Who was the high priest during Jesus' trial?
Answer
Caiaphas
Answer
Caiaphas
Who was the high priest during Jesus’ trial? Caiaphas was the high priest associated with Jesus’ trial before the Jewish leaders.
Joseph ben Caiaphas held the high-priestly office in Judaea during the period traditionally dated to Jesus’ final years. In the Synoptic Gospels, after Jesus’ arrest he is taken to the house of Caiaphas, where chief priests, elders, and scribes question him. Caiaphas is portrayed as presiding over the proceedings and reacting strongly to Jesus’ claim concerning the Messiah and the Son of Man.
The Gospel accounts differ in their details. John says Jesus was first questioned by Annas, Caiaphas’s father-in-law and a former high priest, before being sent to Caiaphas. That is why Annas can appear in accounts of the arrest and questioning, but Caiaphas is the standard answer to this trivia question.
The Jewish leaders subsequently brought Jesus to Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, because Roman authority controlled capital punishment. Herod Antipas also appears in Luke’s account, but he was ruler of Galilee, not the high priest. Caiaphas therefore remains the single canonical answer for the high priest connected with Jesus’ trial.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026