Acts 7:2-17

Excursus.

On certain alleged Discrepancies in Stephen's Speech.

A great deal has been written upon certain supposed inaccuracies which occur in the speech of Stephen, as given in the seventh chapter of the Acts. The case stands thus. In his rapid review of Old Testament history, some few statements occur which appear in certain details to vary from the account of the same circumstances contained in the Old Testament.

These differences are in themselves utterly unimportant, and in no case possess the slightest bearing on the current of the argument; for instance, one of the more notable of these supposed variations consists in the name of the burial-place of Jacob and his sons; another, in the number of years during which the Egyptian slavery lasted; another, the exact period of Abraham's life when his father Terah died. The best general explanation is, that whenever Stephen's account varies or seems to vary in these few little unimportant details from the Old Testament history, in these cases to assume that he follows the popularly-received national history of his time. Ewald goes a little further, and suggests there was at that time current among the Jews a generally-received epitome of national history, which no doubt Stephen quoted from. Meyer, commenting upon this suggestion, writes ‘that such a supposition is possible, but that the existence of such a work is nowhere shown.' But the hypothesis of Ewald, or at all events the modification of it above suggested, is well supported by what we possess of contemporary Jewish literature. In several of the instances of Stephen's supposed errors, Philo or Josephus, when relating the same event, makes the same apparent mistake as Stephen, clearly showing that at that time there was a popular account, written or unwritten, of the history of Israel differing apparently in a few unimportant details from the Old Testament story.

Each of these alleged discrepancies will be found, however, briefly discussed in the following note.

Acts 7:2-3. The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, And said onto him, Get thee out of thy country. According to the history in Genesis 11:31; Genesis 12:1-5, the call of Abraham took place in Haran [Charran]; while Stephen speaks of Abraham being called when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran. There is no doubt, however, that Abraham was twice called by the Lord, once in Ur of the Chaldees in the north of Mesopotamia, and afterwards in Haran (see Genesis 15:7 and Nehemiah 9:7, in both of which passages the earlier Divine summons is alluded to).

Philo, who represents fairly the current tradition of the time, distinctly speaks of these two calls (see Philo, de Abrahams, lxxvii. p. 77, 16,ed. Mang).

Acts 7:4. When his father was dead. This does not accord with the history in Genesis, where we read in Genesis 11:26, Terah lived seventy years, and begat Abraham, Nahor, and Haran; and in Genesis 12:4, Abraham came forth from Haran when seventy-five years old; and Stephen says at that period Terah was dead. Thus the days of Terah could not have exceeded 145 years. But in Genesis 11:32, it is said the days of Terah were 205 years. The Samaritan Pentateuch reads in Genesis 11:32 for Terah's age 145 years for 205, which would of course remove the difficulty. Philo, again, supports Stephen in his statement that Terah was dead when Abraham came forth from Haran (De Migr. Abraham, sect. 32). The singular alteration in the Samaritan Pentateuch was evidently made to suit the traditional history then, evidently from Philo's statement, current among the Jews. The apparent difficulty admits of a ready solution if we adopt the theory held by some Jewish writers, that Abraham was not the eldest, but the youngest son of Terah: the position Abraham occupied in the history of the chosen people would readily account for his being the first named of the sons of Terah. [Japheth, for instance, the eldest of the sons of Noah (Genesis 9:24; Genesis 10:21), is mentioned (Genesis 5:32) last of them.] Thus Terah would be 70 years when Nahor, the eldest of the three, was born, and 60 years might well have elapsed in those days of long life before the birth of Abraham, the youngest. Wordsworth calls attention to the following marriage:

Such a marriage would seem certainly to intimate that Abraham was a younger brother of Nahor.

Acts 7:6. That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years. A chronological difficulty arises here, 400 years, a round number, is mentioned as the duration of the sojourning of the seed of Abraham in a strange land, here and in Genesis 15:13. The exact number of years is given in Exodus 12:40 as 430. Now, from what period are these years to be reckoned?

