Stephen was one of the seven deacons appointed by the apostles to serve the Hellenist widows in the Jerusalem church, and the first Christian martyr. His speech before the Sanhedrin — the longest in Acts — is a sweeping theological reinterpretation of Israel's history, and his death by stoning, with its vision of the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God, established the pattern by which subsequent Christian martyrdom would be understood.