Bible Challenge Day 113: The Earliest Church Again (Acts 8)

The readings for today are dramatic! I’ll leave David for another time. What most sticks with me today is Acts 8:1—persecution breaks out and all are scattered except the Apostles. The fact that the apostles stayed in Jerusalem seems strange. If I were the hostile authorities, the apostles would be my main target. But apparently the persecution targets the rank and file rather than the highest leadership. It sets my historical imagination to working . . . .

Here are the things Acts says. The Christian movement is growing very quickly and beginning to take institutional form. The first set of leaders, the apostles, find they cannot handle all the administrative details, so they choose a second set of leaders, whose task is apparently to manage the distribution of food (6:1-4). The catalyst for this decision is tension between “Hebrews” and “Hellenists” (6:1).

The terms are not defined. The Hellenists and the Hebrews were all Jewish by background and were all part of the Christian movement. Presumably the Hellenists were Greek speakers or were sympathetic to Greek culture (i.e. Hellenistic). The Hebrews probably were more traditionally Jewish. When Peter and the twelve agree to appoint a new set of leaders, they ask others to “select from among yourselves” people “whom we may appoint” (6:3). All of the selected leaders have Greek names, which makes it sound a lot like Peter and the apostles were identified more with the Hebrews, and the Hellenists were to be represented by the Seven.

The religious authorities in Jerusalem were clearly hostile to Peter and the other apostles. But they had not tried to kill them. By contrast, one of the seven—Stephen—is stoned as a result of his interrogation by the high priest (chapter 7). And when the persecution breaks out, Acts follows Philip—another of the Seven—into Samaria (chapter 8). Apparently the religious leaders were more hostile to the Seven than to the Apostles, who were irritating but tolerable.

This is what makes these speculations interesting to me. I think we are seeing the first real division in the Church—a kind of proto-denominationalism. One wing of the Jesus movement is more attached to the religious traditions of Israel, based in Jerusalem, and under the leadership of the twelve apostles (apparently along with James, the “brother of the Lord”—but that is for another time). The other wing of the Jesus movement was also Jewish but was more open to Greek culture and more troubling to the religious authorities in Jerusalem. That wing gets driven out of Jerusalem. And, as a result, that wing provides the leadership for the first missionary expansion of the Christian movement. And, because they were more open to foreign influence, that wing begins to share the Christian gospel with Samaritans and with an Ethiopian. Only later, and with reservations as best I can tell, do the apostles accept the Samaritan mission (8:14f).

If this is at all right, the Hellenist wing of the Jewish Christian movement represents the future of Christianity, and it is to these largely uncelebrated folks that we owe our (Gentile) inclusion in the Church! Of course, there will be much more to this story . . . .

Fr. Harvey