(2) PILATE LITERATURE AND OTHER APOCRYPHA CONCERNING CHRIST

While Christianity was struggling against the forces of Roman paganism, there was a natural tendency to dwell upon the part which a representative of the Roman Empire played in the supreme events of Our Lord's life, and to shape the testimony of Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea, even at the cost of exaggeration and amplification, into a weapon of apologetic defence, making that official bear witness to the miracles, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Christ . Hence arose a considerable apocryphal Pilate literature, of which the Gospel of Gamaliel really forms a part, and like this latter apocryphon, it is characterized by exaggerating Pilate's weak defence of Jesus into strong sympathy and practical belief in His divinity.

Report of Pilate to the Emperor.

In the apocryphal Acts of Peter and Paul there is embodied a letter purporting to have been sent by Pontius Pilate to the Emperor Claudius. This briefly relates the fatuous crime of the Jews in persecuting the Holy One promised to them by their God; enumerates His miracles and states that the Jews accused Jesus of being a magician. Pilate at the time believing this, delivered Him to them. After the Resurrection the soldiers whom the governor had placed at the tomb were bribed by the leaders to be silent, but nevertheless divulged the fact. The missive concludes with a warning against the mendacity of the Jews. This composition is clearly apocryphal though unexpectedly brief and restrained. It is natural, to attempt to trace a resemblance between this pseudograph and certain references of ecclesiastical writers to Acta or Gesta of Pilate. Tertullian (Apologia, xxi) after giving a sketch of the miracles and Passion of Christ, subjoins: "All these things Pilate . . . announced to Tiberius Cæsar." A comparison between this pericope and the Pseudo-Pilate report reveals a literary dependence between them, though the critics differ as to the priority of these documents. In chapters 35, 38, and 48 of Justin's Apologia, that Father appeals confidently as a proof of the miracles and Passion of Jesus to "Acts" or records of Pontius Pilate existing in the imperial archives. While it is possible that St. Justin may have heard of such a report, and even probable that the procurator transmitted some account of the events at Jerusalem to Rome, it is on the other hand admissible that Justin's assertion was based on nothing more than hypothesis. This is the opinion of the majority of the experts. During the persecutions under Maximin in the fourth century spurious anti-Christian Acts of Pilate were composed in Syria, as we learn from Eusebius. It is probable that the pseudographic letter was forged as an offset to these.

Acta Pilati (Gospel of Nicodemus)
(See the separate article under this title.)

The Minor Pilate Apocrypha

The minor Pilate apocrypha, the Anaphora Pilati, or "Relation of Pilate", is frequently found appended to the texts of the Acta. It presupposes the latter work, and could not have been composed before the middle of the fifth century. It is found in manuscripts combined with the Paradoseis or "Giving up of Pilate", which represents the oldest form of the legend dealing with Pilate's subsequent life. A still later fabrication is found in the Latin Epistola Pilati ad Tiberium. There exists a puerile correspondence consisting of a pretended Letter of Herod to Pilate and Letter of Pilate to Herod. They are found in Greek and Syriac in a manuscript of the sixth or seventh century. These pseudographs may be as old as the fifth century.

The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea

The Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea -- furnishing imaginary details of the two thieves crucified with Christ, and the begging of the body from Pilate -- seems to have enjoyed popularity in the Middle Ages in the Byzantine East, judging from the number of Greek manuscripts which remain. The oldest of those published belongs to the twelfth century. The relation is appended to some Latin texts of the Acta Pilati, under the title "Historia Josephi". It may be read in English in Walker's and the Ante-Nicene Fathers' collection of the apocrypha.

The Legend of Abgar

The oldest form of the Pseudo-Correspondence of Jesus and Abgar, King of Edessa, is found in Eusebius (Historia Ecclesiastica, I, xiii), who vouches that he himself translated it from the Syriac documents in the archives of Edessa, the metropolis of Eastern Syria. The two letters are accompanied by an introduction which probably is an excerpt from the same source. According to this, Abgar V, Toparch or King of Edessa, suffering from an incurable disease, and having heard the fame of Christ's miracles sends a courier to Jerusalem, bearing a letter to Jesus, in which he declared Him to be a god, or the son of a god, and invites Him to Edessa, justifying the request partly by his desire to be cured, partly by his wish to offer to Jesus an asylum against the malignant Jews. Our Lord replied as follows:
Blessed are you because you have believed in Me without seeing Me. For it is written that those who have seen Me, will not believe Me; and that those who have not seen Me will believe and love Me. But as to your prayer that I come to you, it is necessary that I fulfil here all that for which I have been sent, and that after I have fulfilled it, that I be taken up to Him who has sent Me. But after my taking up I shall send you one of My disciples, who will heal your pains, and keep life for you and yours. Accordingly, after the Ascension , "Judas Thomas" an Apostle, despatches to Edessa Thaddeus, one of the seventy Disciples, who cures the King of his disease, and preaches Christ to the assembled people. This, adds Eusebius , happened in the year 340, i.e. of the Seleucid era; corresponding to A.D. 28-29. The pleasing story is repeated with variations in later sources. The "Teaching of Addai", a Syrian apocryphon (q.v. infra), reproduces the correspondence with additions.

The authenticity of the alleged letter of Christ has always been strongly suspected when not absolutely denied. As early as the sixth century the Gelasian Decretum brands this correspondence as spurious. Its legendary environment and the fact that the Church at large did not hand down the pretended epistle from Our Lord as a sacred document is conclusive against it. As for the letter of Abgar, its genuineness was formerly favoured by many skilled in this literature, but since the discovery of the "Teaching of Addai", published in 1876, the presumption against the authentic character of Abgar's epistle, owing to the close resemblance of a portion to passages in the Gospels, has become an established certainty. Lipsius, a high authority, is of the opinion that the Abgar correspondence goes back to the reign of the first Christian ruler of Edessa, Abgar IX (179-216), and that it was elicited by a desire to force a link uniting that epoch with the time of Christ.

Letter of Lentulus

A brief letter professing to be from Lentulus, or Publius Lentulus, as in some manuscripts, "President of the People of Jerusalem", addressed to "the Roman Senate and People", describes Our Lord's personal appearance. It is evidently spurious, both the office and name of the president of Jerusalem being grossly unhistorical. No ancient writer alludes to this production, which is found only in Latin manuscripts. It has been conjectured that it may have been composed in order to authenticate a pretended portrait of Jesus, during the Middle Ages. An English version is given in Cowper's Apocryphal Gospels and Other Doeuments Relating to Christ (New York, 6th ed., 1897).