Mark 14:60
Mark 14:6060So the high priest stood up before them and questioned Jesus, “Have You no answer? What are these men testifying against You?”
JW commentary on the trial scene treats the high priest's questioning as the climax of a politically motivated proceeding, not as a forensic test of Jesus's identity. The verse functions as connective tissue between the failed false-witness phase and the question that elicits Jesus's "I am" in v. 62. Watchtower publications avoid lingering on the trial because the high priest's reaction in v. 63 (tearing his robes) is difficult to square with the JW claim that Jesus never claimed to be God.
Notice the high priest's gambit. After the false witnesses failed, Caiaphas stood up and addressed Jesus directly. Jesus had remained silent before the contradictory testimony — the silence is itself a fulfilment of ("he opened not his mouth"). The high priest's question presses for a deity claim because the legal framework around blasphemy is the only charge that would produce a death sentence under Jewish law. The structure of the verse anticipates v. 61's question and v. 62's answer. Read with v. 61 as the lead-in to the central deity-claim moment of the Synoptic trial narrative.