Luke 22:66 - Exposition

And as soon as it was day . The Sanhedrin as a council could only meet by day; all the preliminaries had been settled and the course of procedure fully arranged when the legal time for the meeting of the state council arrived. The elders of the people and the chief priests and the scribes earns together, and led him into their council. These were the three constitutional parts of the Sanhedrin. The name of the famous Sanhedrin, curiously enough, is a Greek, not a Hebrew or Aramaic word, being derived from συνέδριον , an assembly. We first come on the word, says Dr. Farrar, when this state council summoned before them Hyrcanus II ., son of Alexander Jannaeus. In the time of our Lord, the Roman government had taken from them the power of carrying out capital sentences; hence their bringing Jesus before Pilate. There is a remarkable tradition that the council left their proper place of assembly, Gazith, and sat in another chamber (forty years before the destruction of the temple). Now, it was forbidden to condemn to death except in Gazith. Dr. Westcott quotes from Derenbourg ('Essai sur l'Histoire et la Geographie de Palestine'), who suggests the probability of the night sitting of Anrias and Caiaphas and the members of the Sanhedrin favorable to their policy (the second trial) being held at "the Booths of the Sons of Hanan" (Annas), These booths, or shops, were under two cedars on the Mount of Olives (Jerusalem Talmud, 'Taanith,' 4.8). There were four of these booths, which were for the sale of objects legally pure. In one of these pigeons were sold for the sacrifices of all Israel. Derenbourg conjectures that these booths on the Mount of Olives were part of the famous Booths of the Sons of Hanan (Annas), to which the Sanhedrin retired when it left the chamber Gazith.