This paper explores Luke’s allusions to Deuteronomic themes in his account of Stephen’s story (Acts 6:1-8:1a) to argue that the death and resurrection of Jesus enacted the true Exodus and produced a Spirit-empowered community, whose identity is defined by Messiah Jesus and whose mission fulfills God’s covenant purposes for Israel. Luke’s allusions to Moses’s summary of Israel’s past, exhortations to preserve their life in the land, and warnings about their future ejection in Deuteronomy provide a biblical foundation for Luke’s argument that the early Jewish Christians embody the fulfilment of Moses’s prophecy that God would rescue his people from the curse of exile (Deut 30:1-5) and are living in the new creation that the Promised Land could only symbolize.
Stephen’s story serves as an extended case study that highlights the fulfillment of several significant Deuteronomic injunctions that would lead to Israel’s flourishing but were neglected once they were settled in the land. Luke describes the early Christian community with language reminiscent of Moses’s exhortations to obedience that would result in Israel’s flourishing and shows how they are heeding these Mosaic instructions. He emphasizes the lack of need in the believing community, the absence of fear in the face of external threats, and the dangers of idolatry. Stephen’s defense speech also uses examples from the lives of Abraham, Joseph, and Moses to remind his accusers of God’s gracious deliverance of his people in the past and to indict them as the real idolaters. The Deuteronomic influence is evident in Luke’s emphasis on the necessity of God being with the patriarchs, his formulaic use of “signs and wonders” language to describe the Exodus, and his reference to a prophet like Moses.
Luke builds on this foundation to show that those re-adjudicating Jesus’s trial using Stephen as a proxy are the true idolaters. Stephen’s ministry as a Greek-speaking Jew from the diaspora embodies the continuing resurrection power of King Jesus and provides tangible proof that God has fulfilled his promises in both Deuteronomy and the Prophets to rescue his people. Stephen’s identity as one in Christ and filled with the Spirit, emphasized through chiastic references to Christ and the Spirit in 6:3-11, [“full of the Spirt and wisdom” (6:3); “full of faith/faithfulness and the Holy Spirit” (6:5); “full of grace and power” (6:8); and “the wisdom and the Holy Spirit with which he was speaking” (6:11)], demonstrates that the Spirit-filled community, individually and corporately, define the place where God in Christ has chosen to place his name. Those who deny this new creation reality have made the Temple into an idol, have rejected their God-appointed King, and remain exiled from God. This Spirit-empowered people, however, are now poised to fulfill the mission of God’s people as they give witness to the resurrection of Messiah Jesus to the uttermost parts of the earth.