No one has ever known the identity of this mysterious man awakened from his sleep, who appeared suddenly in the night, and as suddenly disappeared. Perhaps he was the youthful Mark, the only one of the Evangelists who tells this story. If it were Mark, it is possible that on that night the involuntary witness of the beginning of the Passion first conceived the impulse to become, as Mark did, its first historian. ANNAS In a short time the criminal was taken to the house which Annas shared with his son-in-law, the High Priest Caiaphas. Although the night was now well advanced, and although the assembly had been warned the day before, that Caiaphas hoped to capture the blasphemer early in the morning, many of the Jews were still in bed and the prosecution could not begin at once. In order that the common people might not have time to rise in rebellion, nor Pilate to take thought, the leaders were in haste to finish the affair that very morning. Some of the guards who returned from the Mount of Olives were sent to awake the more important Scribes and Elders, and in the meantime old Annas, who had not slept all that night, set himself on his own account to question this false Prophet. Annas, son of Seth, had been for seven years High Priest, and though deposed in the year 14 under Tiberius, he was still the real primate of the Jewish Church. A Sadducee, head of one of the most aggressive and wealthy families of the ecclesiastical patriarchate, he was still, through his son-in-law, leader of his caste. Five of his sons were afterwards High Priests, and one of them, also called Annas, caused James, the brother of the Lord, to be stoned to death. Jesus was led before him. It was the first time that the wood-worker of Nazareth found Himself face to face with the religious head of His people, with His greatest enemy. Up to that time He had met only the subalterns in the Temple, the common soldiers, the Scribes and Pharisees; now He was before the head, and He was no longer the accuser but the accused. This was the first questioning of that day. In the space of a few hours, four authorities examined Him; two rulers from the Temple, Annas and Caiaphas; and two temporal rulers, Antipas and Pilate. The first question Annas put to Jesus was to ask Him who His disciples were. The old political priest who like all the other Sadducees gave no credence to the foolish stories about the coming of a Messiah, wished to know first of all who were the followers of the new Prophet, and from what rank of society He had picked them up, so that he might determine how far the seditious ulcer had progressed. But Jesus looked at Him without answering. How could that dove-huckster have thought that Jesus could betray those who had betrayed Him?