11 - The Stoning

The same week Paul appeared before the Chief Officer of the Temple with his two witnesses, Zadok and Samuel. The two witnesses testified that in a sacred place on the previous Sabbath, they heard the preacher Stephen declare to the Hellenist Jews that Messiah would abolish the law of Moses and destroy the Temple, building another in its place.

Chief Officer John had the accuser and witnesses wait in the office while he sent a messenger for his father, old Annas. The witnesses formally repeated their charges, but to their astonishment, old Annas showed no sign of rage. He only sighed with a despair bordering on indifference.

“Yes, yes, we’re a sinful generation,” he said. “And because of our sinfulness we lack the power to do anything against those who dig at the foundation of our sanctity.”

“But the Sanhedrin,” Saul exclaimed, astonished by these words. “The sentence of the High Priest!”

“The Pharisees sit in the Sanhedrin, and they say that every son of Israel is free to preach anything he wants. The High Priest’s sentence depends on their decisions.”

“So it’s open season on God’s vineyard, then,” asked Saul, hotly. Didn’t Moses teach us to burn out the evil in our midst?”

“Ask your rabbi, Gamaliel. Then ask him what he did in the case of those other men who preached in the Temple courts.”

“I know,” muttered Saul.

“One unclean sheep sickens the whole flock. The wrath of God is poured out on the whole congregation for the sins of one man. At least until another Phineas rises up and takes it on himself to execute the vengeance of God,” said Annas, suggestively.

“So what can we do? We can’t stand by and see this happen. “Who knows how far it’ll go?”

“Oh, we know only too well how far it’ll go,” Annas continued. “Do you think this is preached only in the Synagogue of the Libertines? It’s preached every day in the Temple courts. And from here it’ll branch out to every Jewish settlement abroad. Then people will say it’s pointless to make pilgrimages to Jerusalem. They’ll bring their sacrifices to gods closer to home.”

“I say we stamp out the fire before it spreads!” cried Saul.

“How?”

“Let my lord the High Priest listen,” interjected a Sadducee scribe named Herod, “and I’ll tell him how. The Torah says, ‘Let the hands of the witnesses be the first against him.’ Whoever heard the blasphemy should carry out the punishment. In fact, if they don’t, then they too are guilty of blasphemy.”

“Is that the Pharisee interpretation of the law?” Saul asked Zadok.

Now the House of Hillel, which Saul belonged to, generally took a milder view than Zadok’s House of Shammai.

So Zadok answered, “There are commandments of action and commandments of restraint. We teach that commandments of action must always be carried out with no exceptions.”

“If that’s so, then we know what we have to do.”

“The hand of the witness shall be first against him!” exclaimed both witnesses.

“Not so fast, young man!” said Annas to the impetuous Saul. “We must be prudent. If there’s a disturbance in the city streets, the Romans will hear of it and interfere. So first go to the synagogues where the blasphemy is preached and awaken their zeal for the Lord so they take matters into their own hands. The God of Israel needs many Phineases like you. God grant that your numbers increase in Israel.”

With these words Annas dismissed Saul and the witnesses.

* * * * *

As a group, the Hellenists were even more protective of the Temple than the Palestinian Jews. Knowing first hand the evils of the idol worship and abominations of the pagan world, they regarded the Temple as the only island on which the scattered Jews of the world could take refuge. They couldn’t imagine life without that source of hope and comfort. Many of them had abandoned their homes and given up their worldly comforts to move to the vicinity of the Temple.

Thus they felt a wave of horror at Stephen’s audacity. How dare he speak of the destruction of this place? Saul found it relatively easy to find a multitude of Greek-speaking Jews to carry out his plan.

Two days after the meeting with the High Priests a crowd of Jews pulled Stephen out of the pulpit right in the middle of a sermon and half carried and half dragged him to the court in the High Priest’s house. For this wouldn’t be a meeting of the regular Sanhedrin in the Chamber of Hewn Stones. It would just be the Little Sanhedrin, which included the Chief Officer and two or three scribes and interpreters of the law. In point of fact, this group had no power to decide life or death issues, or even to conduct an investigation of such issues.

When those dragging Stephen got there, they were surprised to see all the members of the High Priest’s family already assembled, as if they’d been expected. Stephen was handed over to the guards who place him before the priests, and the witnesses, Zadok and Samuel immediately began to testify that they’d heard the preacher state that Jesus would destroy the Temple of God and the Law of Moses.

The High Priest addressed the accused, “Is this testimony true?”

The preacher offered no defense. Instead he started talking as if he were resuming the sermon he’d been preaching before he was interrupted. He spoke of the patriarchs, of Moses, of kings and prophets, showing that all was only preparation for the coming of Messiah. The witnesses tried to interrupt him, but the High Priest signaled for quiet. He was patient, because so far there was nothing in the sermon that could be used against Stephen. He was following the same line of tradition as all other preachers. It was only when he came to King Solomon and the Temple that he departed from the accepted story line and inserted his own interpretation.

