According to the book of Acts, persecution of Jesus’ disciples began after a trip by Simon Peter and John to the Jerusalem Temple and Peter’s speech. Peter said:
Men of Israel, why are you amazed at this, or why do you gaze at us, as if by our own power or piety we had made him walk?
The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God of our fathers, has glorified His servant Jesus, the one whom you delivered and disowned in the presence of Pilate, when he had decided to release Him.
But you disowned the Holy and Righteous One and asked for a murderer to be granted to you, but put to death the Prince of life, the one whom God raised from the dead, a fact to which we are witnesses.
And on the basis of faith in His name, it is the name of Jesus which has strengthened this man whom you see and know; and the faith which comes through Him has given him this perfect health in the presence of you all.
And now, brethren, I know that you acted in ignorance, just as your rulers did also.
But the things which God announced beforehand by the mouth of all the prophets, that His Christ would suffer, He has thus fulfilled.
Therefore repent and return, so that your sins may be wiped away, in order that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord;
and that He may send Jesus, the Christ appointed for you,
whom heaven must receive until the period of restoration of all things about which God spoke by the mouth of His holy prophets from ancient time.
Moses said, ‘THE LORD GOD WILL RAISE UP FOR YOU A PROPHET LIKE ME FROM YOUR BRETHREN; TO HIM YOU SHALL GIVE HEED to everything He says to you.
And it will be that every soul that does not heed that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people.’
And likewise, all the prophets who have spoken, from Samuel and his successors onward, also announced these days.
It is you who are the sons of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘AND IN YOUR SEED ALL THE FAMILIES OF THE EARTH SHALL BE BLESSED.’
For you first, God raised up His Servant and sent Him to bless you by turning every one of you from your wicked ways.” (Acts 3:12-26 NASB)
Simon Peter and John were imprisoned by a Jewish leadership who were “much annoyed because they were teaching the people and proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead”, a doctrine opposed by the Sadducees. According to Acts, the Jewish leadership involved was specifically “the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees … rulers, elders, and scribes … Annas the high priest, Caiaphas, John (Other ancient authorities read Jonathan), and Alexander, and all who were of the high-priestly family”, who however later released them after warning them to never again “speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus” (Acts 4:1-21).
Another time, all the apostles were imprisoned by the high priest and other Sadducees, only to be freed by an Angel of the Lord (Acts 5:17-21). The apostles, after having escaped, were then taken before the Sanhedrin again, but this time Gamaliel (a Pharisee well known from Rabbinic literature and leader of the Pharisaic Sanhedrin, possibly also secretly a Christian) convinced the Sanhedrin of Acts to free them (Acts 5:27-40), which they did, after having them flogged.
