fluence also, since he was able to promote to it those most closely
connected with him. And while they acted publicly, he really directed
affairs, without either the responsibility or the restraints which the
office imposed. His influence with the Romans he owed to the religious
views which he professed, to his open partisanship of the foreigner, and
to his enormous wealth.... We have seen what immense revenues the family
of Annas must have derived from the Temple booths, and how nefarious and
unpopular was the traffic. The names of those bold, licentious,
unscrupulous, degenerate sons of Aaron were spoken with whispered
curses. Without referring to Christ's interference with that
Temple-traffic, which, if His authority had prevailed, would of course
have been fatal to it, we can understand how antithetic in every respect
a Messiah, and such a Messiah as Jesus, must have been to Annas.... No
account is given of what passed before Annas. Even the fact of Christ's
being first brought to him is only mentioned in the fourth Gospel. As
the disciples had all forsaken Him and fled, we can understand that they
were in ignorance of what actually passed, till they had again rallied,
at least so far, that Peter and 'another disciple', evidently John,
'followed Him into the palace of the high priest'--that is, into the
palace of Caiaphas, not of Annas. For as, according to the three
synoptic Gospels, the palace of the high priest Caiaphas was the scene
of Peter's denial, the account of it in the fourth Gospel must refer to
the same locality, and not to the palace of Annas."--Edersheim, _Life
and Times of Jesus the Messiah_; vol. 2, pp. 547-8.

2. Christ's Forbearance when Smitten.--That Jesus maintained His
equanimity and submissiveness even under the provocation of a blow dealt
by a brutish underling in the presence of the high priest, is
confirmatory of our Lord's affirmation that He had "overcome the world"
(John 16:33). One cannot read the passage without comparing, perhaps
involuntarily, the divine submissiveness of Jesus on this occasion, with
the wholly natural and human indignation of Paul under somewhat similar
conditions at a later time (Acts 23:1-5). The high priest Ananias,
displeased at Paul's remarks, ordered someone who stood by to smite him
on the mouth. Paul broke forth in angry protest: "God shall smite thee,
thou whited wall: for sittest thou to judge me after the law, and
commandest me to be smitten contrary to t