Jesus Christ at the Trial of the Chief Priests and the Sanhedrin
Judging by how greatly Jesus Christ’s enemies hurried with His trial and condemnation, one might have expected the detachment to hasten to bring Him straight to Caiaphas’s house, where the supreme council of the Jews usually met for its deliberations. Yet the divine Prisoner, according to St. John’s testimony (Jn 18:13), was led first not to Caiaphas, but to another, retired high priest, Annas—or, as Josephus consistently calls him, Ananus—because he was, as the evangelist adds in explanation of this circumstance, the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who had counseled the Jews «that it was better for one man to die for the people». That is, Annas, by his close connection with Caiaphas, probably took some particular part in the Sanhedrin’s present undertaking against Jesus; on the other hand, an ancient tradition, still preserved in Jerusalem, says that Annas’s house lay on the way to Caiaphas’s, so that it cost the guard leading Jesus nothing to give him the pleasure of being the first to see, bound, the very man who had so lately seemed unassailable to the whole Sanhedrin. In addition to what is known of this first judge of the God-man, it is worth noting that Annas himself had once been high priest for eleven years, and afterward, despite the Romans’ unwillingness to let the people’s foremost dignity remain long with one man, had managed to prolong it within his own family, among his sons and sons-in-law; and now, drawing on his past influence and present connections, he was, no doubt, the chief and best support of a Sanhedrin declining day by day.
For all his personal importance, Annas, as a private member of the Sanhedrin, had no right of his own to conduct a judicial examination in so weighty a matter as an inquiry into the person of the Messiah. His dealings with Jesus Christ, therefore, must be looked upon as the act of a private man—one, moreover, who considered himself of such consequence that, in his own view, anyone he questioned ought to count it a favor to be questioned by him at all, whatever the question. In the present case, Annas suddenly wished to learn from the Prophet of Galilee about His teaching and His disciples: that is, what He taught, and for what purpose; who His followers were, where, and how many; and what, in general, was the aim of their actions. Though the curiosity of an aged Sadducee no doubt had some part in such questions, they set, whether intentionally or not, a very dangerous tone for the matter from the very start. It was assumed that Jesus Christ had a numerous body of open and secret followers, hostile to the existing order of things; that within this body there was a teaching of its own, distinct from the universally accepted teaching of Moses, a secret aim of its own, and so on. And the least admission of such things would have been enough for Jesus’s enemies to accuse Him of a crime against the faith and the fatherland.
«I,» the Lord answered, «have spoken openly to the world; I have always taught in synagogues and in the temple» (where all the Jews gather), «and in secret I have said nothing. Why do you ask Me? Ask those who heard what I said to them: they know what I said».
No answer could have been given with greater dignity, wisdom, and truth. Nothing is said in it about disciples: for in the sense Annas gave that word—that is, in the sense of followers hostile to society—Jesus Christ had no disciples, any more than He had any worldly society at all. Nor does the Lord explain His teaching to Annas in any way: for it was plain that the chief priests had not paid their silver to hear Jesus’s teaching, but to put Him to death. And how much time would it have taken to explain the mysteries of the Kingdom of God before so blinded a listener, given over to self-interest and malice, as Annas and his servants were? The substance of the matter for which the Sanhedrin had sent an armed guard against Jesus Christ was the accusation that He taught and acted against the faith and the laws; and the truth of such a charge depended entirely on witnesses. So the Lord’s appeal, in testimony of His own innocence, to all who had ever numbered among His hearers, serves as the strongest possible proof of the perfect purity of His teaching and His acts. He had indeed never said anything in secret: if He sometimes spoke to the apostles at greater length than to the people, disclosing to them the «mysteries of the Kingdom of God», it was so that, in His own words, what He told them «in the ear» might afterward be proclaimed by them «on the housetops» (Mt 10:27). Nicodemuses and Josephs heard from the Son of Man the same thing as the people: a preaching of spiritual rebirth, not of civil affairs (Jn 3:1-18). Among the Jews present now there were probably some who had heard Jesus’s teaching, and who could at this very moment give testimony of Him before Annas. The chief priests’ own guard, too, had perhaps not entirely forgotten the extraordinary impression Jesus’s words had made on them not long before, when, despite their masters’ order, they had not dared to lay hands on Him, because «never has any man spoken as this Man speaks» (Jn 7:46). If Jesus Christ’s answer, and the question He put to Annas, carried something of the tone of a rebuke to the high priest, it must be remembered that the present Prisoner was the Messiah, was held to be such by most of the people, and had, in being seized, been treated—even in the merely legal sense—in the most unworthy manner.
