Update on Events in Jerusalem and Judaea
Luke is about to devote the whole of the second half of his book (more than half) to the missionary work of Paul, his subsequent arrest and the final journey to Rome in custody (chs 13–28). In that account the story will return to Jerusalem (chs 1–5; 21–23), but with Paul in the spotlight. It was important for the integrity of Luke’s narrative, however, that he should round off the first half, in which the beginnings in Jerusalem and Peter’s expanding mission were central, rather than let it simply peter out (as the transition at 11.19–26 would have allowed). The fact that the famine relief visit of Barnabas and Saul (11.29–30) provided the occasion for the switch back to Jerusalem will not be accidental. But Luke was hardly concerned to integrate the two, since, despite their presence in Jerusalem (12.25), neither Barnabas nor Saul features in the intervening episodes.
The two episodes each mark the end of an epoch. In the first (12.1–17), the apostolic circle is broken (with the execution of James) and no attempt is made to close it again. ‘The apostles’ will feature again (in 15.2, 4, 6, 22–23 and 16.4), though always in the phrase ‘the apostles and (the) elders’. The early ideal of a reconstituted Israel is being transformed into an organizational structure.
More important, this is the last time Peter himself will feature in the narrative and in Jerusalem, apart from 15.7–11, where he seems to be distinguished from ‘the apostles and the elders’ (15.6–7). The first episode, then, is Peter’s own swansong in Jerusalem. It is not simply that Jerusalem becomes too dangerous for him, for Herod soon dies (12.20–23) and he does return for the Jerusalem council (ch. 15). The point seems to be, rather, that Peter himself is moving on. The missionary responsibility clearly indicated in Gal. 2.7–9, draws him away from Jerusalem as such. It is probably significant, then, that the first episode concludes with the enigmatic note: ‘he went off to another place’ (12.17). For in chs 6–12 the only other ‘place’ mentioned (apart from the burning bush — 7.33) has been the Temple (6.13–14; 7.7, 49). This sentence, then, makes an effective conclusion to a section (chs 6–12) which began with the Temple as an issue. The Temple ties which had previously bound the church to Jerusalem are now further loosened: Peter himself ‘went off to another place’. The spectrum is opening out, with the Hellenists (and soon Paul) at one end, the Jerusalem apostles at the other, and Peter in the middle.
The second episode (12.18–23) also narrates the end of an epoch. For the death of Herod Agrippa marked the end of the Herodian line in the rule of Judaea. He was replaced by a series of inefficient procurators under whom events spiralled steadily downwards into the tragedy of the Jewish revolt twenty years later. Luke would be aware of this, though he does not indicate it in his narrative. What was important for him, rather, was that the death of Herod provided a classic example of the Gentile folly of confusing the human with the divine. This cautionary tale, therefore, can serve a double function: it can round off a section which began by denouncing human misconception of God’s dwelling place (7.48–49) and continued with the encounter with Simon Magus (see Introduction to 8.4–25); and it provides the ideal preamble to the theme (human misconception of God) which will largely dominate the encounter of the gospel with pagan theism in the Pauline mission (particularly chs 14 and 17).
Peter’s departure from Jerusalem
12.1–17
The account of Peter’s release from jail is a classic example of supernatural intervention into human affairs. It stands in some contrast to the brief parallel account in 5.17–20 and the relatively modest account of Paul’s release from prison in Philippi (16.25–28), another of the Peter/Paul matches. For in it Luke glories unreservedly in the supernatural character of the tale. Peter was guarded by four squads of soldiers (12.4); in the event he was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with chains, and with sentries at the gates (12.6); he could hardly have been more secure. And the angel which appeared was real, as was the angelic action on Peter’s behalf; it was no mere vision (12.7–9). The heavy outer gate opened ‘of its own accord’ (12.10). The immediate sequel (12.12–17) conjures up a vivid picture and evidences the hand of a master storyteller.
There can be no doubt that Luke believed the account completely. His own unquestioning faith in the miraculous (‘signs and wonders’) and the tangible nature of the spiritual realm’s impact on the physical is clearly manifest (cf. 2.4; 5.15; 8.17–18; 10.44–47; 19.6, 12). There would be as little point in questioning that faith in this instance as there would in questioning the miracles Bede attributed to Cuthbert. These were firm convictions held by those for whom the interface between the spiritual and the natural was much more immediate and perceptible. The convictions themselves tell us much about the higher energy spirituality of Christianity’s earliest days. For such a spirituality the theological puzzle of why Peter should have been spared, and not James (had the church not prayed for James?), or why Peter should have been spared and not other Christian leaders of other ages in similar circumstances, is submerged in the wonder and rejoicing of open-hearted trust. Those who find the historical and theological problems still troubling can at least rejoice with those who so rejoice.
