Sanhedrin Chamber

The seventy-one-member supreme council of post-exilic Judaism, meeting in the Chamber of Hewn Stone in the southern part of the Jerusalem temple. The Sanhedrin handled both religious and many civil cases under Roman occupation. Jesus is interrogated before it at his trial; in Acts the same council hears Peter and John, then Stephen — the dispute that ends in Stephen's stoning unfolds in this chamber (Acts 6-7).