St. Paul: The Apostle We Love to Hate (Icons)

by Karen Armstrong

But to the followers of Jesus, Agrippa was a false Messiah, and Agrippa launched an attack on their leaders. First he beheaded James, the brother of John, who seems in the very early days to have been second in command to Peter.54 Then, Luke says, when Agrippa saw that the Jerusalem elite approved of James’s execution, he had Peter arrested.55 Agrippa seemed anxious to gauge Jewish reactions, his chief concern being to retain the loyalty of the priestly aristocracy that had long seen Jesus and his movement as an irritant.56 But Peter, Luke says, was miraculously delivered from prison and fled the city.57 He would reappear in Jerusalem later but could no longer govern the community there, and after this incident, we hear no more of the Twelve, who may also have been forced into exile.