Acts 21:27

And when the seven days were almost completed, the Jews from Asia, when they saw him in the temple, stirred up all the multitude and laid hands on him.

Jews from Asia ... These were not Jewish Christians, but were of the hard cadre of secular Israel who rejected Christ totally. Harrison believed that one of the reasons for Luke's inclusion of this incident was to show the final and irrevocable rejection by the Jews of the Lord Jesus Christ. He said:

Luke devotes considerable space to the record of Paul's last visit to Jerusalem, not because the visit was important in itself, but because it showed the final rejection of the gospel by Jerusalem.[31]

That James' intentions were honorable, and that he in heart had not in any degree forsaken the will of the Lord in his request of Paul, which incidentally appears not actually as his request but rather as that of "the elders" (Acts 21:20), is evident in the cause and manner of his death, as recorded by Josephus:

Ananus thought that he had a favorable opportunity because Festus was dead and Albinus was still on the way. So he convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man called James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.[32]

A Christian writer of the second century, Hegesippus, says James was thrown down from the pinnacle of the temple, stoned, and finally killed by a fuller's club.[33]

Jack Lewis declares that these testimonies are "usually thought to be authentic."[34]

Such information further explains the character of the temple crowd which dominated and controlled the Jewish temple, but recently completed, having been under construction nearly three quarters of a century, and which was THE THEATER WHERE the conciliatory efforts of this chapter were enacted. Given the place where the efforts occurred and the mob who controlled it, there was no possibility of such efforts succeeding.

[31] Everett F. Harrison, op. cit., p. 463.

[32] Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, translated by William Whiston (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston), p: 598.

[33] Jack P. Lewis, Historical Backgrounds of Bible History (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1972), p. 141.

[34] Ibid.