Inverted Guilt in Acts 7:55–60 and Paul’s Vote in Acts 26:10
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Irony and Figurative Language
Inverted Guilt in Acts 7:55–60 and Paul’s Vote in Acts 26:10
Luke sometimes employs narrative symbolism or figurative imagery that should have been intelligible to his contemporaries. Two prominent examples of this are his depiction of inverted guilt in Acts 7 : 55–60 and his depiction of Paul’s figurative vote against Stephen in Acts 26 : 10 .
Inverted Guilt in Acts 7:55–60
Ancient rhetoricians commonly turned accusers’ own charges against them, a strategy both recommended in rhetorical handbooks and exemplified in preserved forensic speeches.⁶⁸² Writers also employed this inversion of guilt to provide irony in other literary forms as well, for example claiming that it was Socrates’s accusers, rather than Socrates himself, who were truly guilty of the crimes of which they accused him.⁶⁸³
Stephen’s speech clearly inverts accusations of law violation against his accusers (Acts 7:51–53), but it appears likely that Luke further accentuates this inversion in the ensuing narrative of Stephen’s martyrdom. This additional inversion is suggested by the collocation of three independent but likely mutually supportive factors: the Son of Man standing (7:55–56); the witnesses stripping off their own garments rather than Stephen’s (7:58); and Stephen confessing their sins rather than his own (7:60).
The first of these factors is the least certain, since the Son of Man “standing” has generated numerous plausible interpretations.⁶⁸⁴ Two of the interpretations, however, that Jesus stands as judge or witness, are specifically forensic.⁶⁸⁵ Scripture commonly portrays God as rising to defend his people.⁶⁸⁶ If Jesus stands as the true judge, as witness, and/or as confessing Stephen before the Father (Luke 12:8), then the narrative reverses the verdict of the unjust judges on themselves.⁶⁸⁷
The second feature is the most obvious of the three, in view of frequent reports of killings from antiquity. Ancient reports of lynchings and executions frequently mention that the accused person is stripped naked before being killed.⁶⁸⁸ Later Jewish descriptions of excecutions, which are probably idealized, also specify the stripping of a man before his execution.⁶⁸⁹
There are valid historical reasons why Stephen’s accusers may have stripped themselves: those engaging in strenuous physical activity often stripped off their clothing or their outer garments.⁶⁹⁰ Nevertheless, that Luke chooses to report them stripping themselves, while neglecting to mention any stripping of Stephen, is significant.⁶⁹¹ This account transfers the shame normally attached to the person being killed to those who are performing the killing. This suggests an ominous reversal of roles: unknown to themselves, the accusers are the ones who will face true judgment.⁶⁹²
Finally, Stephen prays for the forgiveness of those who have wronged him. This feature by itself would not necessarily indicate ironic reversal, apart from coinciding with the other features we have mentioned (Jesus did, after all, command prayer for persecutors, Luke 6:28). Taken in conjunction with them, however, it is suggestive. Later Jewish tradition claims that it was conventional for a person being executed to pray, “May my death atone for all my sins.”⁶⁹³ But whereas we might expect Stephen to pray for God to forgive his own sins here, he instead dies praying for the forgiveness of his persecutors.
Scholars regularly recognize that Stephen’s death evokes that of his Lord, so it should come as no surprise that some of these ironic elements echo those in Luke’s passion narrative as well. At his own trial, Jesus announced that he would soon reign as Son of Man (Luke 22:69); hence, he was their judge. Likewise, Jesus prays for the forgiveness of his accusers (according to the likeliest reading (Luke 23:34).⁶⁹⁴ In Jesus’s case, however, it is Jesus who is explicitly stripped of his garments, and his garments divided (Luke 23:34); perhaps the image of stripping for exercise more naturally fit Hellenists such as Stephen’s accuser-executioners presumably were (cf. 6:9–14; 7:58).
In any case, the collocation of these three features of the martyrdom narrative, together with the gist of Stephen’s own speech, suggests that Luke inverts the implied verdict of the hearing. The true judge supports Stephen; Stephen’s accusers strip their own cloaks, in contrast to the convention of stripping that of the person to be executed; and, contrary to convention, Stephen prays for the forgiveness of his accusers’ guilt rather than his own.
