DeConick A.D

115
PAUL AND GNOSTIC DOGMA
When he is asked by the high priest about the truth of these allegations,
Stephen denies nothing. Instead, he tries to defend himself by arguing
that God gave Abraham and his descendants the promise of the land of
Israel before he ever involved Abraham in a covenant of circumcision
(Acts 7:2–8). He went on to explain that the Mosaic law was given to their
ancestors by angels, not by God himself. Furthermore, the bequest had
been ineffective; their ancestors were never able to follow it.
If this were not enough, Stephen inflames the situation further by saying
that the Jews in Jerusalem have continued to make a mess of things,
having gone as far as killing the Messiah, Jesus. In Stephen’s opinion, they
had become murderers of a holy man and traitors to God. In anger, he
calls his accusers stubborn men with uncircumcised hearts (7:51–53).
That was it. Stephen was dragged out into the streets and stoned to
death by the angry mob (7:54–60). The high priest issued orders to find
out who belonged to this blasphemous cult, to enter their homes by force,
and to incarcerate them until they could be judged before the Sanhedrin
on the charge of blasphemy. To save themselves, the non-Jewish Wayfarers
fled into the countryside of Judaea and Samaria, while the Jewish adherents
and the disciples hunkered down in Jerusalem to wait it out.
This is when Paul comes on the scene (figure 4.2). Paul never knew
Jesus. But as a fanatic Jew, he becomes involved in the house arrests of
Jesus’ devotees. The author of Acts says that Paul, with the blessing of the
high priest, heads out on the road to the synagogue in Damascus, where
he hopes to locate and arrest the devotees of Jesus who had fled there
(8:1–3, 9:1–2). Although this is reported in Acts in embellished detail, it
is not complete fiction. Paul tells us in his own letters that he was once
a fanatic Jew. He admits with shame that he violently pursued members
of the Jerusalem church in order to destroy it (Galatians 1:13; Philippians
3:6; 1 Corinthians 15:9).
Something happened on the road to Damascus, something that caused
Paul’s life to be turned upside down and inside out. In the blink of an eye,
his entire identity and life as a Jew was altered in ways so drastic that for
the rest of his career he tries to explain and defend the change, in letter
after letter written to his Christian foster children. Yes, the fanatic Jewish
enemy of the first Christians becomes the father of a form of Christianity
that profoundly transgressed his Jewish heritage and his commitment to