Acts 6:14

For we have heard him saying that Jesus the Nazarene will destroy this place and change the customs ¹  that Moses handed down to us.”

Isa 65:15; Isa 66:1-6; Isa 66:19-21; Jer 7:4-14; Jer 26:6-9,12,18; Da 9:26; Ho 3:4; Mic 3:12; Zec 11:1; Zec 14:2; Mt 24:1,2; Mr 14:58; Lu 13:34,35; Lu 21:6,24; Joh 4:21; Ac 25:8; Ga 3:19,23; Ga 4:3-5; Heb 7:11-19; Heb 8:6-13; Heb 9:9-11; Heb 10:1-18; Heb 12:26-28

¹ tn Or “practices.”

sn Will destroy this place and change the customs. Stephen appears to view the temple as a less central place in light of Christ’s work, an important challenge to Jewish religion, since it was at this time a temple-centered state and religion. Unlike Acts 3-4, the issue here is more than Jesus and his resurrection. Now the impact of his resurrection and the temple’s centrality has also become an issue. The “falseness” of the charge may not be that the witnesses were lying, but that they falsely read the truth of Stephen’s remarks.