Finished translating Acts 5-6. I get the impression that Gamaliel and many of the others of Israel’s elders were not actually present at Jesus' trial, and did not consent to it by way of simply not being there. Given Gamaliel's reputation, I'm not too sure he would have been a party to an illegal trial at night. Those who were present at Jesus' trial were ready to do away with the apostles altogether too after Peter spelled out Caiaphas' and Annas' offense to them all. I'm wondering too if Peter just assumed that all of these men were present. He wasn't actually inside at the time, and wouldn't have seen who was there that night. So when he accuses them all, he assumes that they were all there.
Caiaphas seems keen on denying any responsibility for Jesus' murder in front of the other elders of Israel, and Peter's not having it. "You're bent on bringing this person's blood on us!" Caiaphas tells him as though he had nothing to do with it. This was likely for the benefit of the other members of the Sanhedrin who weren't there. Caiaphas is playing innocent for the more respectable members. Peter then spells it out for him, "[Are you kidding me?] You people violently manhandled Him, AND THEN HUNG HIM ON A WOODEN BEAM!" (addition mine for tone) Peter has no intentions of letting any of them deny their responsibility in Jesus' death or get away with it.
And then there's Gamaliel who can't have failed to have observed this exchange and Peter's absolute conviction that they were guilty of murdering an innocent man, and their messiah to boot. He also can't have failed to notice that these men were miraculously released from prison without the guards knowing. Gamaliel was not a stupid man. There's a reason he was one of the most revered teachers of the Torah in ancient Judaism. There were others in the Sanhedrin who weren't there that night who were probably exchanging surprised and disturbed looks with him. It's not a stretch to assume Nicodemus was sitting at that council with Gamaliel as was Joseph of Arimathea. I can just imagine him looking to either of them for wordless clarification or confirmation, and one of them responding with a careful nod or slow shake of the head.
And then Gamaliel tries to put this potentially blasphemous farce of Caiaphas' to rest. He doesn't know if this Jesus is legitimate or not, but he probably knows what kind of man Caiaphas is. He probably doesn't trust him or agree with him on most things as he's a Pharisee and Caiaphas is a Sadducee, and that's like a Shiite and a Sunni sitting on the same council. What he says is essentially a not so veiled warning to the High Priest and the rest of the Sanhedrin. "Don't go down this road any further. Let God take care of it, or else you'll find yourself His enemy."
And then while ostensibly agreeing, the High Priest has them scourged out of spite before releasing them. The word in Greek here literally means "to skin." In this context, it means that they were beaten in such a way that skin was ripped open and potentially off. This was Caiaphas letting not only the Apostles know what he thought of them, and probably hoping they would die from their wounds, but also letting Gamaliel know what he thought of the venerated Pharisee's opinions. "Sure, I'll let them go, after the forty minus one with a cat of nine tails."
True to Gamaliel's predictions, they didn't die from it, it didn't stop them, and the High Priest found himself fighting on the opposite side from the God his office served.
There's more Judean politics going on here than at first meets the eye. The Pharisees and Sadducees had been political rivals as much as religious rivals for going on more than ninety years now. They despised each other more than Democrats and Republicans in the United States. While the Pharisees attempted to destroy Jesus for his exposing their hypocrisy, the Sadducees, and the High Priest's family in particular, were absolutely threatened by Jesus' resurrection as much as by being responsible for murdering Him using an illegal trial and railroading the Roman governor into signing off on crucifixion. The people's opinions mattered to them, and Jesus' murder and resurrection could potentially be used to break Annas' and Caiaphas' power over the priesthood and the Sanhedrin. The Pharisees could potentially turn the people against the high priest and the Sadducees if they played their cards right with Jesus' followers. This might have been why there were several Pharisees who joined the nascent church and tried to steer them into adhering to the Torah, in particular adhering to circumcision.
The apostles of course didn't care about any of the politics going on, probably not trusting either party, and appeared to only be concerned with being disciples of Jesus and making disciples of Jesus.
Chapter 6 is really the first place you begin to see cracks in the Jerusalem church's unity in Acts, and honestly, it begins with discrimination. The widows of the Hellenists were being neglected by the Hebraists in the daily service or ministry. Those who were culturally Greek were being discriminated against by those who were culturally Judean.
My observations about this passage lead me to ask the question, why here? Why now? There were doubtless Hellenists within the church in the first five chapters. Judging by the names of those mentioned, it's pretty clear the church was a mixture of those culturally Greek and those culturally Judean, and no one cared up til this point. Everyone had been of a single mind, will, and heart.
So what changed?
Well, referring back to Acts 5, politics. The Judean Pharisees found potential allies in the nascent Christians against the Sadducees if they could somehow work it right. Some of these Pharisees joined the church and were baptized. A large crowd of temple priests were obedient to the faith according to the text. But when they entered the community, they brought their prejudices with them, and began to treat those culturally Greek as different or less than just as they had done previously. Their influence within the early church spread to where a council had to be held in Jerusalem by the apostles to put the leash on them and keep them from enforcing circumcision and the Torah on the non-Jewish Greek Christians, and Paul was writing against his former colleagues' misinformation nearly continuously. Even Peter was somewhat afraid of them according to Paul, and Paul had to put him in his place as he writes in Galatians.
Were they legitimate Christians? Paul certainly wasn't convinced of their sincerity, describing them for what they were, those who had snuck into the church to spy on their freedom in Christ. And here in Acts 6, one of the first results of their inclusion within the community was division.
It's also telling that every one of the first deacons was a Hellenist. You can tell this from their names, each one of which is of Greek origin. The majority of the community, and perhaps the apostles themselves weren't certain of their fellow Judean brothers' motives either, and they wanted this thing put to rest so they could do their jobs.
This is another observation as well, that this might have been engineered on some level to distract the apostles from what their role in the church is. If they're having to monitor the tables or do the practical work, they won't have the time to preach and teach among the people.
Of note in the latter part of Acts 6 was that those Stephan was debating with were not culturally Judean per se. They were from Rome, Libya, Alexandria in Egypt, and what is now Southern Turkey near what was Antioch. In other words, they were Hellenized, and to a greater or lesser degree Romanized.
The Libertines described those Judeans and their descendants who had been taken to Rome by Pompey as hostages some 90 years prior and then later freed, given Roman citizenship, and allowed to settle in their own district of the city or thereabouts. It's likely Saul/Paul was a part of this group given his Roman name and Roman citizenship and might have even been one of those men losing the debate with Stephan.
The text doesn't specify where the men came from who underhandedly instigated trouble and falsely accused Stephan. It's natural to assume they were from the synagogue mentioned, but they could also have been planted by the Pharisees or Sadducees and were just looking for an opportunity. I'm kind of inclined to believe the latter. Planting false witnesses to railroad someone was kind of Annas' and Caiaphas' M.O. at this point and there's too many parallels to Jesus' arrest and "trial" to ignore. We know that the High Priests were just looking for something to charge the Christian leadership with.
The word used to describe what Stephan and the Libertines were doing means "to search together, to examine together, to discuss, to debate" and has more of the feel of Socratic debate where questions are asked and answers sought together as opposed to an all out heated argument. That the Libertines couldn't oppose Stephan's arguments likely disturbed the High Priest's agents, who then did something about it themselves or reported back to the High Priest and then were instructed what to do. This may or may not be the case, but the conclusion seems to fit the politics of the situation.
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