¹⁵And all who sat in the council looked intently at him, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel.

¹Then the high priest asked him, “Are these things so?” ²And Stephen replied:

“Brothers and fathers, listen to me. The God of glory appeared to our ancestor Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, ³and said to him, ‘Leave your country and your relatives and go to the land that I will show you.’ ⁴Then he left the country of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. After his father died, God had him move from there to this country in which you are now living. ⁵He did not give him any of it as a heritage, not even a foot’s length, but promised to give it to him as his possession and to his descendants after him, even though he had no child. ⁶And God spoke in these terms, that his descendants would be resident aliens in a country belonging to others, who would enslave them and mistreat them during four hundred years. ⁷‘But I will judge the nation that they serve,’ said God, ‘and after that they shall come out and worship me in this place.’ ⁸Then he gave him the covenant of circumcision. And so Abraham became the father of Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day; and Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob of the twelve patriarchs.

⁹“The patriarchs, jealous of Joseph, sold him into Egypt; but God was with him, ¹⁰and rescued him from all his afflictions, and enabled him to win favor and to show wisdom when he stood before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who appointed him ruler over Egypt and over all his household. ¹¹Now there came a famine throughout Egypt and Canaan, and great suffering, and our ancestors could find no food. ¹²But when Jacob heard that there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors there on their first visit. ¹³On the second visit Joseph made himself known to his brothers, and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh. ¹⁴Then Joseph sent and invited his father Jacob and all his relatives to come to him, seventy-five in all; ¹⁵so Jacob went down to Egypt. He himself died there as well as our ancestors, ¹⁶and their bodies were brought back to Shechem and laid in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.

Well, does this matter? I think it does.

Firstly, Peter was already preaching a new Covenant, and that the Jewish Leaders had rejected the work of God. Stephen is already framing his disucssion around  the fact that there was opposition adn difficulty for the people of the covenant at every time. That Joseph was rejected by his Borthers. He balances that with the faith of the Patriarchs, who saw no reward for this in their lifetimes.

Secondly, he is beginnig from a place people are familiar with. Sp far. he has said nothing objectionable — this is a precis of the last part of Genesis.  In a smilar manner, we have to start where people are — we have to frame our arguments in terms that they understand.

Finally, he is placing the work of Christ into a xontext. It is clear that he is arguing about covenants — and that ther is a new covenant, for the old one has not led to salvation (for no man can keep it). But to get to that point, he has to demostrate that no man has kept the covenatn.

This means that we need to contine to argue the Law. Now, this can be seen as hate speech. We may be accuse d of cyber bullying, or damning people because we say that the stardards of God are in the word, and do not include many things from gossip to fornication.  So be it. St Stephen did not convice anyone by his argument. That was not his duty. His duty was to state the argument.

But theology began here. This is the first abstract argument that justifies Christ as God.