chapter four
which caused his execution and the flight or the other Hellenists from
Jerusalem but did not result in the persecution of the whole Jerusalem
community.^36
Heikki Räisänen has also suggested—following S.K. Williams—that
Paul adopted the idea of Jesus’ death as a salvific event (Rom :–
) not from Stephen himself but from the Hellenists in Antioch who
had developed the idea from Jewish martyr theology as it is expressed
inMaccabees.^37 Although Räisänen does not explicitly assume several
groups of Hellenists, in the last analysis, his interpretation—which pos-
tulates distinctive Antiochene Hellenistic ideas about the significance of
Jesus’ death—leaves the door open for the possibility that there were at
least two kinds of Hellenistic Jewish Christians: the Antiochenes and the
circle around Stephen.^38 If the latter carried with them the true memory
of Stephen’s criticism of the temple but did not adopt the Antiochenes’
interpretation of Jesus’ death as a salvific event, their theology would
certainly have taken a different course of development when compared
to the Antiochenes’ Hellenistic theology and its further development by
Paul. If we combine criticism of the temple with the idea that Jesus’ death
had no special value for salvation, are we not approaching the kind of
theology that was developed by the Ebionites and inRec. :–?
The above-sketched hypothesis is certainly possible—as hypotheses
usually are—but do we have any evidence which would make it reason-
able to review the history of early Jewish Christianity in the light of this
hypothesis?A thoroughanalysis of this subject is not possible in this con-
text but there are some loose ends—both in the history of the earliest
Jerusalem community and in the history of the Ebionites—which sug-
gest that the hypothesis about the Ebionites’ roots in the circle around
Stephen deserves further consideration.^39
(^36) Räisänen , –, argues convincingly that although Stephen’s criticism of
the temple is rather veiled in Luke’s narrative, the speech may still have preserved a true
memory of the reasons for Stephen’s execution. However, Räisänen’s analysis also points
out that it is hard to find explicit criticism of the law in Stephen’s speech. Thus, it seems
that Stephen must have said something against the temple but not necessarily against the
law in general. If this is correct, then Stephen’s position would come quite close to the
Ebionites’ criticism of the temple which did not lead to a total rejection of the law (see
below). 37
Räisänen , –.
(^38) Cf. Räisänen , –. The hypothesis about several groups of Hellenists is
also supported by the observation that the names in Acts : do not have anything in
common with the clearly Antiochene list of names in :. Cf. also Theissen , –
.
(^39) Van Voorst , ,, has suggested that theAscents of James(as he callsRec.