At first sight, the words, both in this place and in Exodus 12:40, would seem to limit the period to the Egyptian bondage; but St. Paul, in Galatians 3:17, evidently understands it differently, and considers the 430 years as the space of time intervening between the call of Abraham and the giving of the law. This is evidently the meaning. Wordsworth gives the following table of dates:

Abraham in Haran, 5 years Abraham in Canaan, 11 years From the birth of Ishmael to that of Isaac, 14 years 30 years From the birth of Isaac to the birth of Jacob, 60 years From the birth of Jacob to the birth of Joseph, 90 years To Joesph's death, 110 years To the birth of Moses, 60 years To the Exodus, 80 years 400 years On examination of both the passages (Exodus 12:40 and that containing the words of Stephen under consideration), it will be seen that this period of 400 years is roughly given as the time during which the children of Israel were to continue sojourners or strangers in the land in which they might be dwelling. The patriarchs were not merely strangers in the land; they were often, as the Genesis history tells us, ‘evil entreated.' Instances of such evil treatment, even in the case of Abraham, the greatest of them, seem to have been not unfrequent (see Genesis 12:20). Jacob, too, tells Pharaoh, ‘Few and evil have been his days.' But whatever view may be taken of this difficulty, Stephen, even if he intended (which at least, as we have shown, is doubtful) to represent the Egyptian bondage as lasting 400 years, adopted a chronology which was current apparently in some of the Jewish schools of that time; for Josephus, Ant. ii. 9. 1, distinctly states that the Israelites spent 400 years under the afflictions in Egypt. In another place the same writer follows the chronology of St. Paul in the Galatian Epistle (see Ant. ii. 15. 2). It would seem as though there were two traditions current at that time in the Jewish schools relative to the time spent by the children of Israel in Egypt

Acts 7:14. Then sent Joseph, and called his father Jacob to him, and all his kindred, threescore and fifteen souls. According to the Hebrew text of Genesis 46:27; Exodus 1:5; Deuteronomy 10:22, the descendants of Jacob at this time amounted to seventy persons; but the Greek version of the LXX. has changed that number in the first two passages to seventy-five, which agrees exactly with the statement in this verse. In the Hebrew text of Genesis 46:27, the family of Jacob which came into Egypt numbered sixty-six, and Jacob himself, Joseph and his two sons, make up the full number seventy.

In the LXX., in Acts 7:27 of this same chapter of Genesis, we find the following interpolation: ‘And the sons of Joseph born to him in the land of Egypt were nine souls.' Thus the LXX. makes up the number 66 + 9 = 75. Philo notices this difference between the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Pentateuch, and deduces from it, after his custom, an allegory (see Meyer here). This, however, cannot with any fairness be termed a discrepancy, for Stephen simply follows the Greek version of the LXX., to which as a Hellenist he was most accustomed. Nor have we any right to condemn the interpolation of the LXX. as an error; it in no way contradicts the numbers given in the Hebrew text, but simply adds to them certain numbers of Joseph's family not reckoned in the original census. Wordsworth mentions who these nine most probably were

‘The addition of these five was not accidental, for Stephen (following the LXX.) thus affirms that those born of Jacob's line in Egypt, the strange land and house of bondage, were equally children of the promise with those born in Canaan, the Promised Land, according to what Jacob himself says of the sons of Joseph born in Egypt, “As Reuben and Simeon they (Ephraim and Manasseh) shall be mine.”'

