STEPHEN'S ERRORS (ACTS 7)

There are several places in Acts 7 where Stephen says things that are at odds with the Old Testament record, and skeptics point to these as examples of the contradictions that are found in the Bible. We should keep in mind two general points here in rebuttal:

Stephen had been hauled in before the high Jewish council for a trial on trumped-up charges, and so he took the opportunity to deliver a long, and possibly impromptu, speech without benefit of notes. Another way of putting it was that this was not an open book test by any means. His defense covers the wide scope of Jewish history and thus he can be forgiven for getting some of the details incorrect, even though the overall thrust of his argument remains the same.

A second point to remember is that when Stephen quotes from Scripture, it is almost always from the Septuagint, not the Hebrew original. His use of the Greek version is perfectly understandable since he was one of the Hellenistic Jewish Christians, as explained in Acts 6:1-6, and may not have even understood the Hebrew language. It has even been proposed by some scholars that Stephen and the other “deacons” ordained in Acts 6 came from a Samaritan background. (One slim piece of evidence supporting that contention is the fact that the “this is...” formula in verses 35-40 is quite common in Samaritan writings.) If that is true, then Stephen may have also been influenced by the wording in the Samaritan Pentateuch in some of his statements. And even though the Septuagint and the Samaritan Pentateuch were translations from the Hebrew, they may have actually been prepared from alternative versions of the Hebrew texts that predated the tradition behind the Hebrew Bible that we have today.

Some of the “problem” statements that Stephen makes are discussed below:

7:1 The difficulties begin right away with the contention that God appeared to Abraham while he was still in Ur and before he moved to Haran. But the usual understanding of Genesis 11:31-12:1 was that God spoke to Abraham at Haran, not Ur. However, as Stott points out, “Genesis 12:1 can be translated 'The Lord had said to Abram' (NIV), suggesting that what he told him in Haran was actually a confirmation of what he had already said to him in Ur.” And this interpretation fits in well with statements made in Genesis 15:7; Joshua 24:3; and Nehemiah 9:7. So there is no error at all here.

7:14 There is clearly a contradiction here since Stephen says 75 people in Jacobs family traveled to Egypt to escape the famine. By contrast, both Genesis 46:27 and Exodus 1:5 say that there were only 70. There are two ways to resolve this issue. For one thing, even numbers such as 40 or 70 appear quite often in the Old Testament and may be the result of rounding off the actual number. An even more likely possibility is mentioned by several Bible scholars, namely that Stephen (as well as the Septuagint) may have included Joseph's sons in the total to reflect Jacob's entire family.

But Peter Davids points out that neither solution is that easy to accept since in the OT texts cited above actually include Joseph and his family in the count of 70 already. Davids feels that Stephen, and probably Luke as well, relied on the Septuagint and may not have even noticed the discrepancy with the Hebrew version. However, it turns out that even the Hebrew text found at Qumran has 75, not 70.

But as a re-rebuttal to Davids, Bruce notes that the Septuagint actually omitted both Jacob and Joseph in its count while listing nine sons of Joseph in place of the two mentioned in the Old Testament.

In any case, as Davids rightly says, “It is not an issue of scriptural accuracy, for neither Stephen nor Luke is teaching about Jacob's genealogy or the size of his family; they are teaching about how God was with Joseph in Egypt and then brought the whole nation out of Egypt. The point is that God deals with Israel outside of the Promised Land.”

7:15-16 Stephen says that Jacob was buried at Hebron (Gen 49:29; 50:13) while it was Joseph who was buried at Shechem (a Samaritan place of worship). Also, as Matthews points out, it was not Abraham, but Jacob who bought the tomb at Shechem (Genesis 33:19; Joshua 24:32).

John Stott says regarding this contradiction, “Some commentators have made fun of Stephen (or Luke) for confusing these, since he speaks of Abraham buying the Shechem tomb, instead of Jacob. But it is antecedently unlikely that Stephen, with is intimate knowledge of the Old Testament, would have made this mistake. It is better to conclude either that Jacob bought the Shechem burial ground in Abraham's name, since he was still alive at the time, or that, in giving an omnibus account of the burial of all the patriarchs, Stephen conflated the two sites, since Jacob was buried at his own request in field of Machpelah, whereas Joseph's bones were buried many years later at Shechem.

“The two purchases of land are telescoped here in much the same way as two separate calls of Abraham are telescoped in v. 2 and two separate Pentateuchal quotations in v. 7. The reference to Shechem, the sacred place of the schismatic Samaritans, would not give pleasure to a Jerusalem.” (Bruce)

7:23 The event described here occurred when Moses was 40 years old, according to Stephen, but Exodus 2:11 says it happened when Moses had grown up. There is no necessary contradiction here since 7:23 does not really imply falsely that the Jews considered 40 years old to mark the beginning of manhood. In addition, Stephen's statement fits with rabbinical tradition which divided Moses' life of 120 years into three major periods of 40 years each, based on Exodus 7:7 and Deuteronomy 34:7.

7:30 Moses sees the vision of the burning bush on Mt. Sinai in Stephen's version of the story even though Exodus 3:1-2 says it occurred on Mt. Horeb. There is no contradiction here either since the two designations refer to the same mountain, as can be seen from a comparison of Exodus 3:12 and Deuteronomy 1:6 with the references beginning at Exodus 19:11.

7:53 Stephen asserts that the Jews were the ones who received the law “as ordained by angels.” While the Old Testament says that angels were present when the law on Mt. Sinai was given, it does not state that they had any direct part of that communication to man. But this was apparently a widely accepted interpretation of the text of Deuteronomy 33:2 as evidenced by the fact that the same idea appears in Galatians 3:19 and Hebrews 2:2. Neil adds that whereas the Jews used that fact to bolster up the importance of the law, both NT writers draw the opposite conclusion from this belief to demonstrate the inferiority of the law.

In conclusion, we really need to concentrate on the overall purpose of Stephen's speech, which certainly was not to educate the Sanhedrin on mere historical facts that they already knew. It was to convict them of the sinfulness of the nation over the centuries in order to set the stage for explaining the necessity of their purification through the coming of Jesus as savior. It would seem on the surface that Stephen failed miserably in his goal. However, it appears that Saul/Paul was present to hear the whole speech as well as taking part in Stephen's subsequent stoning. And everything that Stephen said on that occasion would naturally have come back to mind after his subsequent encounter with the risen Christ on the road to Damascus.