Sanhedrin
ancient High Court and Legislature in the land of Israel
The Sanhedrin (Hebrew and Middle Aramaic סַנְהֶדְרִין, a loanword from Koine Greek: συνέδριον, romanized: synedrion, 'assembly,' 'sitting together,' hence 'assembly' or 'council') was a Jewish legislative and judicial assembly in the ancient land of Israel.
There were two classes of Rabbinite courts called sanhedrins: Greater and Lesser. A lesser Sanhedrin of 23 judges was appointed to sit as a tribunal in each city. In general usage, the Sanhedrin without qualifier usually refers to the Great Sanhedrin. There was only one Great Sanhedrin of 71 judges, which, among other roles, acted as a supreme court, taking appeals from cases that lesser courts decided. The Great Sanhedrin was presided over by the Nasi (lit. "prince", often translated as "president"), assisted by the Av Beit Din ("chief of the court").
In the Second Temple period, the Great Sanhedrin met in the Temple in Jerusalem, in a building called the Hall of Hewn Stones. The Great Sanhedrin convened every day except festivals and the sabbath day (Shabbat).
After the destruction of the Second Temple and the failure of the Bar Kokhba revolt, the Great Sanhedrin moved to Galilee, which became part of the Roman province of Syria Palaestina.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Sanhedrin” as ancient High Court and Legislature in the land of Israel. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q208481. The Library of Congress control number is sh85117269. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sanhedrin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.