Abstract
The present article seeks to understand the statement ‘and the witnesses laid down their cloaks’ in Acts 7:58. This incident does not immediately stand out to the reader as being significant in the context of Acts 7 in any real way, and is often overlooked by commentators. However, based on other ancient episodes in which a cloak is removed, this article will call into question the meaning and function of the laying down of cloaks in Acts 7:58. It will be suggested that the gesture of shedding cloaks was a symbolic gesture which, on one level, signified impending violence or death. The conclusion will have implications for how we are to understand this gesture both in Acts and in the wider Greco-Roman world.
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