The high priests (the Sadducean religious aristocracy), the (Pharisaic) scribes, and the elders (the secular aristocracy, Luke 19:47) together were the three groups that comprised the Sanhedrin, the highest Jewish authority in the ancient Roman period.1
21 From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.