We all recall that Jesus was arrested on the instructions of Caiaphas, the high priest, and was brought to trial before him. We can all conjure up a picture of a man with a beard, luxuriously robed, presiding over a meeting in the Temple. So who was this man, and what was his job?
The job first. What we know about the office of high priest is rather like what we know about the office of Pope. We know there was a disciple called Peter. We know there is a man in Rome who lays claim to being Peter's successor. But scholars are far from united about the thread joining the two together.
In the same way, the Bible tells us about Moses' brother Aaron. We know that many centuries later, there was a "high priest". Yet the only official before the Exile described as "high" priest was Hilkiah, in the reign of Josiah, around 620 BC. Before this time, and certainly before David's conquest of Jerusalem, God would have been worshipped in many sanctuaries, and the meticulous provisions for the Day of Atonement we can read in Leviticus 4 and the luxurious clothes of Exodus 28 would only have been implemented in detail after Josiah's reign.
When the Temple was rebuilt a century later, after the Exile, the office of high priest was must more clearly established. It had become restricted to a small number of families, with the high priest tracing his descent from Aaron and from Zadok, priest of Jerusalem in David's time. More importantly, the high priest was a focus of Jewish identity, at a time when political power was in the hands of a governor appointed by the Persians.
As with the Papacy, not all high priests were models of holiness. Around 400 BC, for instance, Johanan took over the office by murdering his brother Jeshua. And the high priest could easily be involved in court intrigues - Herod the Great deposed three high priests during his reign, and had another murdered.
When the Romans came to power in Judaea in 6 AD, they took over the appointment of the high priest, but chose always from the same few aristocratic families. Their first choice was Annas, who was high priest from 6 to 15. Five of his sons or sons-in-law became high priest subsequently, among them Joseph Caiaphas, high priest probably from 18 to 36.
We know little more about Caiaphas (who is hardly mentioned except by Matthew and John.) John records his prophetic saying: "It is better to have one man die for the people than the whole nation destroyed." (John 11:50). We know from Acts 5:17 that the chief priests were Sadducees, the aristocrats and conservative fundamentalists of their time. We know that he was "first among many" - the word translated "chief priests" is merely the plural of the word translated "high priest". But into the working of his mind we have no insight, except that Jesus represented an unbearable threat to his world.
A threat indeed. For as the writer to the Hebrews recalls, Jesus is the true high priest, appointed not by an earthly ruler but by God (Heb 5:5), one who is no aristocrat, but who "shares our weakness." (Heb 4:15). To quote the next verse, "Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
HD