Kisah Para Rasul 6:14

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.”

Kisah Para Rasul 8:3

8:3 But Saul was trying to destroy ²  the church; entering one house after another, he dragged off ³  both men and women and put them in prison. ⁴ 

[6:14]  ¹ tn Or “practices.”

[6:14]  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.

[8:3]  ² tn Or “began to harm [the church] severely.” If the nuance of this verb is “destroy,” then the imperfect verb ἐλυμαίνετο (elumaineto) is best translated as a conative imperfect as in the translation above. If instead the verb is taken to mean “injure severely” (as L&N 20.24), it should be translated in context as an ingressive imperfect (“began to harm the church severely”). Either option does not significantly alter the overall meaning, since it is clear from the stated actions of Saul in the second half of the verse that he intended to destroy or ravage the church.

[8:3]  ³ tn The participle σύρων (surwn) has been translated as an finite verb due to requirements of contemporary English style.

[8:3]  ⁴ tn BDAG 762 s.v. παραδίδωμι 1.b has “εἰς φυλακήν put in prison Ac 8:3.”