"Some of which, as he proceeds to show, had been of infamous characters.
"I shall now transcribe below in his own words what Orosius, in the fifth century, says of this matter, that all my readers may have it at once before them without looking farther for it." This quotation from Orosius will be found in the "Testimony of the Fathers," under the title, "Testimony of Orosius."
"And I refer to Zonoras and Nicephoras. The former only quotes Eusebius, and transcribes into his Annals the chapter of his Ecclesiastical History quoted by me. Nor has Nicephoras done much more."[213]
Tischendorf's Comments on the Acts Of Pilate
"It is the same with the second apocryphal work brought under review above, the so-called Acts of Pilate, only with the difference that they refer as much to John as to the synoptical Gospels. Justin, in like manner as before, is the most ancient voucher for this work, which is said to have been written under Pilate's jurisdiction, and by reason of its specification of wonderful occurrences before, during, and after the crucifixion, to have borne strong evidence to the divinity of Christ. Justin saw as little reason as Tertullian and others for believing that it was a work of pious deception from a Christian hand." [As has been alleged by opponents.] "On the contrary, Justin appeals to it twice in his first Apology in order to confirm the accounts of the occurrences which took place at the crucifixion in accordance with prophecy, and of the miraculous healings effected by Christ, also the subject of prophetic announcement. He cites specifically (chap. 35) from Isaiah lxv. 2, and lviii. 2: 'I have spread out my hands all the day unto a rebellious people which walketh in a way that was not good. They ask of me the ordinances of justice, they take delight in approaching to God.' Further, from the 22nd Psalm: 'They pierced my hands and my feet; they parted my garments upon them and cast lots upon my vesture.' With reference to this he remarks that Christ fulfilled this; that he did stretch forth his hands when the Jews crucified him—the men who contended against him and denied that he was Christ. 'Then,' he says further, 'as the prophet foretold, they dragged him to the judgment seat, set him upon it and said, Judge us.' The expression, however, 'they pierced,' etc., refers to the nails with which they fastened his feet and hands to the cross. And after they had crucified him they threw lots for his clothing, and they who had taken part in the act of crucifixion divided it among themselves. To this he adds: And you can learn from the Acts, composed during the governorship of Pontius Pilate, that these things really happened.
"Still more explicit is the testimony of Tertullian. It may be found in Apologeticus (chap. 2) where he says that out of envy Jesus was surrendered to Pilate by the Jewish ceremonial lawyers, and by him, after he had yielded to the cries of the people, given over for crucifixion; that while hanging on the cross he gave up the ghost with a loud cry, and so anticipated the executioner's duty; that at that same hour the day was interrupted by a sudden darkness; that a guard of soldiers was set at the grave for the purpose of preventing his disciples stealing his body, since he had predicted his resurrection, but that on the third day the ground was suddenly shaken and the stone rolled away from before the sepulchre; that in the grave nothing was found but the articles used in his burial; that the report was spread abroad by those who stood outside that the disciples had taken the body away; that Jesus spent forty days with them in Galilee, teaching them what their mission should be, and that after giving them their instructions as to what they should preach, he was raised in a cloud to heaven. Tertullian closes this account with the words, 'All this was reported to the Emperor at that time, Tiberius, by Pilate, his conscience having compelled even him to become a Christian.'
"The document now in our possession corresponds with this evidence of Justin and Tertullian. Even in the title it agrees with the account of Justin, although instead of the word acta, which he used, and which is manifestly much more Latin than Greek, a Greek expression is employed which can be shown to have been used to indicate genuine Acts. The details recounted by Justin and Tertullian are all found in our text of the Acts of Pilate, with this variation, that nothing corresponds to what is joined to the declaration of the prophet, 'They dragged him to the seat of judgment and set him upon it and said,' etc. Besides this, the casting lots for the vesture is expressed simply by the allusion to the division of the clothes. We must give even closer scrutiny to one point. Justin alludes to the miracles which were performed in fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy, on the lame, the dumb, the blind, the dead, and on lepers. In fact, in our Acts of Pilate there are made to appear before the Roman governor a palsied man who had suffered for thirty-eight years, and was brought in a bed by young men, and healed on the Sabbath day; a blind man cured by the laying on of hands; a cripple who had been restored; a leper who had been cleansed; the woman whose issue of blood had been stanched, and a witness of the raising of Lazarus from the dead. Of that which Tertullian cites we will adduce merely the passage found in no one of our gospels, that Jesus passed forty days after his resurrection in company with his disciples in Galilee.
"This is indicated in our Acts of Pilate at the end of the fifteenth chapter, where the risen man is represented as saying to Joseph: 'For forty days go not out of thy house, for behold I go to my brethren in Galilee.'
"Every one will perceive how strongly the argument that our Acts of Pilate are the same which Justin and Tertullian read is buttressed by these unexpected coincidences. The assertion recently made requires, consequently, no labored contradiction that the allusions to both men have grown out of their mere suspicion that there was such a record as the Acts of Pilate, or out of the circulation of a mere story about such a record, while the real work was written as the consequence of these allusions at the close of the third century. What an uncommon fancy it requires in the two men to coincide so perfectly in a single production, as is the case in the Acts to which I am now referring. And are we to imagine that they referred with such emphasis as they employed to the mere creations of their fancy?
"The question has been raised with more justice, whether the production in our possession may not have been a copy or a free revision of the old and primitive one. The modern change in the title has given support to this conjecture, for it has occasioned the work to be commonly spoken of as the Gospel of Nicodemus. But this title is borne neither by any Greek manuscript, the Coptic-Sahidian papyrus, nor the Latin manuscripts with the exception of a few of the most recent. It may be traced only subsequently to the twelfth century, although at a very early period, in one of the two prefaces attached to the work, Nicodemus is mentioned in one place as a Hebrew author and in another as a Greek translator. But aside from the title, the handwriting displays great variation, and the two prefaces alluded to above show clearly the work of two hands. Notwithstanding this, however, there are decisive grounds for holding that our Acts of Pilate contains in its main substance the document drawn from Justin and Tertullian. The first of these to be noticed is, that the Greek text, as given in the version most widely circulated in the manuscripts, is surprisingly corroborated by two documents of the rarest character, and first used by myself—a Coptic-Sahidian papyrus manuscript and a Latin palimpsest—both probably dating from the fifth century. Such a documentary confirmation of their text is possessed by scarcely ten works of the collective Greek classic literature. Both of these ancient writings make it in the highest degree probable that the Egyptian and Latin translations which they contain were executed still earlier.