Was Jesus taken first to Annas or to Caiaphas?

John’s own word “first” shows that he is adding an earlier stage, not denying the later one. Jesus was taken first to Annas, and then, as John goes on to say, Annas “sent him bound unto Caiaphas the high priest” (John 18:24). From there John passes straight on to Pilate (18:28), leaving out the trial before the council, which the other Gospels had already told. They, for their part, begin with the hearing that mattered in law, before the high priest of that year and the assembled council, and pass over the preliminary one.

There was good reason to take Jesus to Annas first. Josephus records that Annas (he calls him Ananus son of Seth) was made high priest by the Roman governor Quirinius in AD 6 and removed by Valerius Gratus about AD 15, and that five of his sons later held the office. Caiaphas, high priest from about AD 18 until about AD 36, was his son-in-law (John 18:13). The law of Moses assumed that a high priest served for life (Numbers 35:25), and Luke can still write of “Annas and Caiaphas being the high priests” (Luke 3:2; compare Acts 4:6). Bringing the prisoner to the senior figure of the priestly family while the council was being gathered is just what we would expect. Ellicott calls it a preliminary investigation, distinct from the formal trial. It may well have taken place in the same palace, around the same courtyard, which would explain why Peter’s denials run on through both hearings.

The questioning was before Caiaphas

The KJV translates John 18:24 “Now Annas had sent him”, as a look back, so that the questioning in 18:19–23 was by Caiaphas; Gill took it this way. The Greek verb is a simple past (aorist), and most modern versions translate ‘Annas sent him’, but the KJV reading is grammatically possible. On either reading Jesus came before both men.

One building

Jamieson, Fausset and Brown and Ellicott suggest that Annas had rooms in the high priest’s palace, so that both hearings were held in one building with one courtyard, where Peter stood by the fire.

Whether Caiaphas was present when Annas questioned Jesus, and exactly where Annas lived, the texts do not say.