Jesus's Path To The Cross: An 8-Day DevotionalMuestra

Photo Credit: © Todd Bolen/BiblePlaces.com

The Sanhedrin Plots to Kill Jesus

Saint Peter in Gallicantu (“of the cock crowing”), a modern church on the eastern slope of Mount Zion south of the walled Old City of Jerusalem, marks the traditional location of the home of Caiaphas, the high priest who oversaw the Jewish trials of Jesus. Remains of a church dating to the sixth century AD have been found on the site, together with cellars, cisterns, grottos, and a stepped street, which some archaeologists say was common to wealthy sections of first-century Jerusalem. Another candidate for Caiaphas’s home can be found in the Armenian compound on the highest part of Mount Zion, just outside Jerusalem’s Zion Gate. 

While the exact location of Caiaphas’s home cannot be known, the remains of several spacious mansions dating to the first century have been found in the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City. Wealthy priests once lived there, as confirmed by the discovery in the modern Jewish Quarter of the first-century “burnt house” of Qathros the high priest (which was burned during the First Jewish Revolt) and as inferred from Josephus’s record of another high priestly home in the “upper city” of Jerusalem, which would correspond to modern Mount Zion (including the current Jewish Quarter). Such mansions had walls decorated with plastered panels and delicate, colorful frescoes; ceilings of stucco molded into intricate geometric designs; and mosaic floors in rooms containing water installations. Jewish ritual baths and stone vessels testify to concern for ritual purity (see “Jewish Ritual Washings” on p. 1485 and “Stone Vessels and Ritual Purity” on p. 1543). Luxury wares were also found in these mansions, including bowls and plates painted with floral motifs, molded glass vessels, and expensive pottery (called terra sigillata) with angular shapes and a glossy red color. Together these remains provide a good picture of the presumed elegance of the high priest’s house.