person
Sapphira
Σαπφείρη
Sapphira, along with her husband Ananias, lied to the apostles about the proceeds from a property sale and died as a result.
- verses
- 1
- first named
- Acts 5:1
- last named
- Acts 5:10
- period
- the New Testament
- role
- Woman
Description
Who was Sapphira?
Sapphira is mentioned in Act.5.1 as the wife of Ananias, a member of the early Christian church in Jerusalem. The couple sold a piece of property and conspired to keep back part of the proceeds for themselves while presenting the remainder to the apostles as if it were the full amount (Act.5.1-2). When Ananias presented the money to the apostles, Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, confronted him about his deception, and Ananias fell down and died (Act.5.3-5). About three hours later, Sapphira came in, unaware of her husband's fate. Peter questioned her about the price of the land, and she also lied, confirming the amount that Ananias had presented (Act.5.7-8). Peter then rebuked her for testing the Spirit of the Lord and informed her that those who had buried her husband would also carry her out. Immediately, Sapphira fell down at Peter's feet and died (Act.5.9-10). The story of Ananias and Sapphira serves as a sobering example of the consequences of deception and the importance of honesty and integrity within the early church community.
Relations
Direct connections
Every entity the graph places in a stated relation with this one, grouped by the kind of link. Each relation is authored once and its inverse derived, so both ends always agree. Rows marked “registry” come from the identity spine rather than from a verse, and a row marked “which bearer is the source’s decision” is one where the name could have meant more than one person. The last group is not a relation at all — it counts the events two entities stand in together.
Places
Where this happens
A person is placed by the events they take part in, and an event has to clear three things to place them: it must say where it happened, that place must be one the gazetteer can put a coordinate on, and the verse must report it rather than foretell, command or ask it. Nothing anchored here clears all three. Where the text names a setting no gazetteer surveys — a vineyard, a palace, a plot of ground — it is left off rather than guessed at; where a place is named only in a prophecy, the map does not draw what was said to be coming as though it had happened; and a place reached only through a relation is not inherited, because standing beside somebody is not being somewhere.
No verse Atlas has read as a report puts this person anywhere.
Not read yet
The pattern
Where Sapphira is named
Every book of the corpus in the order it is read, each as wide as the chapters it holds. A bar is the verses of that book which write the name, and the flat stretches are as much of the answer as the bars.
1 verse across 1 of 66 books; 65 write the name nowhere. Named in Acts (1).
Read it
Where to read it
Every verse of the text carried here that names this entity — one, across 1 book.
Onward
Where this page goes
Nothing in the graph stands one hop from this entity yet. These are the best-connected entities of the same type, so the page still ends somewhere. Descriptions by STEPBible TIPNR.
Where they appear
Chapter by chapter
Atlas's reading of each chapter this person appears in, in canonical order. One line per chapter, and each leads to the whole of it.
Sources