Cold Steel, this much I agree with you on:
"if you're going to understand the Bible you have to forget virtually everything you've been taught, read, or thought you understood. And you should begin by throwing away your New World Translation"
Prologos, you said:
"The timing of his resurrection is subject to the above mentioned good observations on Pauls writings, of which Stephen might have known little".
I agree that if there was a "Stephen", he might have known little of Paul's writings and his concept of a resurrection could easily have been different than Paul's, or different from Jesus' for that matter, since there is no indication that Stephen had direct contact with Jesus. But the JW religion is a belief based upon absolutes--the absolute accuracy of the bible, the fundamental perfectness of anything stated in scripture. The bible doesn't explain to us that Stephen had a wrong concept when he cried out for Jesus to accept his spirit, an obvious reference to an instant resurrection to Jesus in heaven, it just records his words which certainly seem to indicate that he believed that as his fate. The writer of Acts, in the very next verse, contradicts Steven's words by saying that he "fell asleep in death", but the writer (whoever he really was), makes no other comment. So the point of my debate is not whether Stephen was resurrected or not, to where, or when, but rather; how can the WTS reconcile this statement as being part of their divinely inspired, unerring holy bible, since it so obviously divurges from their accepted belief? Maybe someone has found a reference in the WT Library that addresses this and puts their WT spin on it, but I looked and can find nothing.