For all these reasons, the Jewish high priest, despite his strong personal prejudice against Jesus Christ, himself apparently found nothing in His answer that could be charged against Him as a fault—though inwardly he could hardly have been pleased at so skillful, in his view, an evasion of the matter. One of the servants standing near Annas looked at all this quite differently. The Prisoner’s holy freedom in answering the high priest, before whom he was accustomed to see and expect only servility, seemed to him an insolence demanding immediate requital. «Is this how You answer the high priest?» he cried, wishing to show his zeal for his master’s honor, and struck the Lord on the cheek.
He who would pray on the cross for those who crucified Him could surely have borne, with indifference, the senseless insolence of Annas’s slave now… But silence, in this instance, might have seemed an admission that respect for the high priest’s dignity had indeed been violated. The unreasoning slave himself would have remained convinced that he had acted justly.
«If I have spoken evil,» Jesus answered the one who had struck Him, «testify to the evil; but if well, why do you strike Me?»
Annas saw and heard all this, but had no intention of curbing his servants’ senseless insolence; his business was to judge and persecute the innocent…
There were no more questions. The Lord’s answer, and the holy fearlessness of His spirit, made the crafty Sadducee understand that his hope of confounding the Prisoner with judicial questions was in vain, and that he stood before the very same man who, not long before, had silenced the most skillful scribes and disputants of Jerusalem.
After this, Jesus was sent by Annas to Caiaphas in the very same state in which He had been brought to him—that is, bound (Jn 18:24). He had stood before Annas, too, in almost that same state—for whom the bonds of the Prophet of Galilee made a pleasant spectacle…
Not only a blow from a slave’s hand did the Lord have to endure in Annas’s courtyard: here too, brief as the time was, began the first of His apostles’ denials.
All the evangelists mention this event, and are so faithful, in this instance, to the rule noted above by St. Chrysostom—never to hide anything «of what might seem shameful» — that, going by the fullness of their accounts, some have counted, instead of the three denials of Peter foretold by the Lord Himself, as many as four, or even eight. We shall set out this incident, keeping, as one ought to do in many other cases too, to the general agreement of the Gospel narratives and the course of events, rather than to the discrepancies of their literal wording.
Making use of his acquaintance with the high priest’s household, John went in at once, close behind the guard leading Jesus, into Annas’s courtyard. Peter, being unknown there, had to remain outside the gate, waiting for John’s intercession to win him the favor of being let in. This favor, so precious to him, was no small matter for those who watched over who came in either. For, to avoid danger from a gathering crowd, Annas had probably given orders not to admit strangers into the courtyard. But John spoke a word to the woman who kept the door (in the East at that time this office was usually held by women — Acts 12:13; 2 Sam 9:6), and she let Peter in, putting to him a brief question: was he not one of the disciples of Jesus (they had been ordered not to admit them)? For this occasion, some slight sign of denial would have been enough; something quite different lay ahead. Shivering with cold, Peter drew near the fire that the servants, on account of the weather, had kindled in the middle of the courtyard (Jn 18:18). But his position was so new to him, and so dangerous, that he could not long keep a calm and steady expression on his face. Meanwhile, when it became known in the courtyard that the high priest was questioning Jesus about His disciples and His teaching, the guard filling the courtyard also began to talk about Jesus’s disciples. How ill-timed Peter’s presence was now! The woman at the door who had let Peter in was the first (Jn 18:17) to grow suspicious. «And you, whom I let in—are you not one of this man’s disciples?» she repeated, coming up to Peter—not so much out of ill intent as out of simple caution; but to the timid Simon, even the friendliest jest of this kind now seemed unbearable, at such a time and in such a place: he flatly said that he «did not know or understand what she was talking about» (Mk 14:68).
As Peter, following the guard that was leading Jesus to Caiaphas, was going out of Annas’s courtyard, the voice of a rooster was heard for the first time (Mk 14:68); but Peter either did not hear it, or paid it no attention. His first denial, described above, before the servant girl, still had the appearance of a chance carelessness of speech, and might seem an act which, though certainly not to be approved, could not yet be called outright treachery to his Teacher.
While Jesus Christ remained in Annas’s house, most of the members of the Sanhedrin, despite the dead of night, had gathered at the house of the high priest Caiaphas. This supreme tribunal now presented, in the most vivid way, «the assembly of evildoers» (Ps 25:5). The two chief sects, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, burned with a long-standing hatred of Jesus Christ. Caiaphas, in whose hands the supreme power lay, had long ago pronounced his opinion: «that it was better for one man to die for the people». For an unbiased observer, one glance at the faces and movements of Jesus’s future judges was enough to conclude, with full certainty, what the verdict would be, and what the accused had to expect.
