It's always weird giving spoilers when talking about biblical films. After all, these stories are thousands of years old. How they go, how they end, is well known.
It's difficult to imagine many people sitting down to watch episode 7 of Testament without knowing that Stephen is going to die. Nevertheless, how a film chooses to do that, and the way it tends to portray those things, can still vary immensely. At the end of the last episode Stephen is being dragged off to be brought before the Sanhedrin and, cinematically speaking, the journey there will be relatively quick.
For the audience, the episode starts by going back 10 months, to the day of Shavuot (Pentecost). In episode 1 the moment where the Holy Spirit comes is not shown. We don't see it, we just see the disciples' reaction to it. Leaving out such a pivotal scene seemed quite a bold decision at the time, helping us identify more with Stephen as an outsider to the disciples.
But now, he is very much an insider, so the series goes back there now and we see the events of Shavuot from the inside. The disciples and some of the other followers (including the women followers) are in the upper room. There is some mild use of special effects to convey the presence of the Holy Spirit coming, as well as a wind coming in through the window and blowing curtains. There have been a only a few different portrayals of Pentecost on screen in previous adaptations of Acts. Unsurprisingly, Roberto Rossellini also left it off screen in Atti Deli Apostoli (1969), but didn’t return to it later.
Here it is shown in quite an interesting fashion. Whereas other series over do the special effects, for example A.D. Kingdom and Empire (AD: The Bible Continues, 2015), here the touch is light. The primary focus seems to be on the way different languages are spoken. There's a cacophony of noise but the roving camera settles temporarily on individuals speaking specific languages as indicated by subtitles in those languages. The sound balance adjusts to bring each one’s words out from the rest. That seemed to be much more the focus than the primary visual element of the tongues of fire, which is shown purely through some faint, wispy, orange, smoke.
Given the budgetary limitations of the series, the filmmakers strike a good balance between doing something visual, but not overdoing it, or doing something very full-on badly on their limited budget. And then the credits roll, and as they do, Peter's words from his sermon in Acts 2 is spoken very quietly in the background by the actor who plays Peter, Tom Simper.
The trial itself is interesting. The original mob, headed up by Abdiel comes in to the Sanhedrin’s chamber, but rapidly become fairly incidental to proceedings. The members of the Sanhedrin clearly object to them being there. It's only really when Saul reminds them that because he, a minister, has witnessed what has happened, they have to pay attention to these events and give them a proper hearing.
Acts 6:13 refers to this generic character, a “false witness” who testifies against Stephen, echoing Jesus’ trial in the Gospels where people also speak falsely about what Jesus had said. Here, Saul essentially gives the speech from 6:13, so, in essence, he becomes the false witness. This is interesting because in the text, Saul only really appears at the end of these events as a way of introducing him as a character. It’s almost as if the text points him out as the guy that's going to become the main character in the rest of the story that’s being told, following this lengthy preamble.

Most of the rest of the episode, then consists of Stephen’s trial unfolding. Ananias again pipes up, clearly trying to edge Saul out completely. But instead, we see Saul very cunningly turn Gamaliel's attempts to build bridges with the apostles against him. Saul essentially portrays Gamaliel (Stewart Scudamore, pictured above) as one of them and says he has a witness that can witness the fact that Gamaliel has been meeting with their leaders. Gamaliel is forced to leave proceedings unable to influence proceedings any further.
In any event, the case against Stephen seems well established, so then he is given his chance to speak. The writers use a lot of the words from Stephen's speech in Acts 7. In the text this speech is more or less one long monologue until the last seven verses when it switched back to commentating on events again.
Working with long bits of text in biblical films is always quite a challenge. There are questions about whether you abridge them and the extent to which that is done; whether you present it all in one long shot or cut to reactions or different camera angles; and if, and then how, you paraphrase the text.
