Verses 52-53: Romans distrusted subversives who acted secretly at night; here it is Jesus’ enemies, not Jesus, who act this way. People popularly associated night with evil, demons and witchcraft.
54: Taking Jesus at night to the high priest’s private home breached ancient legal protocol (both Jewish and Roman).
55: The guards, perhaps servants, may have planned to stay awake late for Passover, but some guards had to remain on watch during night in any case. To trespass on the high priest’s property required great courage from Peter.
56: Even in this household with many servants, the slave girl would (as we may infer from similar cases in antiquity) recognize that Peter did not belong to the household; he would also be clothed differently from the guards. (Residing in the Upper City and working for a priestly household, she might have seen Peter with Jesus in the temple courts.)
59: Galileans were noted for mispronouncing (from a Judean perspective) guttural sounds. Regional accents were hard to conceal (cf. Judges 12:6).
63: Jewish law did not allow mocking and beating a person before trial.
64: They may view Jesus as guilty of the crime of being a false prophet, misleading Israel (Deut 13:1-5).
66: Whatever informal deliberations may have occurred earlier, a daylight hearing was necessary for any semblance of legality. The groups noted here together constituted the Sanhedrin, Jerusalem’s municipal senate and the land’s highest Jewish court. Later tradition assigns to the Sanhedrin 71 members (including the high priest), seated in a semicircle around the high priest in the Chamber of Hewn Stone. In this period they must have met very close to the temple (see comment on Acts 23:10, 15). Not every member was necessarily present on every occasion, and especially during a festival this may be a specially called meeting of select members (cf. Luke 23:51).
67: For the Sanhedrin, demanding whether Jesus was “Messiah” was tantamount to asking whether he would challenge Rome, hence disturb the peace and their security (cf. 23:2). Yet later reports of Jewish law suggest that one could not force a prisoner to convict himself. A prophet could speak the truth while doubting that his hearers would accept it (Jeremiah 38:15).
69: Jesus is not a conventional “messiah” figure but the universal ruler of Dan 7:13-14. Luke simplifies the Jewish divine circumlocution “power” (Mk 14:62) for his Greek audience less familiar with it.
(Adapted from Dr. Keener’s personal research. Used with permission from InterVarsity Press, which published similar research by Dr. Keener in The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament. Buy the book here.)