Yet, despite their firm, long-settled intention to take His life, the Sanhedrin wished to give the whole affair the appearance of justice, and to fasten upon Jesus, by whatever means, a charge deserving death. This was demanded, perhaps, by the conscience of some of the judges—corrupted, but not entirely stifled by passion—and by that regard for appearances which even the most ill-intentioned men do not neglect, especially in public assemblies and matters. But the chief reason for this search after a semblance of justice was the fear of being known, among a people devoted to Jesus Christ, as open persecutors of innocence, if they condemned Him with no trial at all, out of sheer personal hatred.
To accuse the Lord, they resolved to resort to the very means He Himself had appealed to before Annas in His own defense—witnesses. The law required, in such a case, only three, or even two (Num 35:30; Deut 17:6; 1 Tim 5:19): to the chief priests, blinded by passion, it seemed possible to produce them by the thousand. At another time there would indeed have been found a sufficient number of shameless men capable of slandering innocence itself, for Jerusalem was full of the Pharisees’ adherents, and therefore of Jesus’s enemies. But now, in the dead of night, when the whole city slept, witnesses were hard to find. From the high priest down to the last member, everyone busied himself with the search: each recalled and spoke of some man suited to bear false witness against Jesus, both by his own turn of mind and because he had heard His discourses. Such anxious effort on the judges’ part to find grounds for accusing the defendant, and the haste and confusion with which proposals were made, gave the Sanhedrin’s assembly the strangest appearance, and through the mask of pretended justice, malice and personal hatred plainly showed through.
But why, one might ask, did the chief priests not resolve to make use of Judas’s services—Judas, who, knowing the Lord’s teaching and all His deeds, might, to please His enemies, for a further payment, and even to justify his own betrayal of his Teacher, have made the cruelest of accusers? The betrayer, as we have seen, having fulfilled his criminal promise to point out his Teacher’s whereabouts, withdrew at once; and so he could not at once be found. Besides, Judas’s testimony, once his betrayal became known (and it could not be hidden), would have carried no weight in the eyes of impartial men. One might even say that Judas himself would hardly have had the boldness to slander his own Teacher in His very presence. We shall see that, even after his betrayal, a strong feeling of respect for His innocence involuntarily remained in his dark soul.
The false witnesses, sought on every side, at last began to appear from various quarters. What they charged the Lord with is not known: only that their testimonies did not agree with one another, and pointed to no fact of criminal wrongdoing. They probably spoke of some breach of Sabbath rest, some failure to keep the Pharisees’ traditions, and the like—offenses that carried much weight on the lips of the scribes, when they were deceiving the credulous people, but which contained no lawful ground for condemning the accused to death; and yet it was precisely a crime of that last sort that the judges wished to find.
At last two more witnesses came forward, who, having in view words spoken by the Savior two years before, to the people, in the Temple at Jerusalem (Jn 2:19), wished to turn them into a criminal charge; but both, whether through malice or through forgetfulness after so long a time, distorted Jesus Christ’s words. One (Mt 26:61) false witness maintained that He had once said: «I can destroy the temple of God and raise it up in three days.» In this false form, the words attributed to Jesus Christ could sound, before the judges, like insolence and boastfulness, joined with disrespect for the most sacred things—for the Temple itself. The other (Mk 14:57-58) false witness declared that he had heard the Lord say: «I will destroy this Temple made with hands, and in three days raise up another, not made with hands.» In this distorted form, these words contained something seditious, something impious, as though Jesus Christ held not only the basest opinion of the Temple of Jerusalem (the word «made with hands» is used in the sacred books to denote an idol (Ps 21:19) and an idol’s temple (Ps 16:12)), but also intended to destroy it in order to build some other, unknown temple—most likely, to build no temple at all. This appeared to be an open blasphemy against the Temple, equal to blasphemy against God and Moses, which, by the law, carried the penalty of death for the blasphemer (Lev 24:13). The disagreement of the false witnesses probably lay not merely in their wording, but in what exactly, given the evangelists’ silence, it is impossible to determine.
Nothing would have been easier than to answer the false witnesses’ charges, had they been worth answering. In the first place, the Lord had never said: «I will destroy», or «I can destroy the temple», but had only said, conditionally, to the Jews who demanded a sign: «destroy». In the second place, when He said this, He meant by the temple not the Temple of Jerusalem, but His own body, so that His words carried this sense: you demand a sign, and you will have it in My resurrection; for when you destroy the temple of My body—put Me to death—I will raise it up in three days—I will rise from the dead (Jn 2:19-22).