I really like how the series navigates this potentially tricky territory. On the one hand the speeches are rewritten so that the parts we hear are slightly different to standard translations. Even compared to modern translations of text, the words have been tweaked to give a bit more vitality in how the speech comes across. There’s a looser sentence structure and a bit more freshness. It sounds more like a modern 21st century text than just a first century text being translated into 21st century language.
However, the biggest difference is the way that the camera cuts away to scenes of the disciples back at base (as well as a few other scenes that inject a bit more action) in between the sections of Stephen’s speech. Rather than pausing the action on one of the timelines to show what is happening in the parallel timeline, as is often the case, here time continues to pass on the two timelines, even when the camera isn’t watching. This means that not all of Stephen’s speech is shown and the inserted, more action-heavy scenes provide some relief such that when we return to Stephen our attention is refreshed.
This is a really interesting way of presenting the speech while keeping the action and the audience’s attention moving. There’s some really good editing in this episode that is essential for making the whole sequence work. I’m interested to see how this abridged version of Stephen’s speech plays out in terms of how the speech hangs together in the context of the episode and how coherent it is based solely on the words we hear him speak in the show. Does those bits on their own work as a standalone speech?
Personally, I think the first of those cutaways is the most striking.The camera cuts from Stephen to his mum Esther arriving at the disciples’ house and getting them to come and try and help him. Esther has realised her need to connect with her son too late and is desperately trying to get the followers to come and help him. They're keen to reassure her. Most strikingly, we get this moment from Susanna (Bobbie Little, pictured below) who having seen some of the others released before attempts to reassure Esther, saying “I know in my bones God will show up for Stephen”. This is such a jarringly strong line, because, of course, we know that God is not going to show up for Stephen, at least not in the sense Susanna means. We know that Stephen is going to die.

This is yet another example of the show’s honesty and its sense of reality particularly in the writing. It openly confesses to the fact that sometimes people do believe they ‘know’ things, that God has assured them of things, that sometimes turn out not to be true after the event. If challenged, some might still say their words were true in a metaphorical / spiritual / emotional sense, but that would not be the sense in which they would have been understood at the time.
Here, for example, it might be tempting to argue “well God did show up for Stephen but just not in the sense we thought”, but Susanna seems to intend her words to be taken at face value, and Ruth would not have taken comfort from that at the time otherwise. The way Susanna says it at the time seems intended to be understood in a very specific way and that's not the way that it comes to pass.
It's really interesting that the series has depicted this over-enthusiasm, for want of a better phrase) a couple of times now. It hasn't shied away from the fact that incidents like this happen quite often in certain Christian circles. I seems to me that the life of faith does come with major disappointments and significant times when people put trust in God which doesn't seem to pan out as expected. And yet, I suppose, the Christian response is to continue to trust God anyway.
Another of the narrative interruptions to Stephen's speech happens when the group arrives at the temple complex. The Roman soldiers won't let such a large group through the gates . They're only prepared to let one or two of them enter. As it happens we get to see Caleb again. Initially he’s detached from them. He’s just there as a bystander and when he asks one of his fellow bystanders what is happening he’s told “it's the Jesus people”. I think that is the first time that particular phrase has been used in this series, and of course even if this were a world that movement had already happened, it is the kind of informal, neutral term that you can see being used in this kind of scenario.
Surprisingly, though, given his discomfort with joining the disciples after he was healed, Caleb (Steve Furst, pictured below) comes to help them. He starts attacking the electric device that keeps the door locked and it is notable that Caleb does this by kicking the device in order to break it. Obviously, prior to being healed he couldn't have used his legs in such a fashion, but now he is employing them to help his friend Stephen.
Eventually Stephen reaches the end of his speech. Despite having been fairly calm through the series so far, now Caiaphas yells. Suddenly a wind blows in and a bright light streams through the windows, and this isn’t just Stephen’s perspective, all the characters react to this bright light. From the audience’s perspective, we sense that his is an endorsement, just as Stephen and the text of Acts sees that as an endorsement of his position. Butt the scene also makes me wonder how the Sanhedrin interpret this light. Do they also see it as an endorsement of what they're doing?
