Some of those who belonged to the so-called synagogue of the Libyans, the Cyrenians, and the Alexandrians, as well as to that of the Cilicians and Asiatics, started a dispute with Stephen,
"I am a Jew, born at Tarsus in Cilicia, but brought up in this city, educated at the feet of Gamaliel in all the strictness of our ancestral Law, ardent for God as you all are to-day.
They conveyed the following letter. "The apostles and the presbyters of the brotherhood to the brothers who belong to the Gentiles throughout Antioch and Syria and Cilicia: greeting.
But before all that, men will lay hands on you and persecute you, handing you over to synagogues and prisons; you will be dragged before kings and governors for the sake of my name.
Look to yourselves. Men will hand you over to Sanhedrins and you will be flogged in synagogues and brought before governors and kings for my sake, to testify to them.
there was not a synagogue where I did not often punish them and force them to blaspheme; and in my frantic fury I persecuted them even to foreign towns.
You also see and hear that not only at Ephesus but almost all over Asia this fellow Paul has drawn off a considerable number of people by his persuasions. He declares that hand-made gods are not gods at all.
Now in the local church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Symeon (called Niger) and Lucius the Cyrenian, besides Manaen (a foster-brother of Herod the tetrarch) and Saul.
This is why I will send you prophets, wise men, and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, some of whom you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town;
and it was in presenting these that I was found within the temple. I was ceremonially pure, I was not mixed up in any mob or riot; no, the trouble was caused by some Jews from Asia,