18
It was cold, so the servants and guards had built a charcoal fire and were standing around it, warming themselves. So Peter went over and stood with them, warming himself.
19
The High Priest questioned Jesus about his disciples and about his teaching.
20
Jesus answered, "I have always spoken publicly to everyone; all my teaching was done in the synagogues and in the Temple, where all the people come together. I have never said anything in secret.
21
Why, then, do you question me? Question the people who heard me. Ask them what I told them - they know what I said."
22
When Jesus said this, one of the guards there slapped him and said, "How dare you talk like that to the High Priest!"
23
Jesus answered him, "If I have said anything wrong, tell everyone here what it was. But if I am right in what I have said, why do you hit me?"
24
Then Annas sent him, still tied up, to Caiaphas the High Priest.
25
Peter was still standing there keeping himself warm. So the others said to him, "Aren't you also one of the disciples of that man?" But Peter denied it. "No, I am not," he said.
26
One of the High Priest's slaves, a relative of the man whose ear Peter had cut off, spoke up. "Didn't I see you with him in the garden?" he asked.
27
Again Peter said "No" - and at once a rooster crowed.
28
Early in the morning Jesus was taken from Caiaphas' house to the governor's palace. The Jewish authorities did not go inside the palace, for they wanted to keep themselves ritually clean, in order to be able to eat the Passover meal.