That’s certainly possible because the majority of the Sanhedrin then march Stephen off to a spot outside the city walls. However, not all of the Sanhedrin go something that is shown quite pointedly. This brings me to an issue I've been weighing up during the whole series that I've not necessarily reflected on in my reviews of it so far, namely how the series handles potential antisemitism. I’m going to start a new post on that because it’s a big issue and I want to do it justice without detracting from the review of a single episode.

The short version is that the Sanhedrin dragging a man off to be lunched isn’t a great look, but the fact that some demur and don’t take part is significant. I’ve mentioned before the parallels between
Testament and the BBC adaptation of
His Dark Materials (2019-2022) and here it allows us to approach about the question from a different angle. When that series aired the link between the Magisterium and the established church was widely acknowledged and there were
various objections that it was an “undisguised” attack on Christianity.
Testament treats Judaism in a not dissimilar fashion so I suggest it’s worth reflecting on that and recalling that Christian antisemitism has a terrible history.
Before we get to the stoning, there’s a brief scene as they attempt to leave the city walls. There’s a clear suggestion of Caiaphas’ corruption and his willingness to abuse his power. Indeed, he even asks the solitary soldier guarding the border “Do you know who who I am?” There’s also something in the way the soldier shrugs this interaction off, resigned to the compromises of real life and his lack of power to do anything meaningful about the system he find himself a part of.
And then we get to the moment we’ve been anticipating from the opening moments of the entire series. Stephen is dragged to a grubby, rundown bit of dilapidated brownfield wasteland and thrown to the floor. Even the ‘stones’ his persecutors pick up are just lumps of broken brick and masonry. Sometimes there’s almost a certain romance to the way this story is told. Testament, however, utterly strips this away and exposes it plainly as an awful act: a grotty moment of low-down violence, fuelled as much by group-mentality as hatred. The creative choices around location, props and camera filters here, really hammer this home. Despite it all Stephen sees the light and recognises he's about to go to Heaven.
Significantly, the stoning itself is left off camera. Indeed, the scene cuts away before the moment plays out. There are a number of reasons for this. Doubtless part of it is to do with budget and access to the available skills to make that seem realistic rather than distracting (seeing foam rocks could be really distracting). However, this is also clearly an artistic choice. It avoids the mistake of glamorizing the violence. Some film theorists argue that the very act of putting violence on screen lends violence a sense of glamour, even when it is done in such a way as to clearly condemn the violence depicted. Cutting away as Syrstad does at this point refuses to focus on the violence. Instead, it focuses more on the impact of Stephen’s death on the people who loved him, on his mother Esther and on his friends among Jesus’ followers, than on the physicality of Stephen’s body and his suffering and pain.
Perhaps inevitably, the episode ends with a flashback, which nicely pairs with the flashback we had at the start of the episode. It's a flashback to Stephen and the boy Malachi (who has perhaps already lost one father figure and has now just lost another). It’s just a little scene. The two of them sit at a table and chat about the Jesus that neither of them ever met. Malachi just casually says “I can't wait to meet him” and Stephen replies “Neither can I”. It’s the last line of the episode which is somehow both moving and poignant and a little bit cheesy, but nevertheless, it nicely completes the episode.
It'll be interesting to see where this season goes from here in the final episode. It seems unlikely that we will get to Saul’s conversion in a single episode: So far progress has been at the rate of less than one chapter per episode and while
chapter 8 is only one chapter in terms of word count the amount of personal and structural upheaval we see means it would feel like a real change of gear. Perhaps we’ll get Simon the Magician, perhaps we’ll have to dig out
The Silver Chalice over the summer to keep us going.
Either way, we'll soon find out. Episode 8 is out now for paying members, but won’t be shown on the livestream until Tuesday.
Labels: Acts of the Apostles, Testament (Acts series)