Acts 6:11

Then they suborned men, who said, We have heard him speak blasphemous words against Moses, and against God.

They suborned men ... Men do not need to be bribed to tell the truth; and the Pharisees' money in view in this verse is proof enough that the testimony procured by it was false; but such is the mystery of evil that in every generation there must be champions of every lie Satan ever invented. Regarding the false charges alleged against Stephen, "Baur and Zeller accused Luke of uttering an untruth, for ... they alleged that Stephen had really entertained the opinions and spoken the words with which he was charged."[25] It is of no significance that the Pharisees might indeed have "interpreted" some of Stephen's words as blasphemous, because the Pharisees themselves were the actual blasphemers through their conceited device of equating their own prejudiced interpretations with the law of God. On the face of it, the lying charge that Stephen had blasphemed either God or Moses was unsupported by any fact whatever. As De Welt expressed it: "The accusation was nothing but a black lie";[26] and we might add that the falsity of the charges was matched by the deceit of the suborned witnesses pretending to have "heard" Stephen say things, despite the probability that they had "heard" nothing at all, but were told what to say by the paymasters procuring the perjury. By definition, "suborned witnesses" are "false witnesses."

[25] John Peter Lange, op. cit., p. 109.

[26] Don DeWelt, op. cit., p. 88.