"Questions of Origin"

 "And led him away to Annas first; for he was father in law to Caiaphas, which was the high priest that same year." (John 18:13 KJV)

  "It was now the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius, the Roman emperor. Pontius Pilate was governor over Judea; Herod Antipas was ruler over Galilee; his brother Phillip was ruler over Iturea and Traconitis; Lysanias was ruler over Abilene. Annas and Caiaphas were the high priests. At this time a message from God came to John son of Zechariah, who was living in the wilderness. Then John went from place to place on both sides of the Jordan River, preaching that people should be baptized to show that they had repented of their sins and turned to God to be forgiven." (Luke 3:1-3 NLT)

 Well, if you think you have seen it all, this is not all that unusual! Solomon was right, "Nothing New under the sun." What we have here is the guy named Annas, High Priest from 6 A.D. to 15 A.D., but still, in a sense, holding office. It is believed by some that this was the 'rich man' in the story Jesus told about The Rich Man and Lazaras. As mentioned before, if Jesus used names of people or places, then it was a real event, not a parable. 

 Besides being somewhat in the midst of everything political, he also had great power to influence the Jewish leaders; especially those that were connected to the High Priest office, as that was a pretty close-nit group. It is also believed that Annas was the one who plotted to kill Lazaras, the one that Jesus rose to life, after he had been dead four day. It had to be four days, because Jewish belief was that the soul would hang out around the body for three days, waiting to re-enter the body. So, they technically didn't consider that they were dead-dead till after three days. 

 Anyway, who this guy was, was the guy that determined the next place to take Jesus; whether or not, that the High Priest should be the one, or if they should send Him off to a Ruler first. The religious rulers were always concerned about what the people would think, so Annas was a good first start, seeing that he actually was not currently sitting as High Priest.

 Besides that, he also was closer to the place where Jesus was taken, as others tend to believe. After all, if you are going to be in on the plot, you don't want to make yourself a bad guy; although they both were more concerned about money then were where about serving God. Therefore, he being the apparent leader, passed Jesus off to his son-in-law. It was only because Caiaphas married his daughter, that he was even given the honor of High Priest. 

 Things just never change! "Power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely!" By the way, the time of his death is really not known; but he did have five sons...

"It is God's privilege to conceal things and the king's privilege to discover them." (Proverbs 25:2 NLT)