Meanwhile, the Lord made no answer to these false testimonies, any more than to the first (Mt 26:63). Whatever He might have said to explain the sense of His words would not have served His defense: His death had already been resolved upon in the chief priests’ hearts. On the other hand, since the Lord’s words contained a symbolic prediction of His own death and resurrection, to explain their meaning would have been strange and useless under the present circumstances, and would only have led to perplexity and mockery. Silence, in the end, was the best answer, if only because the witnesses did not agree with one another, and such disagreement made their testimony wholly void before the law.
The judges, for all their personal hatred of the accused, themselves felt the weakness of the false testimonies; but His majestic silence seemed, to their petty vanity, an unpardonable inattention, or contempt. Had the Lord defended Himself, they might have hoped to find something contrary to the law in His own words; for the chief priests and scribes had more than once felt the sting of His rebukes, which they took as insolence and blasphemy. And so Caiaphas, who until now had sat in his place and preserved, though not without effort, the gravity of the president of an impious council, was the first to lose patience; he rose from his seat and, stepping into the middle (Mk 14:60), where the Lord stood, said with anger: «Why do You answer nothing? Do You not hear what these men are testifying against You?»
But the Lord answered not a word… Provoked by this silence, the high priest would most readily have counted it a confession of guilt, but some remnant of decency still restrained his personal hatred. Meanwhile, having entered into conversation with the Prisoner, he could no longer bring it to a close without embarrassment, having gained nothing by it. The Sadducee’s cunning found a means, without resorting to openly unjust measures, not only to make the accused speak, but to make Him say something by which the whole examination could, in a few words, be brought entirely to a close. As the chief servant of the God of Israel, the high priest, unworthy as he was, had the right to question an accused man under oath—a manner of questioning to which it was impossible not to answer without a breach of due reverence for the oath, for the high priest’s office, and for the law itself. It was to this means that Caiaphas now resorted.
«I put You under oath—he said, with a feigned reverence for the words he pronounced—I put You under oath by the living God: tell us, are You the Christ, the Son of God?» (that is, are You the Messiah) (Mt 26:63.)
«I am,» the Lord answered, «and I say to you further, from now on you will see the Son of Man» (Myself) «seated at the right hand of power, and coming on the clouds of heaven».
That is: soon the very events themselves will show you that I am that glorious King who, as the prophet Daniel describes, sits upon the clouds at the right hand of the Ancient of Days (Dan 7:14).
It was precisely such an admission that Caiaphas had wanted, for it answered his purpose exactly. But the situation required that his satisfaction be concealed; and concealed it was… As though hearing a dreadful, unbearable blasphemy, the hypocrite at once put on an appearance of extreme indignation and tore his garments (the front of them)—an act which, in a high priest, signified the utmost degree of inward agitation, and displayed the greatest possible show of pretended zeal for the glory of the God of Israel. «Did you hear—Caiaphas cried out to the other judges—did you hear what He said?.. He openly blasphemes, and do we still need witnesses?..»
All kept silence, sharing with the high priest a pretended horror at the supposed blasphemy. «What, then, do you think—the hypocrite continued—what does He deserve?» (Mt 26:65-66.)
«Death, death,» the elders repeated, one after another.
So ended the first hearing. The judges and councilors dispersed to sleep a little, and to gather again at the first light of dawn. The goal so long desired, whose attainment had seemed impossible only a few days before—at least during the feast—this goal, the condemnation of Jesus to death, was now, beyond all expectation, all but achieved; it remained only to confirm, at a fresh session, the sentence just pronounced.
While awaiting the fresh session, the Lord was led out of the high priest’s house, where the council had met, into the courtyard. Little time remained until morning (two or three hours), but for Him this interval was very hard, for He was now in the hands of an unruly crowd made up of the Temple guards and the chief priests’ servants (Lk 22:63-65; Mt 26:67-68). Both groups thought it their duty to show anger and contempt toward a man who, in their opinion, had had the insolence to be an enemy of their masters. Perhaps the chief priests themselves had even given the servants a hint of how to treat the Prisoner. «The Prophet of Galilee! The pretender Messiah!» With such mockery the abuse began. But words soon gave way to blows. Some struck the Lord with their fists; others slapped Him on the cheek; still others spat in His face. Those who wished to seem witty covered His face (Mk 14:65; Lk 22:64) with a cloth, and at every blow asked: «Guess, Christ, who struck You»—since the Messiah, in the Jews’ opinion, was supposed to know everything.
That the Lord bore all these insults patiently, without a murmur, the evangelists did not think it necessary even to mention. They noted only when He said something to His tormentors for their instruction.
