The Hyperlinked Bible
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
Acts 5:21BSB
At daybreak the apostles entered the temple courts as they had been told and began to teach the people. When the high priest and his associates arrived, they convened the Sanhedrin—the full assembly of the elders of Israel—and sent to the jail for the apostles.
Earlier text
Exodus 12:21BSB
Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and told them, "Go at once and select for yourselves a lamb for each family, and slaughter the Passover lamb.
Luke reports that the high priest "called together the Sanhedrin — that is, the full assembly [gerousia] of the elders of Israel" — the same convening of Israel's elders that framed the first Passover, when "Moses summoned all the elders of Israel" to keep the feast of redemption (Exod 12:21). The verbal echo carries a bitter irony: the body that once gathered to receive God's deliverance now gathers to suppress the witnesses of a greater deliverance. Christ-terminus: the true Passover Lamb has already been slain and raised, and the redemption He accomplished cannot be undone by any council of elders. The institution God gave to celebrate salvation now sits in judgment on the Savior's apostles — but the exodus it foreshadowed has been fulfilled, and the gospel keeps advancing.