Mencken slightly mocks a literary group:
"I find it in the deed of a fund given to the American Academy of Arts and Letters to enable the gifted philologs of that sanhedrin “to consider its duty towards the conservation of the English language in its beauty and purity.”

Webster's 1913 Dictionary

Definition: \San"he*drin\, Sanhedrim \San"he*drim\, n. [Heb.
sanhedr[=i]n, fr. Gr. ?; ? with + ? a seat, fr. ? to sit. See
{Sit}.] (Jewish Antiq.)
the great council of the Jews, which consisted of seventy
members, to whom the high priest was added. It had
jurisdiction of religious matters.

When Jesus worked miracles on the Sabbath, complaints were made, and brought to the Sanhedrin, where Caiaphas, the high priest advised that Jesus should die, rather than risk
uprising of the people, which might lead to Roman intervention.