Saint Stephen


Stephen is traditionally venerated as the protomartyr or first martyr of Christianity. According to the Acts of the Apostles, he was a deacon in the early church at Jerusalem who angered members of various synagogues by his teachings. Accused of blasphemy at his trial, he made a speech denouncing the Jewish authorities who were sitting in judgment on him and was then stoned to death. Saul of Tarsus, a Pharisee and Roman citizen who would later become Paul the Apostle, was also involved as a witness in Stephen's execution.
The only source for information about Stephen is the New Testament book of the Acts of the Apostles. Stephen is mentioned in Acts 6 as one of the Greek-speaking Hellenistic Jews selected to administer the daily charitable distribution of food to the Greek-speaking widows.
The Catholic, Anglican, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Orthodox, and Lutheran churches and the Church of the East venerate Stephen as a saint. Artistic representations often show Stephen with a crown symbolising martyrdom, three stones, martyr's palm frond, censer, and often holding a miniature church building. Stephen is often shown as a young, beardless man with a tonsure, wearing a deacon's vestments.

Background

Stephen is first mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles as one of the Seven Deacons, who were appointed by the Apostles to distribute food and charitable aid to poorer members of the community in the early church. According to Orthodox belief, he was the eldest and is therefore called "archdeacon". As another deacon, Nicholas of Antioch, is specifically stated to have been a convert to Judaism before converting to Christianity, it may be assumed that Stephen was born Jewish, but nothing more is known about his previous life. The reason for the appointment of the deacons is stated to have been dissatisfaction among Hellenistic Jews that their widows were being slighted in preference to Hebrew ones in the daily distribution of food. Since the name Stephanos is Koine Greek, it has been assumed that he was one of these Hellenistic Jews. Stephen is stated to have been full of faith and the Holy Spirit and to have performed miracles among the people.
It seems to have been among synagogues of Hellenistic Jews that he performed his teachings and "signs and wonders" since it is said that he aroused the opposition of the Synagogue of the Libertines, and "of the Cyrenians, and of the Alexandrians, and of them that were of Cilicia and Asia". Members of these synagogues had challenged Stephen's teachings, but Stephen had bested them in debate. Furious at this humiliation, they suborned false testimony that Stephen had preached blasphemy against Moses and God. They dragged him to appear before the Sanhedrin, the supreme legal court of Jewish elders, accusing him of preaching against the Second Temple and the Torah. Stephen is said to have been unperturbed, his face looking like "that of an angel".

Hellenistic Judaism

It emerged after Alexander the Great's conquest of Judea, by combining Hellenic and Jewish religions and cultures. From this combination arose religious schools such as the aforementioned Hellenistic Judaism, Christianity, Gnosticism, Hypsistianism, Manichaeism, among others; their theology and theogony being quite disparate, but many of them having a link in terms of worship centered around Zeus-Yahweh and his "Sons", sent to humanity to redeem it and establish a personal union with him.

Speech to Sanhedrin

In a long speech to the Sanhedrin comprising almost the whole of Acts 7, Stephen presents his view of the history of the Israelites. The God of glory, he says, appeared to Abraham in Mesopotamia, thus establishing at the beginning of the speech one of its major themes, that God does not dwell only in one particular building. Stephen recounts the stories of the patriarchs in some depth and goes into even more detail in the case of Moses. God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, and inspired Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. Nevertheless, the Israelites turned to other gods. This establishes the second main theme of Stephen's speech, Israel's disobedience to God. Stephen faced two accusations: that he had declared that Jesus would destroy the Temple in Jerusalem and that he had changed the customs of Moses. Pope Benedict XVI stated in 2012 that Stephen appealed to the Jewish scriptures to prove how the laws of Moses were not subverted by Jesus but were instead being fulfilled. Stephen denounces his listeners as "stiff-necked" people who, just as their ancestors had done, resist the Holy Spirit. "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which showed before of the coming of the Just One; of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers: who have received the law by the disposition of the angels, and have not kept it."

The stoning of Stephen

The account is that the crowd, thus castigated, could contain their anger no longer. However, Stephen looked up and cried, "Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God." He said that the recently resurrected Jesus was standing by the side of God. The people from the crowd, who threw the first stones, laid their coats down so as to be able to do this, at the feet of a young man named Saul. Stephen prayed that the Lord would receive his spirit and his killers be forgiven, sank to his knees, and "fell asleep". Saul "was consenting unto his death." In the aftermath of Stephen's death, the remaining disciples except for the apostles fled to distant lands, many to Antioch.

Location of the martyrdom

The exact site of Stephen's stoning is not mentioned in Acts; instead there are two different traditions. One, claimed by noted French archaeologists Louis-Hugues Vincent and Félix-Marie Abel to be ancient, places the event at Jerusalem's northern gate, while another one, dated by Vincent and Abel to the Middle Ages and no earlier than the 12th century, locates it at the eastern gate.

