Knock 'em Dead

The picture of the early Christian community that Luke paints In the opening chapters of Acts of the Apostles is a communist ideal: “No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common” (Acts 4:32). A positive example is given of Barnabas (4:36-37), who sold a field he owned and laid the proceeds “at the feet of the apostles.” And then you have the negative example of Ananias and Sapphira (5:1-11).

Holding Back

As Luke tells the tale, Ananias – with the full consent and knowledge of his wife Sapphira – sold property and held back some of the proceeds when donating it to the apostles. Peter, aware of the subterfuge, called Ananias out on it, whereupon Ananias immediately dropped dead. Three hours later, completely unaware of what had happened to her husband, Sapphira is questioned by Peter. When she backs up her husband’s story, Peter tells her that those who have just returned from burying her husband will also bury her and then she is struck dead as well.

The passage reads like a tale that would be comfortable in the OT. Indeed, it has similarities to the story of Achan in Joshua 7. In that story, after the fall of Jericho, Achan took some of the gold and silver that should have gone into YHWH’s treasury. When the Israelites suffered a military setback, Joshua learned of the transgression and eventually fingered Achan as the culprit. Achan confessed and was executed by the people, thus restoring order.

Death of Ananias by Gustave Doré (1832-1883)

The main difference with the story of Achan is that here God is the one carrying out the death sentence. Peter, acting as spokesman for the apostles, declares their sin (“you have lied to God;” “you have put the Lord’s Spirit to the test”) but he does not curse them or condemn. But after rebuking them, neither does he offer them a chance to repent and be forgiven as Jesus instructed his disciples to do in Luke 17:3-4.

There are other irregularities. First, it strains credulity that word of Ananias’ sudden death would not have made its way to Sapphira, if only so she could attend his burial. Second, Acts 4:32 quoted above stated no one in the Jerusalem community owned private property, yet Peter clearly tells Ananias that he was under no obligation to sell his property. And, if he did sell it, he was also under no obligation to donate the money from the sale to the community.

So what was their crime?

Trying to Explain

Ananias’ sin was essentially that of lying, claiming that he had donated the entire value of property when he really had not. And Sapphira not only lied to cover up for her husband, but also having full knowledge of what he planned to do, she failed to dissuade him from his course of action. But are those transgressions so terrible that death is a just sentence? What sort of church requires such purity that it can only be preserved by the death of sinners?

The story is so at odds with Jesus’ teachings of repentance and forgiveness that many have struggled to make sense of it. Some biblical scholars have looked for an explanation in the Essene community of Qumran. According to that community’s rule book, after a two-year probationary period, it was obligatory for a candidate to hand over all his property to the community. There were punishments (although not the death penalty!) for deception in regards to property. If there was such a rule in the early Jerusalem community, Ananias and Sapphira would be guilty of failing to fulfill their obligation to God, not simply lying about how much they donated.

Another attempt at explaining the point of the story is that it was the “original sin” of the Christian community. After describing an idyllic community, we see a Christian couple who sin against God and receive a punishment of death. Satan (v. 3) enters the Christian community for the first time. Other examples of sin at the “beginnings” would be the Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3), the golden calf at Sinai (Exodus 32), and David arranging the death of Uriah to claim Bathsheba (2 Samuel 11). But the magnitude of this sin compared to those seems way out of balance.

Post hoc, ergo propter hoc

The most plausible explanation to me is an etiological reading. In the primitive Christian community, it was believed that death had been conquered through Jesus’ resurrection. Since Jesus would return soon in his glory, none of his followers would suffer death. If Ananias and Sapphira were the first members of the Jerusalem community to die, people would want to know why had they died before Christ came again. Death before the second coming is a problem that Paul tries to explain to the Thessalonians (1 Thes 4:13-17).

A simple explanation for the couple’s unexpected death was that they were guilty of some grievous sin (for example, lying to the Holy Spirit) for which death was a suitable punishment. If they had just donated money to the community before their death, their sin must obviously have had something to do with that. The story would then have been re-told in that light, emphasizing the sin and the immediate punishment. It would then become a cautionary tale for members of the community.

If this hypothesis is correct, Ananias and Sapphira were not condemned to death by a vengeful God because they sinned; they died and sin was proposed as an explanation for their untimely demise. It’s not that different from today when, after a great natural tragedy strikes a city, televangelists cast about for some heinous sin that “explains” why God let loose his fury on that city. Never mind that those who died in the natural disaster played no part in the “sin” that supposedly brought down God’s wrath.