Let us return to Peter. Here it is fitting to relate how the last part of Jesus Christ’s prediction of his denial came to be fulfilled.
Despite the danger he had met in Annas’s palace, Simon followed the crowd of servants leading Jesus Christ to Caiaphas’s palace, wishing to know how the trial of his Teacher would end—a Teacher whom Peter’s lips had already betrayed, but whose heart was still faithful. The first crowing of the rooster, at Simon’s first denial, made, as we have seen, no impression on him, or perhaps even roused in him a resolve to prove in deed that the ill-omened rooster would not again be a witness to the apostle’s treachery. In Caiaphas’s palace too, Simon played the part of a man who had come at the sound of the crowd out of mere curiosity; and there too, mingling with the crowd of servants, he warmed himself with them at the fire they had kindled in the courtyard against the cold of the night. But the treachery the Lord had foretold pursued Simon here as well. The Galilean dialect in which he spoke, the natural liveliness of his character, now joined with the utmost timidity, his particular attention to the news of how the trial of Jesus Christ was going, which the servants brought from the council chamber, and a host of other circumstances, betrayed Simon more and more, hour by hour, before the insolent servants, who, serving the judges and being present at inquiries and investigations, had grown accustomed to noticing suspicious persons. One of the servants, his attention caught, began saying to those around him: «This man must be one of Jesus’s disciples.» Simon trembled again; lips that had once betrayed him opened all the more readily for a second denial: mere assurances now seemed insufficient, and the faint-hearted disciple added to his lie an oath that he did not know Jesus at all. So swiftly and so deeply does human virtue fall! Having escaped the danger, Simon moved away from the fire; fear drove him out, but love held him back once more, and he stopped by the door.
A little more time passed; the first hearing ended, and Jesus Christ was led out of the council chamber into the courtyard. Moved by love, the disciple involuntarily drew nearer, to look once more upon his Teacher, to be seen by Him if possible, and to show his share in His fate. It seemed safe; but suddenly one of the servants stopped Simon with a question: «Surely you too were with Him; for you are a Galilean, and your speech betrays you.» The other servants confirmed this suspicion; for the Galilean dialect was very noticeable to anyone, and everyone knew, besides, that Jesus’s disciples were Galileans by birth. The astonished Simon found himself in the most difficult position: for although the soldiers who had seized Jesus apparently had no order to seize His disciples too, now that they had so successfully gotten hold of the Teacher, they would hardly spare a disciple who had fallen into their hands of his own accord. Simon’s heart must surely have sunk, when, without waiting for his answer, one of the high priest’s servants, who had been with the soldiers in the garden of Gethsemane, a relative of that very Malchus whose ear Peter had cut off, began loudly to accuse him, saying: «Did I not see you with Him in the garden of Gethsemane?» The timid Simon did not know what to do; forgetting himself and his Teacher, dying, in St. Chrysostom’s phrase, of fear, he began to swear by everything he could that he had not only never thought of being a disciple of Jesus, but did not know the Man at all.
The faint-hearted disciple had not yet finished his oaths when the herald of repentance—the rooster—crowed a third time.
At that same moment the Lord, standing amid the guard in the courtyard, turned toward the place where Simon Peter stood (where the dispute had raised a commotion), and looked at him steadily… Peter, for all his confusion, noticed this; the gaze of his Teacher and Lord pierced his heart. It seemed to him that he heard again the fateful prediction: «before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.» In place of faint-heartedness came shame and repentance. But the trial was over! The high priest’s servants, believing his oaths, left Peter in peace. But the noise of the high priest’s courtyard had become unbearable to a heart torn with grief—and he, with tears in his eyes, hurried out, to weep alone over his own inconstancy. «And he went out, and wept bitterly..»
St. Clement, a disciple of the Apostle Peter, relates that all his life, at the midnight crowing of the rooster, Peter would kneel down and, bathed in tears, repent of his denial and beg forgiveness—though it had already been granted him by the Lord Himself soon after the Resurrection. According to Nicephorus’s account, St. Peter’s eyes, from such frequent and bitter weeping, always seemed red.
With this striking trait of Peter’s character ends the history of this night, in the course of which so many opposite things came to pass: unshaken devotion to the will of God, magnanimous patience, base treachery, savage inhumanity, pretended justice, true righteousness; a night in which human nature showed itself both at its very best (in Jesus Christ) and at its very worst (in Judas and the chief priests), and in its middle state too (in Peter); a night that laid the foundation for events embracing the whole of mankind, events that will end only with the end of the present world, but whose further consequences will continue into eternity.