Big Idea: While Peter gave in to pressure and disowns Jesus, Jesus maintains his claim before the highest Jewish authority.

Understanding the Text

Matthew and Mark relate Jesus’s trial before the Sanhedrin at greater length, as the central element in the condemnation of Jesus. Luke’s account is much briefer (briefer even than his account of Peter’s ordeal) and less decisive, so that the emphasis in this Gospel falls rather on the Roman trial and verdict, which follow in chapter 23.

Both main parts of this section are in clear fulfillment of Jesus’s earlier predictions, that Peter would disown him (22:31–34), and that he himself would be rejected and condemned by the Jewish leadership (9:22). The confrontation that has been building up since Jesus’s dramatic and provocative arrival in Je…