Stephen's manifesto, while primarily an attack on the unbelieving Jews, brought with it as a real though indirect consequence the shattering of the complacency of the original Jerusalem Church. It created a division in the ranks of that Church. It confirmed the conservative 'Hebrew' Christians- absorbed, all of them, in traditional ideas of the Lord's coming- in their attitude of passive waiting where they were. While the Jewish-Hellenist leaders who adhered to the martyr were 'scattered', and went out to preach the gospel, not only under the compulsion of persecution but in fidelity to Stephen's teaching, the Hebrew-Christian Apostles remained at Jerusalem, within the covert of the Temple and the ordinances. The statement in Acts at this point probably reports only the action of the heads of the two parties, leaving the fortunes of their humbler followers undermined. In course of time, when St. Peter, and possibly other Apostles, were constrained to move out and to take part in the wider mission inaugurated by Stephen's men, stricter, older-fashioned Christians grouped themselves around James of Jerusalem, and James was a pattern-saint of the legal and Levitical type.

 

from page 37, The Epistle to the Hebrews