Thoughts on Acts 7

Today’s reading: Psalms 140-142; Acts 7

I wonder if part of the reason Luke incudes Stephen’s speech, with all the detail that he does, is to give his non-Jewish readers a bit of a background in some of the most important stories of the Jewish Scriptures.

To be clear, in wondering this, I’m in no way suggesting that Luke is making up Stephen’s speech as a literary device or something. He said, from the beginning of his gospel, that he was setting out to pull together an orderly account based on eye-witness testimony of the events surrounding Jesus and His followers, so making up an entire speech would really undermine that claim that he was recording history. 

But it has always struck me as a little odd just how long Stephen’s speech is. The long speech makes sense for Stephen making a defense of himself before the Jewish authorities, but surely Luke could have summarized it, right? As the author/editor pulling these accounts together, Luke could have summarized Stephen’s words, he could have mentioned the fact that Stephen made a speech without recording it all, he could have recorded only half the speech, or handled it a dozen other ways. But as it stands, Luke spilled a lot of ink, and consumed a lot of parchment, including Stephen’s entire speech as he did, and that has always struck me as an odd choice.

For Stephen’s part, my understanding of his speech is that he is largely taking aim at the charges brought against him regarding the temple and it’s customs, and pointing out that God has been interacting with Israel (or her ancestors) in various places and various ways from His first interactions with them. The temple and its customs, especially as it stood before them during Stephen’s speech, was only one form, and this serves, somewhat, as an answer to the contrived charges brought against him.

But for Luke’s part, this speech, while long, gives his Greek readers a pretty solid introduction to many of the most important characters and stories in Jewish history.

At the beginning, the Christian movement was centered around Jerusalem, spreading out through Israel. As it expanded into Gentile cities, it was still largely spreading, at least at first, through synagogues and otherwise Jewish communities who would have had a background in the Scriptures. But as the teaching of Jesus continued to spread, it quickly moved out of Jewish circles and into communities with absolutely no idea who Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were, let alone important figures like Joseph, Moses, and Joshua.

So I wonder if Luke included such a long cut of Stephen’s speech in order to introduce these important men in salvation history, and/or to whet the Gentile reader’s appetite to read those stories for themselves and learn more about the foundation of their faith in Jesus.