Then assembled together the chief priests
About the same time, two days before the passover, that Jesus
said these things to his disciples, as is plain from ( Mark 14:1 ) . By "the
chief priests" are meant, either such who had been high priests,
or such as were the heads of the twenty four courses of the
priests; or rather, the principal men of the priesthood, who were
chosen out of the rest, to be members of the great sanhedrim:
and the Scribes;
the doctors, of the law, who wrote out copies of the law for the
people, and interpreted it to them in a literal way: this clause
is left out in the Vulgate Latin, and in Munster's Hebrew Gospel,
and in the Arabic and Ethiopic versions, and in the Alexandrian
copy, and some others, but is retained in, the Syriac version;
and no doubt, but these men had a place in this grand council:
and the elders of the people;
these were the civil magistrates; so that this assembly consisted
both of ecclesiastics and laymen, as the sanhedrim did, of
priests, Levites, and Israelites F20: these came
unto the palace of the high priest, who was called
Caiaphas;
his name was Joseph, but his surname Caiaphas; a word not of the
same original with Cephas, as Camero thought; for these two words
begin with different letters, nor are the rest the same. Now,
though a king of Israel might not sit in the sanhedrim, yet an
high priest might, provided he was sufficiently qualified with
wisdom F21. The president of this grand
council at this time, should be Rabban Gamaliel, Paul's master;
unless it was Caiaphas, at whose house they were: how they came
to meet at the high priest's palace, deserves inquiry; since
their proper and usual place of meeting, was a chamber in the
temple, called Gazith F23, or the paved chamber: now let it
be observed, that according to the accounts the Jews themselves
give, the sanhedrim removed from this chamber, forty years before
the destruction of the temple F24; and which, as Dr. Lightfoot
conjectures, was about a year and a half before the death of
Christ; and as others say F25, four years; at least three
years and a half before that time: but then, though the sanhedrim
removed from the paved chamber, they met at Chanoth, "the sheds",
which was a place within the bounds of the temple, in the
mountain of the house; and the question still returns, how came
it to pass they did not meet there? To me the reason seems to be,
that they chose not to meet there, but at the high priest's
palace, because of privacy, that it might not be known they were
together, and about any affair of moment; and particularly this:
the high priest's house was always in Jerusalem, and he never
removed from thence; nor did he go from the temple thither only
in the night, or an hour or two in the day; for he had an
apartment in the temple, which was called the chamber of the high
priest, where he was the whole day F26.
F20 Maimon. Hilch. Sanhedrin, c. 2. sect. 1.
F21 lb. sect. 4.
F23 Misn. Middot c. 5. sect. 3.
F24 T. Bab. Sabbat, fol. 15. 1. Avoda Zara, fol. 8. 2. Sanhedrin, fol. 41. 1. Maimon. Hilch. Sanhedrin, c. 14. sect. 13. Juchasin, fol. 21. 1.
F25 Edzard. not. in Avoda Zara, c. 1. p. 236.
F26 Maimon. Cele Hamikdash, c. 5. sect. 7.