found within the whole New Testament literature. The book is important for us, as well as for Jesus and his earliest followers. When Stephen preached before the Sanhedrin he told his hostile audience that God communicated to Moses a message he was ‘to pass on to us’,7 not, surely, a reference to the Hebrew nation alone but to that believing community to which Stephen belonged, the new Israel of God8 comprised of Jews and Gentiles who had trusted Christ. Moses communicated ‘living words’, not detached
Page 14