenes had. They expected the archangel Michael to come with a host of saints and angels to refine the wicked world. Daniel does not say that his vision was a man but that it was “like unto a Son of man”. In short, in his dream it looked like a man but wasn’t one. It was an angel.

Curiously enough, Jesus, thought by Christians to be simply a name, is apparently an Essene title. In Hebrew, Jesus is Joshua, and Joshua it was who, on the death of Moses, actually led the Israelites into the promised land. Thus, even if Stephen had announced that he had seen Jesus as the Son of man, he need not have meant this particular Jesus but whoever had the title, Jesus.

The figure was at God’s right hand because the right hand was a symbol of power, but he was standing at God’s right hand as in Daniel’s vision, whereas in Mark 14:62, Jesus, apparently referring to himself, speaks of the Son of man sitting at God’s right hand. Thus, Stephen was not referring to whatever Jesus had said about himself, if Mark is to be accepted, but to the original vision of Daniel. All of it implies that the Christian Jesus has been imposed by Luke on to his source which was an Essene messianic exhortation.

Luke depicts the reaction of the Sanhedrin as that of a mob (Acts 7:57-60). The speech as given to us by Luke was quite insulting, especially its conclusion, and perhaps even the powerful and distinguished members of the council got enraged when faced with such taunts. Luke tries to pretend that the rage was caused by Stephen’s vision but he had already said that the counsellors were cut to the heart by his speech, before the vision. The vision looks rather like an after thought. Of course, a general vision of God with a messianic figure could not have been blasphemous—it was the hope of all pious Jews—but no doubt the identification of the messianic figure next to God with a crucified bandit would have been regarded as pretty awful, if that is what he did.

Having been stoned, Stephen calls on God to receive his spirit (Acts 7:59) but instead of simply saying Lord he says Lord Jesus. The insertion of Jesus after Lord makes Jesus into God, and that certainly was blasphemous. But Stephen was not an orthodox Jew but a Hellenist who might have been already influenced by the dying and resurrected Gods of the Greeks and Romans. If so, he had already seen Jesus as Attis and appealed to him as a god, and so has a claim to be the true founder of Christianity. More likely, Luke added this to his composition from a later age because Jesus was by then being seen by gentiles exactly as a dying and resurrected god.

After forgiving his murderers, another harmonization, Stephen “fell asleep”, a euphemism for death but one which Essenes might have literally accepted. Death was only sleeping, but real death or everlasting life were the result of God’s judgement.

In this scene (Acts 7:58), Saul stands by guarding coats and is described as a young man. Around 60 AD, if Philemon is to be attributed to Paul, he describes himself as an old man now, presumably meaning he was about sixty and was therefore born about 1 AD. Jesus conventionally died in 33 AD when Saul was about 33. In fact by his own reckoning Paul must have converted around 32 AD implying that a date of 33 AD for the crucifixion is too late. But even if the older preferred date for the crucifixion (29 AD) is reinstated, Paul was still older than 30 when all this occurs, scarcely a young man. If, however, as the Acta Pilati maintain, Jesus was crucified in 21 AD, this incident could have occurred when Paul was barely twenty and the description of him as young is true.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.