Acts 7:15-16. So Jacob went down into Egypt, and died, he, and our fathers, And were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre, etc. We read in Genesis 50:13 that Jacob was buried in Abraham's sepulchre at Hebron, in the cave of the field of Machpelah; and in Joshua 24:32, that the bones of Joseph brought up by the children of Israel out of Egypt, were buried in Shechem. The Old Testament is silent concerning the places of sepulture of the other eleven sons of Jacob. In this verse nothing is said of Jacob's burying-place, for the translation of the passage should run thus: ‘15. So Jacob went down into Egypt and died, he and our fathers. 16. And they were carried over into Sychem (οι ̔ πατε ́ ρες η ̔ μω ͂ ν being taken as the subject of μετετε ́ θησαν without αὐτές).' Of Sychem as the burial-place of the eleven brethren of Joseph, St. Jerome, who lived near Sychem, says that the tombs of the twelve patriarchs were to be seen there in his time (see Ep. 86, and also his treatise, De optimo genere interpretandi), where he expressly states that the twelve patriarchs were not buried in Asbes (Hebron), but in Sychem. This burial of the twelve great ancestors of the tribes of Israel in hated Samarian Shechem was mentioned by Stephen, to show that holiness and blessedness are not limited in death and burial to any particular spot. The bodies of these patriarchs were brought from distant Egypt and laid there as in a chosen spot in preference to holy Hebron and the cave of Machpelah, where Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob had been laid (see Wordsworth's note here).

In the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money from the sons of Emmor, the father of Shechem. Some commentators have supposed, but needlessly, that in haste or inadvertence Stephen has here substituted the name of Abraham for that of Jacob. In Stephen's speech we read how ‘Abraham bought a sepulchre of the sons of Emmor.' In Genesis 33:19 we read how ‘Jacob bought a piece of ground from the sons of Emmor.' Now was Stephen (or his transcriber) mistaken here? Did he through ‘inadvertence' mention the name of Abraham instead of that of Jacob? The question really is, Did Abraham buy a piece of land at Shechem? Directly this is not stated in Genesis, but we find from Genesis 12:6-7 that it was in Shechem that God first appeared to him, and that there he built an altar to the Lord; at that time we are expressly told ‘the Canaanite was then in the land.' Now it is certainly more than probable that Abraham purchased the site on which he erected the altar, and where God first appeared to him, just as we read later, when his grandson Jacob erected an altar also in Shechem, he bought the site from the princes of the land. Whether or not the field purchased by Jacob was the same as that originally acquired by Abraham is doubtful (Wordsworth, whose argument generally is here followed, supposes it was, and that in the intervening years the sacred spot had been occupied by others, and Jacob from a feeling of piety wished to restore it). Certain it is from the story of Genesis, that both Abraham and Jacob built an altar to the Lord in Shechem, and the latter, we are told, bought the site from the princes of the country. That the former should have omitted to secure as far as possible so sacred a site, is most improbable. Stephen asserts that he did so, thereby contradicting no previous statement, but adding, doubtless from some well-known tradition, an additional fact in itself by no means improbable. The fact of the names of the persons, ‘sons of Emmor,' from whom Stephen relates that Abraham bought the sepulchre, being identical with the names of those from whom Jacob bought the field, is adduced as a proof that the two transactions are identical, and that Stephen has substituted Abraham for Jacob. But, as Wordsworth well suggests, there is nothing strange in the fact of there being more than one prince in Shechem bearing the same name ‘Emmor.' The ‘Emmor' mentioned by Stephen need not have been the same as the ‘Emmor' or Hamor from whose sons Jacob bought the field. Indeed, some five hundred years later we find (Judges 9:28) the same name meeting us, and again connected with Shechem: ‘Serve the men of Hamor (Emmor) the father of Shechem: for why should we serve him? ‘Wordsworth believes the name Emmor (Hamor) to have been the hereditary title of the kings of the country, as Pharaoh was in Egypt, Cæsar in Rome, and probably Candace in Ethiopia; but apart from such a hypothesis, which is doubtful, how commonly in royal dynasties does the same name occur and recur! We need only instance in old days Darius in Persia, Antiochus in Syria, Herod in Palestine, and in modern times Louis and Philippe in France, Henry and George in England.