Question: Acts 7:16. You have recently shown Dean Alford’s error (borrowed from rationalists) as to ver. 4; but how is the apparent confusion of ver 16 to be cleared up? Yet one feels with Stier that it seems “almost infatuation” to accuse Stephen’s wonderful exposition of Israel’s history as a “demonstrable error,” where scripture so plainly distinguishes the grave of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from that of Joseph and the rest.
A. B.
Answer: The true solution lies, not in Calvin’s idea of “Abraham” as a wrong reading for “Jacob,” but in the elliptical compression with which Stephen, like other Jews, referred to the well-known facts. Abraham’s grave was at Hebron, bought of Ephron the Hittite; Jacob bought ground at Sychem of the sons of Ramon. In the former notoriously were buried Sarah, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But as ancient scripture tells us that Joseph was laid in the second, so Stephen intimates here that his brethren were also. Josephus is opposed to Jewish tradition in fancying that they were buried in Hebron; and Jerome confirms Sychem as their grave, affirming that it was seen as a fact in his day for all twelve. The difficulty is due to bringing both together as Stephen did. Ignorance is rather with those who do not enter into his manner, and so are apt to impute their own blundering and irreverent haste to a discourse of the profoundest character with an astonishing mastery of principles as well as facts throughout scripture. Without speaking of the Holy Spirit (and this of course if admitted incalculably condemns such criticism), it is rash beyond measure to impute to such a man a mistake which a child might detect. The late Archdeacon Lee in his book on Inspiration points out the same system of combining incidents; as, for instance, comparing ver. 7, with Gen. 15:13, 14, and Ex. 3:12; ver. 9; but especially ver. 43, with Amos 5:27, “Beyond Damascus” clearly referring to the Assyrian deportation of the ten tribes; whereas Stephen combines in his way that of the two tribes to Babylon. This the Dean might have as fairly assailed; but he contents himself with saying that “fulfillment of the prophecy would make it very natural to substitute that name which had become inseparably associated with the captivity.” This apology is as unworthy here as his attack there.