“But the Eternal does not dwell in temples made by man. Even as the prophets said, ‘Heaven is my throne, and earth my footstool. Where is the house you would build for me?”

Although this was a direct quote from the prophets, his listeners immediately began shouting, “He blasphemes the Temple! We will not listen!”

“Stone him!”

The High Priest gestured for quiet. Suddenly, the accused changed his tone from one of explanation to one of denunciation. He looked at the High Priest and the other judges and, pointing at the mob, said, “You stiff-necked and uncircumcised of heart and ear!”

He couldn’t have picked a more offensive word than “uncircumcised.” It was tantamount to calling them pagans.

Several shouting men tried to break past the guards to grab him. But he shouted all the louder, “You’ve always rebelled against the Holy Spirit, even as your fathers did. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute? They killed those who prophesied the coming of the Just One, to whom”

“What prophets did we ever kill?”

“To whom,” continued Stephen, resolutely, “you became the traitors and the murderers.”

This was more than the crowd could stand. Ignoring the High Priest’s gestures, they shouted, “To the stoning place!”

Suddenly Saul shouted, “Let the hand of the witnesses be the first against him!”

The crowd roared approval as Stephen continued, “You received the Law from the hands of angels, but you haven’t kept its commandments holy.”

As the crowd went wild, Stephen looked up and the sunlight of late afternoon fell on his red beard. The autumn sky shed a flood of brightness that broke in a thousand reflections on the golden thresholds and golden gates of the Temple, so that the courts and the place of trial were bathed in a sea of gold. As the preacher’s voice rang louder, his hands reached toward heaven, white as snow in the sunlight.

“I see the heavens open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.”

A second later a white body swam in the air, above black heads, bearded faces, and clenched fists.

The High Priest called for peace, but no one listened. The guards had disappeared. Alexander the Overseer cowered behind a curtain. In vain the High Priest said, “This is against the law! We haven’t sentenced him!”

But no effort was made to hold back the procession. At the head of it marched Saul of Tarsus. Behind him were the witnesses, Zadok and Samuel, and behind them followed the roaring confusion of hands, heads, beards, and a half naked body swimming in the midst.

The field of stoning, which lay outside the city, wasn’t really a field. It was a pit on the summit of a hill. Heaps of stones lay around the sides, and the bottom was not visible because of the stones that covered it, some of them showing flecks of dried blood.

The clothes were ripped off the accused, and a multitude of hands threw him down into the stony pit. A voice cried, “Witnesses, come forward and do your duty.”

Zadok and Samuel stepped forward. Saul started too, but some inner command, stronger than his own will, held him back.

“Two witnesses is enough,” he said aloud.

Zadok and Samuel threw off their burlap garments. Seeing this, Paul decided that rather than be a completely passive bystander, he could at least guard the clothes of the stoners. Though tattered and wretched, the clothing of the poor is still precious to them. He sat down on the bundle and watched the first stones fly down on the condemned man.

Blood suddenly covered the white body. . . A rain of stones came down. . . . A naked hand raised up. . . . More stones rained. . . . The white, bloody body kneeling, falling, rising. . . . Half a body now dipped in stones, and half a body rising naked out of the sea of stones. . . . The last rays of the sun falling on the white body, making patches of silver amid patches of blood. . . . Two naked hands, like silver wings, lifted toward the sun, a white face lifted to the sky, and the high, ringing, metallic voice of the preacher, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!”

An angel, half sunk in the earth, the upper half of the body flickering in white fire, arms lifted to heaven; where had he seen this picture before?

There was hot confusion in Saul’s mind. He dropped his eyes, for he could look no more. But he could never shut out the voice, ringing still, but dying away, “Father, forgive them. . . .”

* * * * *

As Saul returned from the execution, a strange man came up and walked with him. It was twilight and the lower city deepened in darkness. Saul wasn’t sure if he knew the man, but he also didn’t look closely to find out. The excitement of participation in the bitter incident still held him.

As if to lighten a burden on his conscience, he said aloud to the stranger, “God be thanked, a commandment has been fulfilled. ‘The hand of the witnesses shall be first against him.’”

“Yes, but you’ve forgotten the second half of the verse,” responded the stranger.

“What second half?” asked Saul.

“That anyone who bears false witness shall be punished with the same punishment visited on the accused.”

“But there was no false witness,” answered Saul, angrily. “Didn’t you hear the words out of his own mouth?”

“Doesn’t matter. You know as well as I do that if the court hasn’t pronounced sentence, then the accused is as innocent as a newborn child. They who stoned the child, then, are not witnesses, but murderers.”

The stranger disappeared, leaving Saul alone in the dark, narrow street.

Saul stood looking at the shadows that swallowed up the stranger. He was certain now that he’d seen him before, but he couldn’t remember where or when.