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Chapter 8

Now Saul was consenting to his execution.(A)

Persecution of the Church. On that day, there broke out a severe persecution[a] of the church in Jerusalem, and all were scattered throughout the countryside of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.[b] Devout men buried Stephen and made a loud lament over him. Saul, meanwhile, was trying to destroy the church;[c] entering house after house and dragging out men and women, he handed them over for imprisonment.(B)

III. The Mission in Judea and Samaria

Philip in Samaria. Now those who had been scattered went about preaching the word.(C)

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Footnotes

  1. 8:1–40 Some idea of the severity of the persecution that now breaks out against the Jerusalem community can be gathered from Acts 22:4 and Acts 26:9–11. Luke, however, concentrates on the fortunes of the word of God among people, indicating how the dispersal of the Jewish community resulted in the conversion of the Samaritans (Acts 8:4–17, 25). His narrative is further expanded to include the account of Philip’s acceptance of an Ethiopian (Acts 8:26–39).
  2. 8:1 All were scattered…except the apostles: this observation leads some modern scholars to conclude that the persecution was limited to the Hellenist Christians and that the Hebrew Christians were not molested, perhaps because their attitude toward the law and temple was still more in line with that of their fellow Jews (see the charge leveled against the Hellenist Stephen in Acts 6:13–14). Whatever the facts, it appears that the Twelve took no public stand regarding Stephen’s position, choosing, instead, to await the development of events.
  3. 8:3 Saul…was trying to destroy the church: like Stephen, Saul was able to perceive that the Christian movement contained the seeds of doctrinal divergence from Judaism. A pupil of Gamaliel, according to Acts 22:3, and totally dedicated to the law as the way of salvation (Gal 1:13–14), Saul accepted the task of crushing the Christian movement, at least insofar as it detracted from the importance of the temple and the law. His vehement opposition to Christianity reveals how difficult it was for a Jew of his time to accept a messianism that differed so greatly from the general expectation.