Christian Texts and History • Shelly Matthews on Acts’ story of Stephen’s death within the discourses of Christian martyrdom and Marcionism

Acts constructs unbelieving Jews as villainous and savage, cut off from salvation, in part, through employing Romanized stereotypes of barbaric behavior. Through focus on this vilifying and vengeful rhetoric, and its conformity to Roman imperial values and frameworks, I call into question scholarly arguments that Acts holds an irenic view of unbelieving Jews, as well as arguments that the text is best understood as a form of “resistance literature” serving to challenge the Pax Romana.

Finally, I address the recent argument of Joseph Tyson that Acts, along with the first two chapters of the Third Gospel, serves to counter emerging Marcionite theology. Tyson’s work focuses on how Luke’s appropriation of Jewish symbols in these chapters responds to Marcionite renderings of Christian distinctiveness. I add a supporting plank to Tyson’s argument by noting how the martial imagery of these chapters [in Luke] provides swift rebuttal to any Marcionite assertion that divine violence is the exclusive preserve of the Old Testament God.

... of the Stephen pericope within the book of Acts, [in chapter 2] I note how the depiction of Stephen’s stoning by a riotous and barbaric mob of Jews conforms perfectly to Acts’ rhetorical attempt to bracket Romans from violence against Jesus believers, on the one hand, and to implicate Jews who do not accept messianic claims concerning Jesus as essentially murderous, on the other. I argue further that Stephen’s typological function as the perfect martyr goes far to explain Acts’ silence regarding the deaths of prominent early Christian figures at Roman hands, and especially its silence concerning the death of Paul.

As a means of challenging Acts’ version of events as “natural” or “obvious,” in chapter 3, I consider a set of related death narratives concerning James, the brother of Jesus. The chapter begins with the narrative of the death of James preserved in Hegesippus —a text with remarkable structural similarity to Acts’ story of Stephen. It then takes up two texts that diverge considerably from the Stephen story: the death of James as recounted in Josephus’ Antiquities, and the story of violent conflict between James and Paul in the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions. The chapter ends with an assessment of the various merits of these texts in evoking and explaining first-century violence among Jews.

Having considered the “perfection” of Stephen in chapter 2, in terms of the rhetorical fittingness of the pericope, I turn in chapter 4 to the question of the traditional reason that Stephen is hailed as the “perfect” martyr: In early Christian thinking, the sign of the martyr’s perfection is the dying forgiveness prayer he utters on behalf of his persecutors. Because the Stephen prayer is closely linked to the dying forgiveness prayer of the Lukan Jesus, both of these iterations are considered here. Against those who argue that the dying prayer conforms perfectly to Jewish scriptural precedent, and those who argue that it signals a clear break between Christianity and Judaism, I argue that the dying forgiveness prayers are part of a complicated rhetorical balancing act. Through these prayers, the author of Luke-Acts both attempts to assert Christian difference from Jews on the basis of their superior ethic of mercy while also challenging Marcionite notions that this ethic overrides divine judgment against unrepentant sinners.

I draw on the discourse of Roman imperial clemency to account for how an early Christian text can both mark its heroes as extremely merciful, all the while engaging in the unmerciful act of depicting Jews villainously. Acknowledgment of the violence adhering to the “manly” virtue of Roman clemency helps to clarify the violence of merciful rhetoric in early Christianity. I also consider the Roman discourse of pardon to account for the ambiguity of the reception of the dying forgiveness prayers. In questions of appropriate pardon, the possibility exists that any purported assertion of the virtue of clemency might in actuality prove to be an instance of a more “womanish” vice, such as pity or softness that owes to weakness of mind. Pardon owing to such softness or irrationality is a breach of justice. I shall show that while some Christians hailed the forgiveness prayer as a sign of the martyrs’ perfection, others were much more troubled by them since, standing alone, they might suggest just this breach of justice—an inappropriate use of the dying forgiveness prayer conjures an eschatological moment in which the evildoers do not receive the divine punishment which is their due.

Here again are raised not only questions of Roman imperial framing—how do these prayers measure against Roman articulations
of the manliness of clemency, the womanishness of pity; the justice of the former and the despicable nature of the latter—but also questions of a “Marcionite” sort—what is the nature and extent of divine mercy? Is divine judgment with its hell of fire and brimstone to be dismissed as the preserve of the Old Testament God?

https://www.academia.edu/114161601/Perf ... n_identity