That being said, we should note possible indications of an underlying story — particularly the recollection that it happened at Passover (12.3–4), the fervent prayer (12.5, 12), and the hints in 12.9 and 11 that Peter dreamt it all. The comic sequel can also recall details of place and names (Mary and Rhoda). And following the execution of James it is very likely that Peter too was the object of Agrippa’s malice and subsequently did have to slip away from Jerusalem at risk to his life. Beyond that, however, it would be hazardous to try to reconstruct ‘what actually happened’, enmeshed as any first-hand report now is in Luke’s delight in the miraculous and skill as a storyteller.
12.1 The chief actor is now the king — Herod Agrippa I, son of Aristobulus and grandson of Herod the Great. He was a friend of the imperial family, having been brought up in Rome; it was customary to cement the bonds with conquered nations and to guarantee royal compliance by having their princes brought up in Rome. He had been given the tetrarchies of Philip and Lysanias (cf. Luke 3.1) and the title ‘king’ by Gaius Caligula in 37. In turn, Claudius, when he became Emperor, had added Judaea and Samaria, in 41, in effect restoring the kingdom of Herod the Great to its old boundaries.
Why he should have acted against the church is not said. But we do know from other sources that once established in power, Agrippa had set out to revive the fortunes of his people, lived a life of notable piety and was held in considerable respect by the Pharisees and the people. So a policy of repression against a recently formed sect held in some suspicion by the religious leaders of his people would make sense. That he could act with such arbitrary power (12.2–3) we can have no doubt. And that he did so in this case was no doubt all too clearly recalled by the Jerusalem church.
12.2 James, brother of John, was chosen, presumably to make an example. The implication, borne out by his being named with Peter and his brother John as a kind of inner circle (Mark 3.16–17; 5.37; 9.2; 14.33; Acts 1.13), is that he was recognizably one of the leaders of the new sect (contrast 8.1). That he was executed by a sword may indicate that the believers were now being regarded as a political threat. But all sorts of scenarios could lie behind these bare details. We need only envisage growing tensions between the believers and their fellow Jews (12.3). No one in higher authority would complain if the king engaged in some arbitrary despotism in regard to his own subjects.
12.3 Growing opposition is ascribed simply to ‘the Jews’. This is odd, since those attacked were also Jews. Here we see again the tension which runs through Luke’s portrayal of the new movement’s identity. On the one hand, the new sect was in full continuity with Israel’s hope and heritage. But on the other, there was a growing distinction between this movement and those with a more obvious claim to that heritage in national and religious terms. How else better to describe the latter than as ‘the Jews’? Although it took the influx of Gentiles to bring that distinction to breaking point, Luke no doubt wished to maintain as much continuity as possible between the Jerusalem church and the expanding mission by indicating that the distinction and opposition from ‘the Jews’ was early on experienced also and even in Jerusalem itself (see on 9.22). The account at this point, however, is also consistent with the report (in the Mishnah, Sota 7.8) that Agrippa felt deeply the fact that he was not fully of Jewish lineage (Herod the Great having been an Idumaean); consequently, setting him over against ‘the Jews’ was quite appropriate.
12.4 Peter’s arrest was remembered as having taken place at the time of Passover — probably a genuine memory rather than an attempt to draw out a parallel between Jesus and Peter (cf. Luke 22.1), since Luke makes little of the Passover timing of Jesus’ actual arrest and execution. The prison, presumably, would have been the Antonia fortress which abutted the Temple platform.
12.5 The fervent prayer is also a typical Lukan interest (see on 1.14), but since it is part of though not integral to the amusingly told sequel (12.12), this detail too can probably be credited to memory of the occasion. It would be a natural reflex of a people for whom the curtain between heaven and earth was already very thin and for whom recourse to worship and prayer was a daily delight.
12.6–11 The story is told to bring out the wonder of it. It did not happen until the very last night possible (12.6). Soldiers, chains and doors proved no obstacle (12.6–10). There was a real angel, in the glow of heavenly illumination (see on 6.15) and in complete charge of events, who prods Peter into wakefulness and is as concerned for Peter’s attire as for his deliverance.
There are possible hints that Peter’s(?) own memory of the affair was exceedingly hazy, or indeed dream-like. ‘He did not know that what was done by the angel was real, but thought he was seeing a vision’ (12.9). He ‘came to himself’ once outside, the angel vanishing at the same time (12.10–11). But Luke himself had no doubts on the matter: it was real (12.9); and Peter drew the same conclusion (12.11).
