ABSTRACT
The hostility of the Jewish authorities, even if it was as active as the compiler of Acts makes it out to have been, did not hinder the expansion of the church but its very growth created a difficulty and to overcome it measures had to be devised. The story of the persecution ordered by Herod Agrippa I in the spring of 44 is the last fact of immediate concern to the church at Jerusalem to be reported in the Book of Acts. This chapter examines the material used by the author of Acts to express his own idea of the history of the church at Jerusalem. It has been suggested that although only the word ‘house’ is used for the meetings of Christians, in reality they formed a synagogue (called the synagogue of the Galileans or of the Nazarenes), one of the many synagogues at Jerusalem which the Jews formed according to their particular affinities without any thought of separation.