Paul’s Figurative Vote in Acts 26:10
Because Paul in Acts 26:10 claims that he “cast his vote” against Jesus’s holy ones in capital cases, scholars sometimes have thought that Paul was in the Sanhedrin.⁶⁹⁵ From this putative position in the Sanhedrin, they have even inferred that he may have been married.⁶⁹⁶ (To be consistent, they may as well have assumed that he was an elder, as most members of the Sanhedrin were, though this view contradicts Acts 7:58 and probably his continuing active longevity.) Such inferences are, however, unwarranted. Ancient hearers would recognize that Paul is simply employing figurative language effectively.
The expression does have a judicial context, and functions as good judicial rhetoric. In Roman provinces, only the designated Roman officials could execute people;⁶⁹⁷ the behavior Paul here confesses before Agrippa, Berenice, and Festus, therefore, is technically illegal. Why would Paul confess illegal behavior at a trial? Paul’s “vote” to execute people (or Stephen, if it is a generalizing plural) suggests that he acted not purely on his own but participated in corporate decisions. That Paul locked up Jesus’s holy ones because of “authorization” from the high priests (26:10; cf. 9:14; 26:12) implicates leaders of the priestly aristocracy in Paul’s crimes.
The very priestly class that insists on Paul’s execution, now that he is in Roman custody, participated in assassinations! The difference between them and Paul in Paul’s argument appears to be that they supported his illegal activity, but now that he has long since turned from it and is ready to denounce it, they are eager to silence him. Luke’s narrative also implies that they may be ready to continue to participate in such activity (cf. 23:14–15; 25:3).⁶⁹⁸ Returning charges against one’s accusers was conventional forensic rhetoric.⁶⁹⁹
Nevertheless, Paul’s “vote” does not imply a democratic civic council or a jury court; it indicates merely his consent and participation (cf. 8:1; 22:20). Paul does, to be sure, use the term for “pebble,”⁷⁰⁰ which could function as one among several kinds of ballots. But it could also function as a metonymy for other forms of corporate approval, and many scholars argue that it does not refer to literal voting here.⁷⁰¹ Luke Timothy Johnson points out several reasons why literal voting is not likely here; his strongest argument is that, despite Luke’s frequent emphasis on Paul’s high status, he fails to portray him as a member of the Sanhedrin—the one body that could have issued capital verdicts if anyone could have.⁷⁰²
There is, however, another important consideration rarely mentioned or documented that also supports the view of figurative ballots here: namely, the same or similar language is often used figuratively in ancient sources.⁷⁰³ Aelius Aristides employs the phrase figuratively for expressing an opinion.⁷⁰⁴ After weighing various evidence on a matter, Dionysius of Halicarnassus notes a criterion that casts the final “vote” (psêphon).⁷⁰⁵ Lucian tells his patron that regardless of others’ votes (psêphon) on his work, the patron’s will ultimately prove decisive.⁷⁰⁶
As Johnson has noted, this figurative image is particularly apt here and may function as wordplay: while others were stoning Stephen to death, Paul cast his own pebble.⁷⁰⁷ The idiom “cast” does not indicate this by itself, since jurors “casting” their pebbles was a conventional idiom.⁷⁰⁸ It fits the context well, however. Some find the suggestion dubious because the context does not invite humor; but ancients used puns less for humor than for wit, which might be appropriate when implicating accusers.⁷⁰⁹
If Luke does include such a wordplay, he was not the only ancient writer to have thought of it. Thus a fragment of Hipponax decrees: “by public vote . . . Pebbled with stones she may die, an evil death to the evil.”⁷¹⁰ Likewise, when some accusers agree to drop their stones (admittedly not the term for pebbles here) and instead vote as jurors, the defendant urges, “Keep your stones [[lithous]], . . . for you will need them presently at court.”⁷¹¹
Other figurative uses of “vote” in antiquity support the view that Paul “casting his vote” simply portrays graphically his consent to and participation in a lynching or lynchings. This portrayal’s context implicates the class that now accuses him. If “casting his pebble” also involves a wordplay (as a contrast with those who “stoned” Stephen), it reflects the sort of wordplay that also occurred to some other ancient writers.