The Lord in 12.7, 11 will be God who sent his angel (cf. 5.19; 7.35; 8.26; 10.3; 12.23; 27.23). That Peter should speak of ‘the Jewish people’ (12.11) is surprising; the perspective is more that of the storyteller for whom the movement represented by Peter had become clearly distinct from ‘the people of the Jews’ (see on 12.3).
12.12 The name of John Mark is given with a view to his part in the subsequent narrative (12.25; 13.13; 15.37–39), and as one well known among the churches subsequently (Col. 4.10; II Tim. 4.11; Philemon 24; I Peter 5.13). But the detail of the rather substantial house (outer gateway, maidservant, large enough for a gathering of ‘many’) and householder will certainly reflect knowledge of one of the earliest Jerusalem church’s meeting houses and was presumably part of this tale from its first telling. From 12.17 we can deduce that none of the other apostles was present (in hiding?) and that ad hoc meetings for prayer without recognized leaders present were a natural expression of early Christian spirituality.
12.13–16 Whoever first told this story evidently had a sense of humour: Peter who has just walked through gates manned by soldiers is left standing at the door by a maid servant and has to keep knocking to gain attention (12.14, 16); and those inside dismiss the maid’s story twice (12.15 — ‘You are mad’; ‘It is his angel’) and are amazed when they at last open the door (12.16). So much for their confidence in the power of prayer! Would Luke have thus disparaged their faith by creating such details on his own initiative?
12.17 The heavenly actor is now identified as ‘the Lord’ — yet one more case where the ‘Lord’ retains an ambivalence which leaves the reader uncertain whether it is God (see on 12.7, 11) or the exalted Christ who is meant.
The James referred to will be James the brother of Jesus, who now emerges as the principal leader of the Jerusalem church (15.13; 21.18; Gal. 1.19; 2.9, 12). When he became a member of the church is never indicated (see on 1.14). In middle Eastern tradition rule usually passes to a brother rather than to a son. This presumably was a factor in James (as Jesus’ brother) in effect succeeding Peter (and the brothers John and James?). But he certainly was a man of weight and influence (Gal. 2.9, 12). The New Testament letter of James is attributed to him, as well as other apocryphal writings, he is alluded to in the Gospel of Thomas 12, and he is a hero in the third-century pseudo-Clementine literature.
Peter then disappears from Jerusalem, and, apart from 15.7–11, from the story. This will have been, partly, presumably, because he had to withdraw from public activity; Herod’s agents would operate throughout Judaea. But it also serves Luke’s grand design. For though Peter evidently continued to engage in missionary work thereafter (Gal. 2.8; I Cor. 9.5), his departure ‘to another place’ in effect completes the action of the first half of Luke’s second volume. If the event happened in as close proximity to Agrippa’s death as the narrative (12.19–20) seems to imply, then we can date Peter’s departure from Jerusalem fairly precisely to 44.
12.18–25
With Peter no longer in the focus the story could move on at once to Saul/Paul. But Luke knew the history of Herod Agrippa’s fearful end and it fitted well with one of his major purposes in the second half of his book. So he took the opportunity of this transition from the first to the second half to slip it in at this point. It also fitted neatly on to the end of his narrative of Peter’s departure from Jerusalem, with verses 18–19 added in to make the link. Its starkness contrasts with the tension-relaxing humour of 12.12–17, and its message reinforces that of 12.6–11 (faithfulness delivered, pride punished), ‘an angel of the Lord’ being the agent of divine intervention on both occasions (12.7, 23).
The gruesome account of Herod’s death is closely parallel to the account in Josephus, Antiquities 19.343–52. Both accounts place the event in Caesarea, on a public state occasion. Both refer to Herod’s robes and agree that Herod was hailed as a god. Both report that he was then struck by a sudden illness and died in great pain. And both draw the appropriate lesson, that the words addressed to him ought to have been rebuked by him. There can be no doubt, then, that Luke was able to draw upon a widely retailed and moralistic account of the king’s death. The divergences are such as we might expect to find in such multiple retellings. Luke’s object, however, was not that of Josephus, and his much briefer account serves his more restricted object quite adequately.
That object is plain: Herod is a fearful warning to all who think they can somehow identify a human being with God. It was a theme already part of the initial outreach beyond Judaea to Samaria (8.9b–10) and further hinted at in the first proper encounter with a Gentile (10.25–26), and will become dominant in the subsequent narratives devoted to encounter between the new movement and paganism (chs 14 and 17). But since it is a point of confrontation occasioned by the new movement’s heritage of monotheism, Israel’s understanding of God, it is ironic, and no doubt purposely so in Luke’s account, that the the first full denunciation of the fallacies of Gentile theism takes as its warning example the king of the Jews.
