Definition: Sanhedrin

In yesterday’s post on the Rich Young Ruler I said the it was possible that he was a member of the Sanhedrin.  The word is often translated as “council,” and when presented as “Sanhedrin” is a direct transliteration of the Aramaic word and the Greek word synedrion.  The word seems to have begun in Greek and then passed into Aramiac and, in Greek, means “together” and “seat,” so, “to sit together.” The Greek speaking Jews called it the gerousia, “the Assembly of the Ancients.”

The Sanhedrin was a council of judges who ruled in matters of a strictly Jewish nature.  The Romans held all real political power.

Jewish tradition says that the Sanhedrin began with Moses and his council of seventy elder (Numbers 11:16) but the first undisputed mention of the gerousia is in The Antiquities of the Jews, (XII, iii, 3) by Josephus, in his discussion of the reign of Antiochus the Great (223-187 B.C.).