That Roman conquest did not blot out Jewish local self-government; and that the Great Sanhedrin still retained judicial and administrative power, subject to Roman authority in all matters pertaining to the local affairs of the Jews, is thus clearly and pointedly stated by Schürer: "As regards the area over which the jurisdiction of the supreme Sanhedrin extended, it has been already remarked above that its _civil_ authority was restricted, in the time of Christ, to the eleven toparchies of Judea proper. And accordingly, for this reason, it had no judicial authority over Jesus Christ so long as He remained in Galilee. It was only as soon as He entered Judea that He came directly under its jurisdiction. In a certain sense, no doubt, the Sanhedrin exercised such jurisdiction over _every_ Jewish community in the world, and in that sense over Galilee as well. Its orders were regarded as binding throughout the entire domain of orthodox Judaism. It had power, for example, to issue warrants to the congregations (synagogues) in Damascus for the apprehension of the Christians in that quarter (Acts ix. 2; xxii. 5; xxvi. 12). At the same time, however, the extent to which the Jewish communities were willing to yield obedience to the orders of the Sanhedrin always depended on how far they were favorably disposed toward it. It was only within the limits of Judea proper that it exercised any direct authority. There could not possibly be a more erroneous way of defining the extent of its jurisdiction as regards the kind of causes with which it was competent to deal than to say that it was the _spiritual or theological_ tribunal in contradistinction to the civil judicatories of the Romans. On the contrary, it would be more correct to say that it formed, in contrast to the foreign authority of Rome, that _supreme native_ court which here, as almost everywhere else, the Romans had allowed to continue as before, only imposing certain restrictions with regard to competency. To this tribunal then belonged all those judicial matters and all those measures of an administrative character which either could not be competently dealt with by the inferior or local courts or which the Roman procurator had not specially reserved for himself."[2]