This Sunday at our church, we had the privilege of thinking about God’s call of Abram in Genesis 12:1-5. We reflected on how Genesis portrays Abram as a new Adam through whom God would bring blessing to the world, ultimately through Jesus.
However, in studying the early chronology of Abraham’s family, some issues come up when we consider how Stephen relates the story of Abraham in Acts 7:2-4.
In Acts 7, Stephen is standing trial for his preaching about Jesus. The Jews accused Stephen of speaking against the temple and the Law, but Stephen walks them through the history of Israel in the Old Testament to show them that (1) their ancestors consistently rejected God’s chosen prophets like they were now rejecting Jesus and (2) God has never really been confined to a physical temple building.
He begins with Abraham and shows that he believes in the promises of God and that God is faithful to his promises. Stephen declares:
“Brothers and fathers, hear me. The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he lived in Haran, 3 and said to him, ‘Go out from your land and from your kindred and go into the land that I will show you.’ 4 Then he went out from the land of the Chaldeans and lived in Haran. And after his father died, God removed him from there into this land in which you are now living.” (Acts 7:2-4)
Stephen’s summary of Abraham’s call appears to contradict Moses’s account in Genesis 11:26-12:4 in two places.
First, Stephen says that God appeared to Abraham before he lived in Haran. But in the Genesis account, it seems that Terah and his family left Ur (i.e., Mesopotamia), settled in Haran, and then God appeared to Abraham (Genesis 11:31-12:1). Thus, the Genesis account suggests that God appeared to Abraham in Haran, but Stephen says God appeared to Abraham before he lived in Haran.
Is this a contradiction? I don’t think so. It is possible that Stephen believes that Genesis 11:31-32 and Genesis 12:1-3 are not arranged chronologically. Genesis 12:1-3 does not actually say that God spoke to Abraham in Haran. Thus, Genesis 12:1-3 may jump backwards some years in the narrative to before Abraham journeyed to Haran.[1] Genesis 12:4, however, does seem to link God’s words in 12:1-3 and Abram’s departure from Haran in 12:4-5, suggesting that God called Abram when he was in Haran, which weakens this interpretation.
Another possibility is that Stephen believes that God spoke to Abraham in Ur with similar promises before repeating them again when Abraham was living in Haran. Throughout Abraham’s life, God repeats his promises time and time again. So it is reasonable to conclude that Genesis 12:1-3 may not be the first time God had summoned Abraham to go to Canaan and receive these promises.
Other OT passages support this reading. For example, later in Genesis, God declares to Abraham, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess” (Gen 15:7). Here, God claims that it was he who brought Abraham out of Ur, though no mention of this is made in Genesis 11. Stephen seems to follow this interpretation by claiming that God spoke to Abraham while he was in Ur.[2] Thus, there is no real contradiction here. Stephen is simply sharing an interpretation of Abraham’s life that lines up with Genesis 15:7.
However, Stephen also says that Abraham left Haran after his father (Terah) died. But Genesis 11:26-12:4 seems to suggest that Terah was still alive when Abraham left Haran. In Genesis 11:26, Moses reports that Terah was 70 years old when he started having sons, with Abram listed first. Then, in 11:32, he tells us that Terah lived to be 205 years old and died in Haran. And in Genesis 12:4, we learn that Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran, which means that Terah would have been (only!) 145 years old when Abraham left Haran.
Yet, Stephen says that Abraham didn’t leave Haran until Terah died. Is Stephen mangling the text? Is he assuming a detail that isn’t in Genesis? Is there a contradiction here? Again, I don’t think so.
One solution is that Abraham wasn’t actually Terah’s oldest son. In this case, Genesis 11:26 tells us when Terah started having sons (maybe Haran was the firstborn?), but it doesn’t tell us when Abraham was born. He may have been born 60 years later and is mentioned first simply because he was the most prominent of Terah’s sons, not because he was the oldest.
Another possible solution is that Stephen is following a specific Jewish tradition about Abraham and Terah and/or a variant text of Genesis 11:32 (where Terah’s age at his death is listed). In fact, the Samaritan Pentateuch (the Bible of the Samaritans) reports that Terah died when he was 145 years old. Another Jewish author, Philo (writing around the time of Jesus), also suggests that Abraham left Haran after Terah died. This may have been a common interpretation of the time, possibly backed by a Greek translation of Genesis that Greek-speaking Jews like Stephen were familiar with.[3]
Either way, Stephen isn’t mangling Genesis. Most likely, he is simply following the chronology he and his audience were most familiar with. He is trying to show his fellow Jews that he believes the promises God gave to their forefathers. He is not blaspheming the forefathers of their faith, much less their God (Acts 6:11).
Stephen reminded his audience that God brought Abraham out of Ur, and God removed Abraham from Haran. It was all the work of God. God is faithful to keep his promises, even though his people so often rejected God’s prophets and messengers until they even betrayed and murdered the Righteous One, their Messiah (Acts 7:52).
Untangling these alleged contradictions matters because many object to Christianity due to their insistence that the Bible is full of contradictions and can’t be trusted. Yet, pointing out supposed problems in the text can simply be a cover or an excuse for rejecting Jesus. In the end, what matters most is how we are responding to God, his promises, and his Promised One, Jesus. That’s the central point in Genesis 12:1-5. That was Stephen’s point too in Acts 7.
When all of the alleged contradictions are examined and weighed, we can agree with Christian apologist Justin Martyr from the second century who wrote, “I am entirely convinced that no Scripture contradicts another.”[4] And, most importantly, we should trust in the Savior and Lord that all of Holy Scripture leads us to.
- Allen Ross argues for this in Creation and Blessing: A Guide to the Study and Exposition of Genesis, 258.↩︎
- Darrell Bock, Acts, BECNT, 282–83.↩︎
- Bock, Acts, 284; Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis: Chapters 1–17, NICOT, 366–68.↩︎
- Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, chap. 65, https://www.logoslibrary.org/justin/trypho/065.html.↩︎
Theology and Technology 