12.18–19 The account of Peter’s departure is already complete, but the addition rounds off the story still more effectively, and allows the spotlight to remain on Agrippa. The balance of the story is now completely the reverse of that in 5.19–26. There the angelic rescue was retold with the greatest brevity, with the pace of the narrative then slowed for the perplexity of the Temple authorities to be savoured more fully. Here the object is to swing the spotlight back on to Agrippa, so little attention is given to the aftermath. The brusque brutality of the discipline for military inefficiency (the failed sentries ‘led away’, that is, almost certainly to execution), however, would be characteristic of the times.
The return to Caesarea is indicative of Agrippa’s political strategy. Apart from anything else, it had been the Roman provincial capital, and the lines of communication to the other eastern Mediterranean cities and statelets would certainly be more efficient from there than from Jerusalem in its out of the way location amid the Judaean hills.
12.20 We have no other record of a delegation from Tyre and Sidon or of the anger which occasioned it, but the account is at least consistent with Josephus’ reports that within his brief threeyear reign Agrippa had begun to flex his political muscles, by attempting to strengthen Jerusalem’s fortifications and by seeking to develop links with other client kings (Antiquities 19.326–7, 338–42). Here, however, Josephus reports that those attending the gathering were Agrippa’s own officials and prominent citizens (Antiquities 19.343).
12.21 Unlike Josephus, Luke ignores the version which told how it was Herod’s glorious apparel, the silver in it glittering in the sunlight, which provoked ‘his flatterers’ to address him as god (Antiquities 19.344). Luke’s much briefer account, in contrast, suggests, less plausibly, that it was the oration given by Herod which provoked the crowd’s acclaim.
12.22 In Luke it is ‘the people’ (NIV, NRSV), ‘the populace’ (REB) who hail Agrippa as god. The word here, however, is not the one used to denote ‘the people of Israel, the Jews’ (as in 12.11). It refers simply to the crowd gathered for the occasion (as in 17.5 and 19.30, 33). Thus Luke manages (12.20 and 22) to give the impression that the occasion was Gentile in character. The mistake made was a typically pagan one of failing to distinguish a man from God.
12.23 Characteristic of their different perspectives are the different accounts given of Agrippa’s actual death by Josephus and Luke. Josephus refers it to ‘fate’ and describes how Agrippa saw an owl, ‘harbinger (‘angel/messenger’) of woes’, immediately prior to his fatal attack (Antiquities 19.346–7). Luke attributes Agrippa’s death immediately to ‘an angel of the Lord’, and provides the reason in succinct terms: ‘because he did not give God the glory’. God did not brook a man, least of all king of the Jews, claiming share of the glory which was God’s alone. The literary and dramatic effect should not be missed, giving the chapter as a whole its unity: God struck down Agrippa in as summary fashion as Agrippa had struck down James (12.2).
The common features of the accounts of Josephus and Luke could suggest that Agrippa’s death was caused by peritonitis or poison. Worms in the alimentary canal could have hastened his death. But Luke’s concern is more to describe the death as an act of God: ‘the angel of the Lord (= God)’ was responsible, as in the much recalled deliverance of Jerusalem from the Assyrians (II Kings 19.35; Sir. 48.21; I Macc. 7.41). Even more to describe it as a warning sign, as in the case of other infamous kings, Antiochus, whose ‘body swarmed with worms’ (II Macc. 9.9), and Herod the Great (Josephus, Antiquities 17.168–70), not to mention the cases of Judas (1.18) and Ananias and Sapphira (5.5, 10). Thus perish all who set themselves against God. The prince of Tyre in particular should have served as a warning to any king, lest he say, ‘I am god’, when he was but a man and no god (Ezek. 28.2, 9).
12.24 is one of Luke’s brief summaries (6.7; 9.31; 13.49; 19.20) which indicate the passage of time and function like a brief break between scenes in a play (see also on 13.49).
12.25 Luke did not forget that he had left Barnabas and Saul in Jerusalem (11.30). He could have recounted their return to Antioch before embarking on the Peter and Herod episodes (12.1–23), since the presence of Barnabas and Saul in Jerusalem during these episodes was irrelevent to them. But in artistic terms the return of Barnabas and Saul from Jerusalem to Antioch provides the hinge on which Luke’s narrative swings from the first to the second half of his book. The reference to Mark provides a link still further forward into Part III (13.13; 15.37, 39).