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Matthew and John state that Caiaphas was high priest at this time. Who does the author of Acts state was high priest?
“And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem” (iv, 6).
Luke (iii, 2), who is declared to be the author of Acts, says that Annas and Caiaphas were both high priests.
Criticizing John’s account of the examination before Annas, the author of “Supernatural Religion” says: “The Synoptics know nothing of the preliminary examination before Annas, and the reason given by the writer of the fourth Gospel why the soldiers first took Jesus to Annas: ‘for he was father-in-law to Caiaphas who was first high priest that year,’ is inadmissible. The assertion is a clear mistake, and it probably originated in a stranger writing of facts and institutions with which he was not well acquainted, being misled by an error equally committed by the author of the third Gospel, and of the Acts of the Apostles.... Such statements, erroneous in themselves and not understood by the author of the fourth Gospel, may have led to the confusion in the narrative. Annas had previously been high priest, as we know from Josephus, but nothing is more certain than the fact that the title was not continued after the office was resigned; and Ishmael, Eleazar, and Simon, who succeeded Annas and separated his term of office from that of Caiaphas, did not subsequently bear the title. The narrative is a mistake, and such an error could not have been committed by a native of Palestine, and much less by an acquaintance of the high priest” (p. 660).