Views of Stephen's speech

Of the numerous speeches in Acts of the Apostles, Stephen's speech to the Sanhedrin is the longest. To the objection that it seems unlikely that such a long speech could be reproduced in the text of Acts exactly as it was delivered, some Biblical scholars have replied that Stephen's speech shows a distinctive personality behind it.
There are at least five places where Stephen's retelling of the stories of Israelite history diverges from the scriptures where these stories originated; for example, Stephen says that Jacob's tomb was in Shechem, but Genesis 50:13 says Jacob's body was carried and buried in a cave in Machpelah at Hebron. Some theologians argue that these may not be discrepancies, but rather a condensing of historical events for people who were already familiar with them. That Jacob's body was carried to a final resting place in Shechem is not recorded in Genesis, though it does not exclude the possibility that his bones were transferred to Shechem for a final burial place, as was done with the bones of Jacob's son Joseph, as described in Other scholars consider these and other discrepancies as errors. Still others interpret them as deliberate choices making theological points. Another possibility is that the discrepancies come from an ancient Jewish tradition which was not included in the scriptures or may have been popular among people of Jerusalem who were not scribes.
The parallels between the accounts of Stephen in Acts and the Jesus of the Gospels have led to suspicions that the author of Acts emphasized or invented some of them as a way of demonstrating to the audience that people become holy when they follow Christ's example.
The criticism of traditional Jewish belief and practice in Stephen's speech is very strong – when he says God does not live in a dwelling "made by human hands", referring to the Temple, he is using an expression often employed by biblical texts to describe idols.
Some people have laid the charge of anti-Judaism against the speech, for instance the priest and scholar of comparative religion S. G. F. Brandon, who states: "The anti-Jewish polemic of this speech reflects the attitude of the author of Acts."

Commentary

The Catholic theologian Friedrich Justus Knecht lists the similarities between the martyrdom of Stephen and Jesus' death on the cross:

  1. Jesus was sentenced to death on the charge of blasphemy, because He had affirmed on oath: "I am the Son of the living God, and hereafter you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of God". Similarly, Stephen was stoned on the assumption that he was a blasphemer, and because he professed his belief in the Divinity of Jesus, and said: "I see heaven open, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God".
  2. Both were treated as outcasts, and put to death outside the city.
  3. Both, when dying, prayed for their enemies: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do". – "Lay not this sin to their charge".
  4. Both, before dying, commended their souls to God: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit". – "Lord Jesus, receive my soul!"

Pope Leo XIV comments that

Tomb and relics of Stephen

Acts 8:2 says "devout men carried Stephen to his burial, and made great lamentation over him," but the location where he was buried is not specified.
In 415, a priest named Lucian purportedly had a dream that revealed the location of Stephen's remains at Beit Jimal. After that, the relics of the protomartyr were taken in procession to the Church of Hagia Sion on 26 December 415, making it the date for the feast of Saint Stephen. The recovery of the relics were described in a letter written by Avitus of Braga, who was involved in a plot to bring some of those relics to Braga via the historian and theologian Paulus Orosius. In 439, the relics were translated to a new church north of the Damascus Gate built by the empress Aelia Eudocia in honor of Saint Stephen. This church was destroyed in the 12th century. A 20th-century French Catholic church, Saint-Étienne, was built in its place, while another, the Greek Orthodox Church of St Stephen, was built outside the eastern gate of the city, which a second tradition holds to be the site of his martyrdom, rather than the northern location outside Damascus Gate.
The Crusaders initially called the main northern gate of Jerusalem "Saint Stephen's Gate", highlighting its proximity to the site of martyrdom of Saint Stephen, marked by the church and monastery built by Empress Eudocia. A different tradition is documented from the end of the Crusader period, after the disappearance of the Byzantine church: as Christian pilgrims were prohibited from approaching the militarily exposed northern city wall, the name "Saint Stephen's Gate" was transferred to the still accessible eastern gate, which bears this name until this day.
The relics of the protomartyr were later translated to Rome by Pope Pelagius II during the construction of the basilica of San Lorenzo fuori le Mura. They were interred alongside the relics of Saint Lawrence, whose tomb is enshrined within the church. According to the Golden Legend, the relics of Lawrence moved miraculously to one side to make room for those of Stephen.
The Imperial Regalia of the Holy Roman Empire includes a relic known as St. Stephen's Purse which is an elaborate gold and jewel-encrusted box believed to contain soil soaked with the blood of St. Stephen. The reliquary is likely a 9th-century creation.
In his book The City of God, Augustine of Hippo describes the many miracles that occurred when part of the relics of Saint Stephen were brought to Africa.
The relics of the protomartyr were also in India Kerala brought from Congregation Mount Athos, Greece to St. Stephens Orthodox Cathedral Pilgrim Center, Kudassanad, Kerala, India.