“You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you always resist the Holy Spirit. As your fathers did, so do you. Which of the prophets did your fathers not persecute?.”

Thus spake Stephen to the Sanhedrin. Stephen was a “Greek,” someone from outside Judea. He may have been a proselyte or the son of a proselyte. His ancestry probably did not go back to Abraham or the Israelites at the time of the exile. And he is preaching to “pure blood” Jews.

That had to hurt.