There are indications in the story that the author of Acts wants us to think of the death of Stephen as just like Jesus. There’s numerous parallels (a literary device used to forge Stephen’s death).
Jews did not persecute Christians during this time because:
- There were no Christians, the name “Christian” didn’t exist, there were labeled as a sect of Judaism. They were Jews.
- It might be argued that Jewish followers of Jesus were attempting to distance themselves from non– Jesus-believing Jews. For example, in the Gospel of John the followers of Jesus are repeatedly pitted against “the Jews.” The Gospel of John, however, is estimated by scholars to have been written sometime after 90 ce. Moreover, the antagonism expressed by the fourth Gospel toward the Jews seems to be the result of a schism at the time between the community for whom the Gospel was written and synagogue-going Jews.
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- The question of when Jesus followers began to think of and call themselves Christians is a huge one. Regardless of when this process began, it seems clear that the “parting of the ways” was a lengthy process. Early Christian thinking about martyrdom seems to have played a role in this process and the formation of Christian identity. For the role of theories about martyrdom in the development of Christian identity with respect to Jews, see Judith M. Lieu, Image and Reality: The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century (Edinburgh: Clark, 1996); and Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press, 1999). The moment at which the title “Christian,” or christianos, began to be used is similarly controversial and in part rests on the dating of the Acts of the Apostles. It seems to have emerged at the end of the first century and become common usage by the beginning of the second. For more information on the development of the term, see David G. Horrell, “The Label Χριστιανος: 1 Peter 4:16 and the Formation of Christian Identity,” Journal of Biblical Literature 126, no. 2 (2007): 361–81.
- We don’t know how any of the apostles have died. There are 15 different versions of the deaths of the apostles Peter/Paul that were written at the end of the sixth century.
- The earliest evidence for the apostles such as Peter are late 2nd century apocyrpha.
- Clement of Rome also writes that Peter was killed on the account of “jealousy” not that he was a Christian (in 1 Clement 5:1-7).
Furthermore, we don’t have any good proof that Peter went to Rome, and even more that he got martyred there.
- For Paul, we also don’t have any good proof that he was martyred, as well as that he went to Rome. 1 Clement 5 seems to indicate that he died in Spain.
- [3:49 PM]Furthermore, the apocryphal acts can’t be dated any earlier than the second century, they’re filled with mythological narratives. Whoever wrote them never met an apostle, or witnessed his death.
- We know that they did die, but “how they died” is impossible to answer.
- Furthermore, 1 Clement 5:4-7 doesn’t actually suggest any martyrdom.
- [3:52 PM]The Romans executed people for sedition, not for monotheism, or for belief in a resurrection, or for other known beliefs of early Christians. The Romans would not have made much, if any, distinction between Christians and Jews during the lifetimes of the apostles, and they didn’t execute Jews for monotheism. Some practices among early Christians might have provoked executions, particularly if they were organizing against the State, but it is difficult to see what Christian beliefs would have provoked them. The broader persecution of Christians doesn’t appear to have begun until the early second century, and it appears to have been about concern over political organizing rather than beliefs.
- [3:54 PM]The only disciple whose death is mentioned in the New Testament is James of Zebedee in Acts, which says he was executed by Agrippa, but doesn’t say why.
“…there was no “continuous history” of the first Christian martyr. Most especially not in Jerusalem. The Holy City—as Hugo Méndez makes clear in his important new contribution to the study of Stephen—was late to embrace its patron…” https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/50326