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Simon (father of John Hyrcanus) the supreme power, referred to in the Apocrypha, may
well have been such a body.
"So I went in and saw . . . . . the idols of the house of Israel . . . . . and there stood
before them seventy men of the ancients of the house of Israel, and in the midst of them
stood Jaazaniah . . . . . with every man a censer in his hand" (Ezek. 8: 10, 11).
"At Saramel in the great congregation of the priests, and people, and rulers of the
nation, and elders of the country, were these things notified unto us . . . . . The people
therefore, seeing the acts of Simon . . . . . made him their governor and chief priests"
(1Macc.14:28,35).
The Sanhedrin at the time of Christ.
Mention has already been made in these articles of the interference of Herod the Great
with the Sanhedrin. At one time he is said to have exterminated every member of this
body except one, whose eyes he put out. Soon after this, he put into the High Priesthood
men of Egyptian and Babylonian origin, who would of course preside over the Sanhedrin.
It would seem, in the light of this, that the body which condemned the Lord, was
of a hybrid nature, if indeed He actually appeared before the Sanhedrin as such.
Dr. Edersheim asserts in his Jesus the Messiah, that it was "no formal, regular meeting of
the Sanhedrin", pointing out that if it had have been, "all Jewish order and law would
have been grossly infringed in almost every particular". He quotes the Jewish historian
Dr. Jost:
"A private murder, committed by burning enemies, not the sentence of a regularly
constituted Sanhedrin. The most prominent men who represented the Law, such as
Gamaliel, Jochanan ben Zakkai, and others were not present."
It is alas only too sad to relate, and in opposition to this view, that even normally calm
assemblies of intelligent men, when their judgment is clouded by hatred or fear, will act
in the most irrational and unlawful manner. The men who opposed the Lord, even if they
could be so described, were certainly burning with a hatred for Him and all He stood for,
and there seems no reason to doubt, under such circumstances, that the so-called "Grand
Sanhedrin" could act in a way which infringed "all Jewish order and law". As to the
absence or otherwise of the most prominent members of this body, since Scripture is
silent on this, it cannot be established with any certainty one way or the other.
Authority of the Sanhedrin.
The authority of the Sanhedrin at this time, was to judge in the more important causes,
to the extent of pronouncing the death sentence, but with the limitation that such
sentences should be confirmed by the Roman procurator, and be put into effect by the
Roman power. Hence the words of John 18: 31; 19: 7:
"The Jews therefore said unto him (Pilate), It is not lawful for us to put any man to
death . . . . . We have a law, and by our law He ought to die."